THE GOLDEN BIRD AS THE CAPITALIST ALLEGORY: CLASS, ALIENATION AND THE PEDAGOGY OF A FAIRY TALE

Abstract

This paper proposes a critical Marxist interpretation of the fairy tale about the The Golden Bird as written by the brothers Grimm, based on the premise that the fairy tale serves as an allegory of smart socio-economic sort which prefigures the logic of industrial capitalism. And while the story was drawn from a pre-capitalist oral tradition, the symbolism within the story is unlocked and revealed to contain a prescient condemnation of incipient class relationships and exploitative labor relations, of systemic alienation. Through a reading of the text which is interpolated with Marxist theoretical constructs - base and superstructure, class struggle, commodity fetishism and the four forms of alienation, the golden bird and apples are read as capital, the distant kings as alienated bourgeoisie, obsessed with accumulation, and the dangerous adventure of the sons of the gardener as proletarian experience of forced labour and ideological interpellation. At the center of this reading is the figure of the wise fox who is being invoked as subject of critical pedagogy and emergent class consciousness, and as the key to maneuvering a way through and overturning the system of oppression. Contextualizing the tale in the historical context of the Grimm 19th century Germany and in intertextual communication with basic texts in political economics and literary naturalism, this analysis reveals the way in which the folk tale goes beyond its moral surface level. The tale's autobiographical enduring pedagogical value is the concluding assertion in this study whose intellectual overcoming of allegorical chains partakes in the vital pedagogy of cultivating critical media literacy and is the key part of a study that concludes with the assertion that deciphering the tale's allegorical chains is a pivotal act of understanding to counteract and critically engage with the perennial machinations of capital and exploitation.