How Do You Like Your Jack

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Fairy tales don't belong to any one country or culture. They are universal and can be found in all parts of the world. Cinderella has versions in China, Mexico and Zimbabwe but we don't consider her to be an Asian character or an African one. She has roots and traits from everywhere. Most fairy tale inhabitants are the same.

One obvious exception is Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk - the quintessentially British fairy tale. Fee Fie Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman is the main giveaway, but the swaggering, clever and opportunistic Jack is a dearly beloved avatar of both the British persona and the British Empire itself.

That Empire lasted almost 350 years and at its height it had control over the largest land mass and the largest population of any empire in human history. One person out of every four was under its direct rule. From the 16th century on it sent its navy to every area in the world and swallowed up whole countries wherever it landed.

Like our fairy tale Jack, the British rulers looked at the world and everything it had to offer and decided it was theirs for the taking. A large proportion of the world's population could indeed smell the blood of an Englishman and like the poor, outsmarted giant, lived to regret that.

But the fairy tale begins on a different note. In the first part of the story, Jack is the ne’er do well son of a mother desperately poor and trying to survive. Against her better judgment she lets Jack take their cow, their only asset, into town to sell it. Jack trades the cow for five magic beans and his mother howls in despair. Jack has brought ruination upon them. She sends him to bed without any food and throws the beans out of the window.

The next morning an entirely different Jack awakes and his adventure begins. The beanstalk, the most phallic symbol in all the Fairy Tale Canon, grows at night and is so large and erect that it blocks the window's light and reaches all the way up to the sky.

It could be argued that this story is about puberty and Jack's developing manhood. But what type of man does Jack become? The feckless boy who went to bed begins the new day as a reckless adventurer ready to take on the world and whatever it has to offer.

If you ask Google what the lessons Jack has to say to children it will tell you that they should learn to take risks and seize opportunities.

That's not the way I see it.

In an interesting essay written by John Wellfare, a corporal in the Australian army, he dissects how we view Jack and how that relates to the behavior of soldiers in the field.

"The stories we pass down through the generations can teach us a lot about our world and our own psychology. There are those who suggest these well-known allegories serve as a pre-scientific method of explaining universal truths. The story of Jack and the Beanstalk – a widely known folktale which was passed down as an oral tradition for thousands of years before it was ever committed to paper – contains many lessons on human tribalism and the nature of morality.

'...Much can be learnt by considering, in a military context, the way we interpret Jack and the Beanstalk and the actions of its great villain – one of the most malevolent and destructive mythical characters in literary history.

I am referring, of course, to Jack."

Wellfare goes on to outline all the crimes Jack commits in his pursuit of self-gain, up to and including the death of the giant, who was only trying to retrieve his property.

Here's where it gets interesting…

Part II will appear in two weeks. Join me then…