Essay on Briar Rose

Briar Rose Assessment Task – Year 12 –

Briar Rose is centered around one woman's Holocaust experience and intermixed with the classic fairy-tale, Sleeping Beauty. Yolen's uses of classic fairy-tale elements such as a prince and the curse of a long sleep are used to connect us to the horrors of the death camp Chelmno. The result is a story that is fresh and shocking as it tears away any of the numbness one may feel for another account of a Holocaust survivor. Suddenly the fairy-tale ideas of rescue and evil are invested with modern connotations.

Jane Yolen takes an interesting tactic with the story. The odd chapters consist specifically of Gemma, the grandmother, telling her version of Sleeping Beauty to her grandchildren, mostly Becca. The even chapters, however, tell of Becca's search, after her grandmother's death, to find out her grandmother's real identity and origin.

It is evident that within the last half of Briar Rose that the alternating chapters merge. Thi...