Hans on a Diet

I've finally managed to trim the length of my week one assignment to under 320 words. Here it is:

Tale by Numbers

The number seven pops up everywhere in Grimm’s Household Stories. The prevalence of the number betrays the stories’ origins in the oral tradition as well as the Christian background of the Grimm versions. This can be demonstrated through an analysis of ‘Hans in Luck.’

In ‘Hans in Luck,’ the eponymous character works for seven years and exchanges his wages in seven steps. The Old Testament binds the number seven to notions of labor and rest: God creates the universe in six days and rests on the seventh, and ordains a Sabbath Year (of rest for the land and its workers) after every six years and a Jubilee Year after forty-nine years (the square of seven).

The emphasis on rest places value on forgoing material expansion by halting crop production. It also values sharing, as one’s slaves partake from the land during periods of rest.

The tale’s very first sentence establishes Hans’ period of work as lasting seven years, referencing the Biblical pattern. The exchanges he makes in good faith, leading to his eventual loss of capital, parallel the values condoned by the relevant passages.

The seven steps whereby Hans loses his wages – aside from echoing his seven years of labor –function as a storytelling device. From antiquity onwards, storytellers employed repetition to recall stories and make them memorable.¹ In a widely referenced clinical study, George Miller determined that working memory holds an average of seven items at a time, give or take two.² The seven steps in ‘Hans in Luck,’ thus, hint at the tale’s origins in the oral tradition.

Patterns of seven occur frequently in the Grimms’ collection of stories, as exemplified by ‘Hans in Luck.’ It evinces the narratives’ affinity with Christian tradition as well as its roots in oral storytelling. In the same vein, the number three makes even more appearances, and its symbolism warrants its own investigation.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/books/08book.html?pagewanted=all

2. http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/