Components to a Successful Fairytale

For a fairytale to be successful it needs to have many components. Of these components needed are the components of the fairy tale's protagonist having his or her happily ever after, the protagonist's having a sidekick or having outside help, there must be some kind of magical element, the fairytale must appeal to younger kids because they are the ones being told these tales, and because the audience of fairy-tales are children, the fairytale must at the end advise the reader a moral or a lesson. The reason for the protagonist having a happily ever after is because for one thing the story's audience are children, so if the story ended with an unhappy ending that would discourage them from reading it. As mentioned earlier this ties in with the appeal to children, as well as one common lesson in all fairy-tales; in the end good things will happen to good people. With the protagonist having a sidekick or outside help is needed because sometimes the hero or heroine will feel lost and will need assistance, the helper can take different shapes, such as the fairy godmother in Cinderella or the seven dwarfs in Snow White. Outside help ties in with the element of magic. Such as Lin Lan's Cinderella turning into a bird, then a bamboo tree, a spirit and then resurrecting back into a human. Or in Beauty and the Beast, with all of the people in the castle cursed. But most important of all is that the fairytale teaches a moral or a lesson; such as in Beauty and the Beast, that you should look beyond outer appearances, or in The Girl Who Trod on Loaf, vanity is dire, and in some sense beauty is only skin deep.