How many more fairy stories could we read? How many more metaphors are there? Is Atonement incarnation? An infusion of light? Is it mercy or moral influence? Is the Atonement joy? Grace? School? Eternal progression?

We have looked at six stories here but could read many more. Just as the Savior taught in different ways—sometimes answering questions directly, sometimes answering questions with questions, at other times offering parables, or even not speaking but answering with actions or examples—the Atonement is multifaceted. It works in different ways for different people as it responds to their needs.

The Atonement is infinite, and it can be experienced and understood in infinite ways.

Because of this diversity, these metaphors are abundant and easy to see. We talk about the Atonement like it is a great mystery, and there is some truth to that, but at other times it seems that it is so comprehensible that we can’t help but recognize it in every moment of our lives. When we plant a garden and invite our friends and family to enjoy it, we see our work as similar to Christ’s. When we make a new friend or help someone in need, we recognize the connections between what we are doing and what he has done for us. When we fly a plane, buy our child a bicycle, remodel a house, heal after a long sickness, even not heal after a long sickness, we see in those tasks and activities shadows of Christ’s divine mission.

When I look for metaphors of Christ (symbols, similes, types, analogies, call them what you will), I find that they are everywhere. And we have seen how fairy tales can help us understand these metaphors. Some of the fairy tales are simple, like “Snow White,” which features a princess who bites an apple, dies, and then is resurrected by the kiss of a prince. Others feel unintentionally meaningful, like “Tam Lin” or “Beauty and the Beast,” which seem like they are shared for entertainment but reveal gospel truths when seen through the right lens. Yet others are intentionally metaphorical, like “The Selfish Giant,” which contains Christ as a character.

I hope that in reading these fairy stories and exploring the ways we often conceptualize salvation, you have come to understand the Atonement better. But there will always be more to learn.

Atonement as Eucatastrophe

So, here, in the conclusion of this series, we will look briefly at one more metaphor, one that is dear to my heart. To introduce it, we will go back to Tolkien’s “On Fairy-stories,” where, at the tail end of the lecture, he writes this:

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels . . . and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; . . . The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. (35)

Here, instead of looking at various conceptual metaphors that can be found in fairy stories to see what they can teach us about Atonement (which was my project), Tolkien instructs us to look at the Atonement itself as a true fairy story.

This isn’t a new idea. Many scholars and theologians have called the gospel a fairy story. As recently as 2010, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said in a talk to the young women of the church, “‘Happily ever after’ is not something found only in fairy tales. You can have it! It is available for you!”

In his talk, Uchtdorf discusses “Beauty and the Beast,” “Rumplestiltskin,” and “Cinderella,” explaining the similarities between these stories and our lives. He looks at how we, and the fairy tale characters, go through trials and adversity before finding Eucatastrophe (my word, not his). Then he bears witness that the gospel is the way to find that happy ending, that through Jesus Christ we can get there.

In his book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, author and preacher Frederich Buechner also writes about the gospel as a true fairy tale. He expands on the idea with gusto, adding his own poetic flair. “That is the Gospel,” he writes,

the meeting of darkness and light and the final victory of light. That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, the one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. To preach the Gospel in its original power and mystery is to claim . . . that once upon a time is this time, now, and here is the dark wood that the light gleams at the heart of like a jewel, and the ones who are to live happily ever after are . . . all who labor and are heavy laden, the poor naked wretches wheresoever they be. (90–91)

The Gospel is the good news that Christ has overcome the darkness of the forest. He has defeated evil, sin, and death. This good news can be discussed and analyzed metaphorically in potentially infinite ways, but every metaphor we use or could use means that we can have a happy ending, not just in our imaginations or in a fictitious world, but in reality. So maybe the best metaphor for all that Christ has done for us, is the “happy ending” itself, the good catastrophe, the surprising and inevitable conclusion to the fairy story that is our lives.

This Eucatastrophe plays out in the lives of saints the world over in varied and remarkable ways. Many people meet Christ as they repent of their sins. They find in him forgiveness and justification. Some come to him wounded or sick; they meet him as a healer who has the requisite power not only to make them whole but also to understand and succor them through the entire healing process. Others meet Christ in moments of grief or sorrow and find his improbable comfort and peace. Just as President Uchtdorf testified, we all have to go through challenges, but with the blessing of the gospel, we will find ourselves emerging on the other side of them with joy and hope.

Eucatastrophe in My Life

In my life, I am often surprised by the ways my Savior reaches me. It is easy to look at Christ in the scriptures, see his sinlessness, and imagine that he could never understand what it feels like to feel sin and regret, but my experience is that he does in a very fundamental way. I had trouble understanding how Christ could support me through the experiences I have had as a woman and a mother—after all, he is a man. What could he know about childbirth and nursing, about raising children, or even having a monthly cycle? But the more I seek his closeness through these experiences and search for him in my moments of sin, sadness, or confusion, the more I find him there, willing and able to offer comfort, understanding, and assistance. He offers clarity of thought. He offers peace when faced with anxiety, turmoil, and contention.

One way that Christ has reached out to me had little to do with sin, woundedness, or death and everything to do with loneliness and despair. When I graduated from high school, I left my family to enter the dark forest of college. My four closest high school friends went to BYU in Provo, but I didn’t even apply. Having grown up just ten minutes from BYU campus, I wasn’t interested in more of the same. I wanted to go far away to school and have an adventure in a strange land.

I ended up only a few valleys north at Weber State University in Ogden, but even though I could drive home in a little over an hour, it felt like I was far, far away. It was completely new and foreign. I had three roommates who were strangers to me. They were strangers because I didn’t know them, and they were strangers because as I got to know them, we found no similarities between us. We didn’t have the same beliefs or worldviews. We didn’t eat the same things, or do the same things, or even study the same things. I didn’t know anybody. I felt like Snow White, alone in her sleep, the only one lying under a coffin of glass. Or like The Beast, who was alone in his curse, not having another beast like him in the world.

I tried to make friends in my classes and at my work. And now, when I look back, I realize that I could have made friends if I had known how, but I didn’t know how to connect with the people around me. I was afraid of people who were different from me and afraid of changing myself.

When I look again at these fairy tales through the lens of loneliness, I see that each of the protagonists of the story is lonely in their own way. Laura, who has Lizzie and other people around her, is alone in her addiction and illness. She is trapped in her memories, craving something those around her have never tasted. The Selfish Giant is alone in his home and garden; he feels no connection to anyone, no love for them, just icy winter in his cold, lonely heart. Tam Lin occupies a liminal space unique only to him. A wild shade, he lives among the fae but is not one of them; he is human but is not a part of human society.

When we—like Tam Lin and the Beast, like Laura, Snow, and even the people and princess in “The Most Remarkable Thing”—are going through trials, it is easy to feel alone in them. I certainly felt alone in my first year of college. I was sure that nobody else was experiencing what I was going through, not my friends who went to college together; not the other students I studied with, who all seemed to have friends and family around; not even my parents, who loved and supported me, but who hadn’t graduated from college and (I thought) couldn’t possibly understand what I was going through.

So, where did I find my support? I found it through Christ. In my first semester of classes, I had a hard time attending church for all the reasons mentioned here. I went home a lot on the weekends to visit my family. When I did stay on campus, I didn’t want to go because I didn’t know anyone, and it was awkward. I had so little money that I wasn’t doing a good job paying my tithing, and I felt ashamed. But one day, during the week, I was crying alone in my tiny dorm room that only had enough room for a tall bed with a dresser underneath it and a tiny desk and bookshelf against the far wall, and I decided to pray. It was a prayer of loneliness, a prayer of desperation. I needed companionship and love, and something more, maybe strength to go on, maybe hope that things would get better, that I wouldn’t feel so alone. As I prayed, I felt all of those things. I felt a blanket of love enveloping me. I didn’t hear a voice, but I felt a voice say that I wasn’t alone, that I was loved and understood. I felt a good catastrophe, a connection with my Savior. I was being healed and reconciled, strengthened, protected, and even justified all at once. I was feeling hope.

It was a beautiful experience, and it helped me not to give up, to keep attending classes, searching for friends, going to church and clubs, and working. It was a real moment of Eucatastrophe for me.

I have had other experiences of Eucatastrophe in different times and different ways. I have felt the support of Christ in moments of crisis as strengthening and calming, or as a peaceful sense of acceptance or resistance. I have felt it as forgiveness, but also as healing. I have felt it as intelligence scooped into my brain like you scoop and dump a cup of flour into a bowl of batter. I have felt it again and again as love that won’t let go.

Every Metaphor is Right

I have been able to understand my own experiences better after reading these fairy tales and thinking about some of the ways the Atonement can feel, some of the miracles it can make. These stories have also helped me understand the experiences of others when they share them with me.

I still don’t know how it works. I don’t know how Christ has the power and capacity to make Eucatastrophe for all of us. But I know how it feels to receive it. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:

The central Christian belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work. (54)

This is what I know: that somehow, someway, Christ can bring about a happy ending for all of us. Debates about whether he does this through justification, radical healing, or reconciliation seem moot at this point. Because yes, he does all of those things. He does justify us and reconcile us and cause us to be reborn, but he also does more. Each of those metaphors represents a small part of what he does. As I lay crying alone in my bed at eighteen, I needed companionship, and he provided that too. He forgives and reconciles, but he also comforts and brings peace. He teaches and enlightens our minds. He sanctifies us.

The Atonement is bigger than the law. It is bigger than healing. It is bigger than your piano lessons or your brother saving you from certain death as he holds on to you at the top of a cliff. It is bigger than bread, water, or wine. It is bigger than a father welcoming you home after you have wasted your inheritance (Luke 15: 11–32) and bigger than your mother, who carried you, birthed you, and fed you from her own body before she supported you through the rest of your life. It is bigger than any of us. Bigger than Aslan, bigger than Gandalf, and bigger than any of the heroes we have read about in these or any fairy tales. It is the biggest thing, the most incredible thing. It is the only way, the capital-T truth. It is life.

Prophets have tried to describe it. They use a lot of superlatives, calling the life of Christ the greatest story ever told. Christ is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible” (Deuteronomy 10:17). He is not only god, but the God of gods. Not only king, but the greatest king of all—the King of kings. Always supernal, the greatest of the great, infinite and eternal, the first and the last.

One of my favorite scriptures is First Corinthians chapter two, verse nine, where Paul writes, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” Both metaphor and superlative descriptions fail at capturing the Atonement because we don’t have the room in our hearts to understand it, but I think there is a reason that stories are the best tool we have for understanding.

Stories Teach Empathy

A good friend of mine taught me that understanding comes from the combination of knowledge and experience. Sometimes, when we search for understanding, we start with our experience and try to work outward from ourselves, seeking ways to frame and understand the things that have happened to us. This would be like having an experience with Christ and then pondering on it or writing it in a journal. At other times, we work from the outside in, not seeking to understand our own experiences but instead hearing about, studying, or learning from the experiences of others. This is empathy. Listening to stories, either personal or fictional, can give us understanding without experience, almost like a map made by someone who has been where we haven’t been ourselves. This sort of outside-in learning can be a huge time saver. It can also open up our perception of our own experience, giving us language to understand ourselves and those around us.

Christ lived a sinless life. He lived in one time and one place, but he had perfect empathy and understanding. He knows all of us—not because he is us, but because he knows us—he has empathy for us. He has knowledge. Stories and scriptures can help us gain that knowledge. Stories teach us how to understand our own lives and the lives of others. They teach us how to develop the empathy to assist, support, heal, and succor those around us. This empathy can be added to our faith and trust to make a more perfect understanding.

As we read these stories and ponder these metaphors, we are also coming to understand our Savior and his mission better. We are learning to empathize, not only with each other, but with him. We are staying awake, turning our focus to Jesus Christ, and his work, watching with him “one hour” (Matthew 26:40), and doing our small part to witness his holy work and support him in his trials.

Christ has made a happy ending for each of us. Eucatastrophe teaches us about Atonement because every happy ending of a fairy story helps us remember what we already know, that in the end, good triumphs over evil. But Atonement is also Eucatastrophe because every time we read a story to the end and find that moment of victory or miracle of salvation, we learn new ways that Christ succors us—whether it is through love or trust, through healing or rescue, through hope, reconciliation, or learning.

I wish I could say that studying these metaphors has given me a complete picture of the Atonement in all of its detail. But how could it? How could I even find room enough in my mind and heart to receive the Atonement in full? It’s okay if right now, I only have a teaspoon of understanding, a morsel of faith. I have watched with my Savior for an hour, and I have gained some new tools, expanded my understanding. I hope, here at the end, that you, like me, feel edified, and that you are ready to go forth and continue in learning, by story and by faith.

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669)

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ATONEMENT AND FAIRY STORY SERIES:

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The Most Incredible Thing

Click the link above to read “The Most Incredible Thing” by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875).

Although it would be hard to argue that Hans Christian Andersen wrote this story intentionally to teach us the gospel, he was a Christian, and the ideas of fall and atonement were part of his worldview. Whether it was intentional or not, it is easy to read “The Most Incredible Thing” as a broad, narrative retelling of the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement—the three pillars of eternity taught by (among others) Elders Bruce R. McConkie (The Three Pillars of Eternity) and Russell M. Nelson (Constancy amid Change).

Creation, the first pillar, could be represented by the beautiful clock that the artist makes. Fall, the second pillar, could be represented by the clock’s destruction. And Atonement, the third pillar, occurs when the clock rises up and avenges the one who destroyed it, bringing peace to the kingdom. Although you could argue that this is an allegory, I think the story ends up being more complex than that. The clock could be seen to represent several things at different points in the story, while the meaning of “the most incredible thing” keeps evolving into something new.

If we continue with our task of looking at what each of these fairy stories can teach us about Atonement, we see how the most incredible things in this story build upon one another and offer us insights into the grand, enabling purpose of the Atonement for everyone.

And this story really is about a general everyone. More than the other stories we have read, this story is about a whole people, an entire kingdom. There are no named characters in the story; we don’t have Snow or Tam Lin or even “The Beast” to follow. There is an artist, a bony fellow, judges, boys, and a princess, but most of the time, the individual characters are not the point. They are not going on individual journeys but playing roles in a story about a communal journey.

This story is about the people of the kingdom as they get together to accomplish the task of discovering the most incredible thing. The prize is the princess and half the kingdom. And yes, the sexism is strong in this story. In addition to portraying a woman as a prize, it also seems that only men are permitted to compete at all. The story also contains racism. In many glaring ways, the people in this kingdom don’t live up to the values of our modern world, which means that they are, in all honesty, a lot like us.

Right away, we see that they have very mundane ideas as to what things are incredible. They eat and drink in large amounts, spit on their backs, and hold an exhibition where people bring incredible things to display. Most of the things done in the contest aren’t impressive, but, among all the things present in this very short story, four of them are declared by the narrator to be the most incredible, and if we look at each of those incredible things as Atonement metaphors, they can offer us new ideas and insights.

The First Incredible Thing: Atonement as Creation

The first incredible thing is a clock found on display at the exhibition.

This clock is an “extraordinary contraption, outside and in. . . . People said that nothing so incredible had ever before been seen.” The people of the kingdom decide that the creator of this incredible clock wins the prize. With its detailed displays at the chimes of the hours, each one demonstrating the works of God and man throughout history, this clock can serve as a vehicle for all of creation, that first pillar of eternity. The clockmaker, then, would be a vehicle for Christ as the creator. Just as the clockmaker painstakingly built the intricate clock, so Christ painstakingly created the earth and all that is in it.

It is not surprising that the people found the clock to be the most incredible thing, just as it isn’t surprising that so many people in life view the creation of the universe as the most incredible thing. And creation is a part of the plan of salvation—that first pillar. But creation is also a part of Atonement. If we try to look at each of these incredible things as metaphors for Atonement, what does it look like if Atonement is creation?

This metaphor—that Atonement is creation and re/creation—has received some attention recently in the work of Adam Miller, who argues in Mormon: A Brief Theological Introduction that God’s work is to create and re/create the world continually, and that “Christian discipleship is the work of willingly participating in the re/creation of the world” (37). If we embrace this idea, our perception changes and we see God’s ongoing creation of our world and lives as miraculous. We see our lives and losses differently. This worldview opens up our lives to seeing the tender mercies of God as we see his creation and re/creation every day.

The Second Incredible Thing: Atonement as Fall

The story could end here. Many fairy stories are as short or shorter than this first section of the story, but Andersen continues. Another contender steps up to challenge the artist. The bony man destroys the clock, smashing it to smithereens. When the artist’s intricate and beautiful creation is sawn asunder, the people of the kingdom redefine what is most incredible. “‘To destroy such a work of art!’ said the judges. ‘Why it’s the most incredible thing we’ve ever seen.’ And the people said so too.” The prize is taken from the clockmaker and given to the destroyer.

This moment could be seen as a representation of the Fall, and it is an unsatisfactory turn. The clock is beautiful, and seeing it destroyed doesn’t please anybody.

I think we can all agree that fall is not Atonement, but if we look closely, we also see that there can’t be an Atonement without a fall, for then, what need is there for an Atonement? Nephi answered:

And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. . . .

Wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.

But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. (2 Ne. 2:22–25)

This is an important feature of Atonement. It is not possible without a fall. There can be no restoring Snow White if she doesn’t first eat the apple. There could be no justification, healing, or reconciliation for anyone who hasn’t first broken the law, become wounded, or become estranged. So while Atonement is not fall, fall is a necessary prerequisite to it. It is the second pillar of eternity, equal to the others. Without it, there can be no joy, no good, no growth.

And the destruction of the clock is an incredible thing. Not in the sense that it is a difficult act to perform, a clock—especially a fine-tuned, hand-crafted object of mechanical complexity—is fairly easy to destroy. But it is incredible that the bony man is victorious—that he demonstrates power over something great and wonderful. “‘I did that,’ said the lout. ‘My work beat his, and bowled you over, all in one stroke. I have done the most incredible thing.’” When they offer the destroyer the prize for his actions, the people follow a fairly common worldly philosophy that “might makes right,” a belief that power, the ability to do something, is more important than the morality of the action performed.

The Third Incredible Thing: Atonement as Victory over Evil

I am happy that Andersen doesn’t end the story there. Might does not make right, and fairy stories feature miraculous endings where justice is often meted out without mercy. Near the end of the story, the clock performs the third incredible thing when it returns and defeats the bony man. This is the first indisputable magical act of the story. It is as surprising as it is miraculous. And while early on in the story I thought that the artist represented Christ and the clock represented creation, this moment changes the metaphor. The clock becomes a character in the story, and we see it taking on the role of Christ. Even though the destroyer has the power to bruise the clock’s proverbial heel, the clock has the power to crush the destroyer’s proverbial head (Gen. 3:15).

This is formally Atonement, the third pillar of eternity, and we see it here demonstrated in a new way. The clock is re/created. He becomes a deliverer, terrible and mighty, like the God of the Old Testament. He comes and “with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked” (Isa. 11:4). If the bony man is Satan, then this is the prophesied moment when he shall be bound and “not have power to tempt any men” (D&C 101:28). It is a moment we yearn for, a moment when good triumphs over evil on a grand, universal scale, for all people.

Once again, we see a new side of Atonement. This is not the view of the Atonement we have spent most of this series discussing, a view where Christ ministers to individuals one at a time, healing and restoring them to wholeness. This is a bird’s-eye view of the forest. We are looking at it from a distance, not to see the unique veins of the leaves, but to see a whole mountainside. Here we see what it looks like when Christ enables us to “conquer Satan, and . . . escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work” (D&C 10:5). This view of Atonement reveals Christ defeating Satan, the adversary, the very fountain of sin and death.

Once again, we could end the fairy story here. It would be even easier than before. After all, the clock was victorious. We have been through three incredible things, and the princess and half the kingdom are safe from the rule of the bony man. But thankfully, there’s more.

The Fourth Incredible Thing: Atonement as Collective Harmony

“Now,” the princess commanded, “summon the right man, the craftsman who made the work of art. He shall be my husband and my Lord.”

The clockmaker is awarded the prize, much to the relief of the princess, who, let’s face it, had a lot riding on this contest, and “everyone was happy for him, everyone blessed him, and there was no one who was envious.” Then, for the fourth time, the narrator declares that “that was the most incredible thing.”

Reading this story is a roller coaster. I experience constant whiplash with each new incredible thing I am presented with. This fourth incredible thing, however, is where I feel Tolkien’s “catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.” That final declaration is where I felt the greatest miracle has taken place. It is the miracle we saw in the Selfish Giant and Laura. A miracle that transforms the saved—in this case, the entire kingdom—into something new and better.

One day, the people of the kingdom are all competing to do the most incredible thing, eating and drinking themselves to death, spitting and fighting, and even cheering on the destroyer because of his display of power. Then, the next day, they are none of them envious. They are happy.

Can you imagine it?

The Nephites experience this in the Book of Mormon. They are overrun by Gadianton robbers, their chief judge murdered. “The people were divided one against another; and they did separate one from another into tribes, every man according to his family and his kindred and friends; and thus they did destroy the government of the land” (3 Ne. 7:2). The greater part of the people are wicked.

Thankfully, it doesn’t last. Like in our fairy story, an incredible thing happens. Christ comes. He brings healing and forgiveness, justice, mercy, and reconciliation, not just for the individual, but for the whole community. And a people who were recently full of inequality, greed, violence, and hatred become a people unified around the Savior—righteous and peaceful. “And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift” (4 Ne. 1:3).

As I get older and see the ways that we in our societies and even families choose to divide ourselves into tribes and embrace contention and greed, I long for this miracle. For the miracle Christ prayed for in the intercessory prayer, “That [we] all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that [we] also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21).

After Christ comes to the Nephites, they all believe in him and unite around this belief. As a consequence, they have three hundred years of peace. These three hundred years serve as a witness to the unifying power of Christ. And while I still don’t feel like I adequately understand the enchanted forest of the Atonement, this fairy story does remind me that the transformations we have discussed in this series—restoration, justification, healing, reconciliation, and rebirth—are not only available to us as individuals but to our entire communities. The good clockmaker, hand in hand with his greatest creation, has the power to banish the destroyer and bring peace to everyone.

Careful readers will notice that even the bony man, who received his blow from the clock (a blow for a blow), was not declared dead in the story. Andersen never says the man died, that he was killed or slain, or even that he disappears like the clock. No, even he is included in the ending; even he is not envious.

Fiona and Terryl Givens write that “the work of Atonement [is] intended to bring about the healing and unifying of the entire human family” (144). President Russell M. Nelson, in his October 2024 conference talk bore testimony that “at [Christ’s] Second Coming, ‘the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’ That day will be filled with joy for the righteous!” That is the hope this story brings, that not only me, not only you, individually, but all of our families, friends, and communities will all feel this joy together. “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).

Retroactive Salvation

The miracle of Atonement is that it can reach everyone, through all time and space. It can reach those closest to us, but also our neighbors who think differently. It reaches refugees and soldiers, rock stars, and teachers. “Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous” (Alma 11:44).

Yet another miracle is waiting for those who access the Atonement, a retroactive salvation, a joy that radiates into the forest of the past and bathes each moment with new light. When I say that Atonement reaches all of time and space, I am not only talking about people from the past or future. I am not talking of a single moment in time when all will be right, but of a moment in time when all previous moments will have been right.

The Atonement brings the promise that each moment of the past, a past that contains sorrow and suffering, will come to be a part of the Atonement as well. When Christ will reach back to those moments of creation and re/creation, those moments of fall, and sanctify them, making them holy and whole, a part of the grand plan of eternity.

This is nowhere better expressed than in fairy stories. In fairy stories, happy endings erase the sorrows of the beginning and middle. Kate Bernheimer writes in “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale,” that “Characters in fairy tales are always flat . . . they are not in psychological conflict. In a traditional fairy tale, a child who has escaped an incestuous advance does not become a grown-up neurotic.” The ending of “The Most Incredible Thing” wipes out the fallout of the earlier story. The people are truly happy, suffering no consequences from the violence they have experienced. C.S. Lewis writes in The Great Divorce:

That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t take suffering seriously, that we should hold back our love and our empathy because someday everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt. Quite the opposite. Those who follow Christ should seek to alleviate suffering just as he did. But we can never win alone. We could make our world into a paradise where every person is known, loved, and happy. But we can never undo the past. We can never make what has been done right again. Only the Atonement can do that.

This is the most incredible thing—a wholeness that extends to all people and all moments. A promise that those who receive the Savior will have—even during their darkest moments—always been with him. A true happily ever after, and a happily ever before, and a happily ever always.

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by Howard Lerner; Magnus S. Fossum (1888–1980); illustration from the first US publication of “The Most Incredible Thing” in The Riverside Magazine for Young People, September 1870.

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Tam Lin

Click above to read “Ballad 39A: Tam Lin,” collected by American folklorist Francis James Child (1825–1896).

When I first heard the story of Tam Lin, I fell in love with the ending. Tam Lin’s situation was hopeless: a slave to the faerie, destined to die. It couldn’t be worse, but then . . .

I was transfixed by the image of Janet, alone, nine months pregnant, dressed in her best green dress on Halloween night, pulling Tam Lin down from his milk-white steed as he was marched slowly to his death. As if that weren’t enough of a dramatic rescue, after pulling him down, she holds tightly to him as he turns into monsters in her arms—first a newt, then a snake, a bear, a lion, a red-hot rod of iron, and, lastly, a hot coal which she throws into the well. After all that, even the queen of the fairies agrees that Janet deserves her happy ending. As Tam Lin emerges naked from the well, Janet throws her green cloak over him, the bonniest knight in all the company, free at last.

Janet certainly loves Tam Lin (even though readers don’t always believe that he deserves it) and in the end, her steadfast love saves him. Her passion and commitment to his salvation cause her to put herself at risk, and sometimes readers are “confused at grace that so fully she proffers him.” And, in Tam Lin’s case, it isn’t a grace of restoration, justification, healing, or reconciliation. The force that saves him is Janet’s love.

But as much as I am attracted to the metaphor of love as a mechanism for Atonement, I have some issues with it—one being the small problem that the shape of the metaphor doesn’t match up with the patterns of the previous metaphors we have studied.

I have been using nouns to refer to these metaphors: restoration, justification, healing, and reconciliation. But they are also all active verbs; one can restore, justify, heal, and reconcile. In every metaphor so far, Christ’s role as Savior is to do something to us that makes us something new. That sounds complex, but it’s easier to write it out:

Christ restores us, and we are restored.

Christ justifies us, and we are justified.

Christ heals us, and we are healed.

Christ reconciles us to him, and we are reconciled to him.

But if Atonement is love, if what Christ does when he atones for us is to love us, then what are we having done to us?

Christ loves us, and we are loved?

This may make sense eternally, but with my limited understanding of love, I struggle to see how being loved equals atonement. The story of Janet and Tam Lin offers us a model of a love-driven atonement, as well as an alternative that deserves our careful attention:

Christ loves us, and we are reborn.

What is Love, Anyway?

Love is a powerful, soul-saving force that shows up in so many of our stories. An act of love can thaw a frozen heart; a mother who gives her life to protect her son from death can bestow upon him a lifetime of protection; true love’s kiss can turn a frog into a prince. Even outside of fairy stories, love is believed to have magical properties. The idea that love can bring miracles is ever-present in our imaginations.

Janet calls Tam Lin her “ain true-love.” And at the end of her story, she demonstrates just how strong her love is. We recognize her actions as actions of love, and on the surface, love seems like a concept we understand, a metaphor that should be fairly straightforward. It is something we are all familiar with, after all, and something that most of us aspire to give and receive.

The problem with using love as a metaphor for Atonement is that even though we all revere it, it is difficult to define what love is. Love seems to be as complicated to understand as Atonement. It is abstract. It is formless. According to scripture, Love and Atonement could even be the same thing. John says that “God is love” and dwells in those who love him (1 Jn. 4:8). Mormon writes that “charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever” (Moro. 7:47). These scriptures could both imply that love is the very essence of God and Atonement, that they are inseparable.

But we don’t usually talk about love like it is God. We often talk about it as a feeling of liking with more enthusiasm (I don’t like chocolate cake; I love chocolate cake). This definition of love is resonant with words like affection and attraction. But this meaning of love falls short in this metaphor. If love is a warm, fuzzy affection for something, how can we ever be expected to love our enemies? How can we even love our neighbors or ourselves? And if the greatest love is this, “that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), is he feeling those warm, fuzzy feelings even in death?

Another definition of love is commitment. This definition is resonant in words like devotion and attachment. Love is always being there for someone. It is binding yourself to them. This resonates more fully with the idea of soul-saving love. A love that is unalterable, unfailing, indefatigable (the list could go on) feels more compatible with Atonement than a love that is merely a liking.

The difference may not be in the constancy of committed love as much as the agency. If love is a feeling, then we don’t choose it; we merely experience it when conditions are right. If love is commitment, then it is a choice. It is something that we decide we are going to do, an action of will.

There are many other ways we could define love, just as there are many ways to define Atonement. I have chosen these two because, in my experience, they are the most common lenses we use as we try to understand love. They are also both present in Janet as her story with Tam Lin unfolds.

Christ as Bridegroom

One relationship that is almost universally associated with love is that of the lover. And this is the first fairy tale we have read that includes a romantic—even physically intimate—relationship between the savior and the saved.

The metaphor of Christ as a romantic lover hasn’t received a lot of analysis within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but in the scriptures, Jesus Christ is often symbolized as the Bridegroom (Matt. 25:1–13, Mark 2:19–20). This is a powerful symbol of unity and love between Christ and his people, who are sometimes represented by wedding guests and sometimes represented by the bride herself (Isn’t the malleability of metaphors fun?).

A common reading of the Song of Solomon is that it is a spiritual allegory about the way Christ views his church, and oddly, many of the verses in this book feel like they could be pulled out of Janet and Tam Lin’s story directly. “Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir” (Song of Solomon 1:16–17). “My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether” (2:16–17). The fairy world described in these verses feels almost dreamlike. And this allegory of Christ as a bridegroom and his people as his bride adds dimension to the comparison between Janet and Christ, and Tam Lin and Christ’s People.

As Janet’s story begins, almost the first thing she does is braid her hair, put on her finest clothes, and run off to Carterhaugh, where she knows she will find Tam Lin. After she becomes pregnant, when she has a chance to leave him for another (more stable and less liminal) man, she makes the conscious decision—moving from attraction to commitment—to hold on to him ‘til the end. Does Tam Lin deserve her? Not really. But neither do we deserve Christ, not as our bridegroom or in any other capacity.

Christ as Mother

A second relationship that is almost universally associated with love is that of the mother and her child.

In “Tam Lin,” Janet becomes pregnant, and by the end of the story, she is very close to giving birth. This part of her identity allows her to step into this second relationship and represent Christ as a mother.

Many scriptures call Christ our father (Ether 3:14, Alma 11:38–39), but in Matthew, the Savior uses the metaphor of a mother hen when discussing himself and his people, declaring that he wants to gather his “children together” (Matt. 23:37). Peter takes the metaphor further when he compares members of the church to “newborn babes,” who “desire the sincere milk of the word” (1 Pet. 2:2–3). The word is Christ, and when they taste of it, they find it to be good.

The metaphor of us as nursing babes, wholly reliant on our Savior, is both shocking and powerful. On one hand, the vehicle of the baby for each of us shows how truly helpless we are. Then, when looking at the vehicle of the nursing mother, it shows Christ’s complete and total commitment to our salvation. A nursing mother cannot leave her baby for longer than a few hours. She nurtures the baby with her body in a visceral way. It is in this way that Christ nurtures us.

Speaking messianically, Isaiah expands this lesson when he writes, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” I remember the first time I read this scripture, thinking that Isaiah would equate Christ’s love with the love of a mother, but he continues, “Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isa. 49:15–16). Reading this, I was gobsmacked. He wasn’t equating the two loves; he was placing Christ’s higher. In these short verses, Isaiah takes the holy, respected, even (for better or worse) idealized relationship of mother and child and then raises Christ’s love above it. A mother can birth you, he argues, but through Christ, you are reborn. Through his Atonement—the Atonement that left permanent scars on his hands and feet, that caused Christ to cry out to God in pain—he has shown a greater love than even that of your mother.

The Lord articulates and explains the metaphor of birth (vehicle) and rebirth (tenor) very patiently to Adam in Moses:

Inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory;

For by the water ye keep the commandment; by the Spirit ye are justified, and by the blood ye are sanctified. (Moses 6:59–60)

These verses gained new meaning for me after I gave birth to my first child. I experienced firsthand the birthing process, and while it was magical, it was not a sparkling rainbow tale full of roses and smiles. It was one of the fairy stories where monsters creep in dark forests, miracles come at a cost, and bargains are made but never broken. There was—as this scripture promised—water, blood, and spirit. The water broke first, and the spirit entered the world with my daughter. But the blood wasn’t hers. The blood was mine. And even more than a mother gives a part of herself to bring a child into the world, Christ gave his very life to enable our rebirth.

One more strange and possibly stochastic similarity between Janet’s story (which is, remember, a fairy story and not an allegory) and Christ’s reality is the moment when Janet wishes to be free from this awesome power of birth and creation. She visits Carterhaugh for a second time, early in her pregnancy, and pulls the poisoned rose, thinking it would be better to abort her baby than to go through with it. Tam Lin stops her, asking: “Why pu’s thou the rose, Janet,/Amang the groves sae green,/And a’ to kill the bonnie babe/That we gat us between?” And her answer is to ask him a question in return, “‘Oh tell me, tell me, Tam Lin,’ she says,/‘For’s sake that died on tree,/If eer ye was in holy chapel,/Or Christendom did see?” She basically asks him if he is Christian. His answer is no.

In the end, Janet’s desire to be free from the responsibilities of raising a child is understandable, especially when we consider that she might have to raise that child alone or with a man who is no more than a wild shade. Even Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane asked for the cup to be taken from him (Matt. 26:36–46), for the burden of rebirthing all of humanity to be lifted. But Christ went through with the Atonement, and Janet goes through with her pregnancy, and in the course of the story, even causes Tam Lin to be reborn.

The Atonement of Love

Janet is a lover, Janet is a mother, and Janet rescues Tam Lin from his curse and his execution through her active love.

But if we are to use and understand this metaphor, we should seek to understand how love works as an atoning force. In Tam Lin, Janet asks her ain true love what she can do to rescue him, and his answer is clear. First, she has to recognize him and grab him. These tasks already prove difficult, but he instructs her to let the black horse pass and then the brown and pull him off the white. He tells her what he will wear and how he will do his hair. When she arrives on Hallows Eve, she is only able to recognize him as her own because he matches the description he gave earlier, even down to his one glove.

Then she has to hold on, a task more difficult even than grabbing him in the first place. The fairies turn Tam Lin into a snake, but she holds him fast and fears him not. Then they turn him into a bear and a lion, but she holds him fast and fears him not. Next, they turn Tam Lin into a red-hot rod of iron, but Janet holds him fast and fears him not, he having promised that he would do her no harm. And last, they turn him, still in her arms, into a hot coal (the burning gleed). She throws him into the well, a symbolic baptism, and he is finally transformed back into her love, the father of her child.

I am Tam Lin in this story. We all are. As hard as we may try, sometimes we are bears, sometimes snakes, and sometimes red-hot irons. But we have a Savior, and he has endless love for us. He is there through all of our transformations, standing beside us and hoping we will choose him. In his essay, “The Atonement of Love,” physician-scientist, ethicist, and theologian Samuel Brown says it well:

We are, unavoidably, painful to love. We are the infants who shriek through the night no matter how tenderly the parents try to soothe. We are the children who kick and steal and curse. We are the partners who betray, belittle, and violate. We are the narcissistic exhibitionists who can hear no voice but their own. And there God stands, through Jesus, loving us anyway. Loving every hard and painful bit of us. No matter how much it hurts God to do so. This is not the vacuous love that is indifferent to the shape of our lives as some pop psychologists might have it. God’s love will transform us: that is, after all, the end game for the Atonement. That transformation will be painful, and it is the best thing that could ever happen to us.

This metaphor, like the others, resonates with my experience. The Savior does for each of us what Janet did for Tam Lin: he holds us tight and fears us not. He descends from his throne to rescue our rebellious, proud souls. We are prone to wander, to leave him, but he never leaves us. He stays by us, understanding and loving us until we are ready to commit to him, then covenanting to be there for us even longer.

If Christ is our bridegroom, he takes us into his family and we become his beloved. And if he is our mother, we are begotten of him, born again in spirit. This kind of committed love is transformational. It changes each of us into a new person. Like Tam Lin was brought back into the world he came from, we are brought back into the presence of God, becoming someone new.

I love the final image of Tam Lin, emerging from the waters of the well, born again, ready to follow Janet back to civilization. Through her love, he was reborn.

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by John D. Batten (1860-1932) in More English Fairy Tales, ed. Joseph Jacobs (1894); Katharine Pyle (1863-1938); William Cubitt Cooke (1866-1951) in Illustrated Popular British Ballads, Ancient and Modern, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (1894); J. Herbert Macnair (1868-1955); Katharine Cameron (1874-1965); John D. Batten (1860-1932); and Vernon Hill (1887-1972).

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The Selfish Giant

Click on the link above to read “The Selfish Giant” by British writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900).

More than in the previous metaphors, where sin and redemption were represented by physical losses and gains, “The Selfish Giant” offers us a complex internal landscape to contemplate, even as we hold on to the fairy tale setting.

“The Selfish Giant” is a beautiful illustration of both estrangement and reconciliation. As in many fairy stories, we again have a garden, but this time, our protagonist doesn’t eat the forbidden fruit but instead keeps the fruit locked up for himself.

I have no trouble relating to this Giant. Nominally, his sin is selfishness, and his greatest offense is building a wall to keep others out of his garden. “‘My own garden is my own garden,’ says the Giant; ‘any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.’”

The wall he builds separates him from others, and he becomes estranged from the world. The story says that he leaves his ogre friend, the neighborhood children no longer visit him, the birds don’t land in his garden, and even the seasons—at least Spring, Summer, and Autumn—stay far away. In the giant’s garden, “it [is] always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow [dance] about through the trees.” They are his only companions. It is poignantly ironic that by trying to wall in his garden, he destroys its growth, completely preventing it from flowering at all.

Maybe sorrow and winter eventually wear a hole through the giant’s wall, or maybe steady effort on the part of the children chips away at the wall until they form a hole big enough to enter. The story isn’t clear as to how the children come to break through the wall, but eventually the children do break through to make space for Eucatastrophe. Through the efforts of the neighborhood children, the Giant is reintroduced to music, to the birds, to the sun, and to the soft breezes of Spring. His trees bloom once again, and the children climb them, laughing and having fun.

Even though they have broken into the garden on their own, it is interesting that the first time the Giant appears, the children run away from him. Only Christ, represented by a little boy, is left with the Giant in the garden. The Giant doesn’t know yet who he approaches, but Oscar Wilde makes it clear by the end of the story that the Giant owes his happiness to Jesus Christ, who does not run away from him:

And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently in his hand, and put him up into the tree. And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant’s neck, and kissed him. And the other children, when they saw that the Giant was not wicked any longer, came running back, and with them came the Spring. “It is your garden now, little children,” said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o’clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.

This is a moment of repentance and change. The giant meets Christ and his heart changes. He returns to society, knocks down his wall, and finds joy again.

At One Ment

The Atonement as reconciliation is about a setting “at one” those who have been estranged from God. The metaphor is contained in the word itself—at-one-ment—and it is closely related to the Latin roots for reconciliation re, meaning “again”; con, meaning “with”; and sella, meaning “seat.” Reconciliation means “to sit again with.”

Another word that can help us understand the metaphor of Atonement as reconciliation is the Greek word for sin, which is hamartia. In English, we translate hamartia as a fatal flaw, one that leads to a tragic hero’s downfall, but hamartia arose from the Greek verb hamartanein, which means "to miss the mark, err, and therefore not share in the prize" (Strong’s Concordance of the Bible). If we were using the metaphor of justification, we could look at hamartia as anything that causes us to break the laws of God—to miss the legal mark. When we look at it through the lens of reconciliation, missing the mark is based on relationships instead of legality. In this case, sin is anything that causes us to break or sever our relationship with God, to be estranged or even walled away from him; therefore, to not share in his prize.

Julian of Norwich—14th-century English Anchoress, and author of Revelation of Divine Love—writes about this using the word oned. One-ing is the process of overcoming this estrangement and coming to sit again with Christ. She writes that we are oned with Christ: “when we of His special grace plainly behold Him,” which is a simple act the Giant performed, and “seeing none other needs, then we follow Him and He draweth us unto Him by love. . . . and then we can do no more but behold Him, enjoying, with an high, mighty desire to be all oned unto Him.”

She describes a process of coming to Christ, beholding him, following him, being drawn to him, and then desiring to unify with him. This process is also encouraged in scripture, when Jacob writes, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and . . . after ye are reconciled unto God . . . through the grace of God . . . ye are saved”” (2 Nephi 10:24). Later he writes again that we should take counsel from the Lord, and “be reconciled unto him through the Atonement of Christ” (Jacob 4:10-11).

Returning to the fairy tale, we see the Giant experience this reconciliation through Christ. He beholds him, not even knowing who he is, then he is drawn to him. In Christ’s presence, he becomes more like him, having a desire to share his garden with others, and he is changed into a new person. Interestingly, when the Giant “sits again” with Christ, he is also oned with his community. He welcomes the children to his garden. Spring, Summer, and Fall return. The birds sing again, and to him, it is glorious music. The transformation of the Giant from a solitary grump to a jolly, joyful figure, rivals some of the greatest transformations in both literature and scripture. It calls up images of Paul the apostle, Ebenezer Scrooge, or even Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, whose heart grows three sizes during his moment of Eucatastrophe. But among the stories in this book, one thing that makes this story unique is the timing of the Giant’s change of heart.

The Good Catastrophe

Often the Eucatastrophe in a fairy story comes at the close of a narrative. The stories we have read so far in this series—“Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Goblin Market”—all end shortly after their respective saviors have carried out their missions. After an inciting incident (sin), we get some rising action when everybody sorts out what to do and how to overcome it, and then (Atonement) the prince carries Snow White off to his castle and marries her, Beauty loves the Beast and breaks his curse, Lizzie returns from the market dripping with the cure for Laura’s woundedness.

But let’s look again at how Tolkien described Eucatastrophe in “On Fairy-stories.” This time, I want to examine some assumptions we have made about these happy so-called “endings” that don’t necessarily find support in Tolkien’s source text:

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale) . . . is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.

Tolkien uses the word “ending” but does Eucatastrophe have to come at the end of a fairy story? Is that a rule? Because if Eucatastrophe is a “sudden joyous turn” and “there is no true end to any fairy tale,” then maybe the turn can come early—maybe we don’t have to wait for the end of a story to see the miracle we are hoping for.

If we want to try to look directly at the Atonement, the ending of the Christian story will be each of us sitting before God, receiving restoration, forgiveness, and healing, and then entering into a kingdom of glory. But what about the healing we are seeking now, in mortality? What about repentance, forgiveness, healing, and restoration in our day-to-day lives?

‘The Selfish Giant” is a better model of our actual experience in one key way: The Giant meets Christ in the middle of his story, not at the end. That meeting changes him. It inspires him to be better, to love others, and to share all that he has. But his story doesn’t end at that point, his life continues forward after the miracle.

“Life with Christ Before We Die”

Through this story, we get a glimpse—a small, metaphorical look—at what comes after Eucatastrophe.

Life goes on. The Giant tears down his wall through work and sweat. He makes his garden beautiful again, pulling weeds and briars. And he opens his life up to others. The story says that the children come and play every day.

There is joy in his life, to be sure, poignant moments of joy. But there is also sorrow. The Giant misses the boy, whom he doesn’t see again. He wonders where the boy is and asks the other children, who have no answer. Most of all, he has to live a long time, and it is a life with Spring, but also Winter. The cold North wind doesn’t disappear forever. It rotates in and out like the rest of the seasons. Some moments are cold and some are warm. But the Giant doesn’t mind anymore because “he knew that [Winter] was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.” Here, the Giant shows his growth. He not only experiences both joy and sorrow, but he has learned to find joy in sorrow, and, like many of us he also experiences sorrow in joy. He has joy and hope in the resting flowers because he knows that they will soon bloom.

In “On Fairy-stories,” after Tolkien discusses the joyous turn of Eucatastrophe, he describes its opposite, “dyscatastrophe”:

[Eucatastrophe] does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and inso far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

“Walls” is a particularly relevant word to use here as we discuss “The Selfish Giant,” but the language also calls up the experience of Alma in the Book of Mormon, when he writes, “And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!” (Alma 36:20). Alma, like Tolkien, does not deny the existence of the pain and sorrow as he experiences the hope and light of Christ, he experiences them even in the same moment, remembering the pain and comparing it to sorrow.

The Selfish Giant learns to live with this. He lives with grief and sorrow, and with the joy of Christ. He holds on to his memories of the boy and lets those memories get him through his many winters. One key feature of this metaphor, and one way that it can change our understanding of the Atonement, is that it allows for moments of Eucatastrophe throughout a life. In his book An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die, Adam Miller describes this life in Christ:

Living in Christ changes what it means to be alive. Living in Christ, I carry myself differently. I desire differently. I love differently. I greet pain and loss differently. I fail differently. I succeed differently. I part with the past differently. I respond to the present differently. I look to the future differently. In Christ, I hold time itself in a very different way. (p.18)

The difference is that we are reconciling with Christ and God, one-ing our souls and selves with them. Instead of being saved once from jail or healed once from sickness and then—tada—we never have any problems ever again, we find peace and forgiveness over and over again, experiencing exquisite joy and tragic sorrow in many moments.

Repentance

Another wonderful feature of this metaphor comes as we consider what it says about repentance. In the other metaphors we have discussed, repentance is either absent or it comes as a result of guilt or shame. Reconciliation seems to soften the idea of repentance. Yes, the Giant changes. He tears down his wall; he becomes more friendly and less selfish, but he doesn’t do it out of guilt or shame. He doesn’t bemoan his brokenness first. He repents because he wants the good things that come from being kind. He isn’t running away from selfishness, he is running toward the sun and the birds and the children.

In this metaphor, Christ’s very presence incites change in us. As we come to spend more time with him, we want to be different. We want to be like him. It is not about obeying him because he has mediated or brokered a deal with our debt collectors. It is not about him fixing something that is broken within us. Reconciliation is very much about our own desire to come closer to Christ and our heavenly parents and to be more like them.

If we use the metaphor of reconciliation to structure our understanding of Atonement, then prayer, contemplation, scripture study, and church attendance are motivated not by the idea that we have to keep these commandments to earn our salvation, but that we want to know and understand God better, and we do this by doing godly things.

The Giant (we won’t call him selfish at this point in the story) spends the rest of his life seeking Christ. He asks the other children about him, watches for him, waits for him. His whole life is shaped by the vision of forgiveness and acceptance that he receives from Christ in a single moment. In this metaphor, the Giant plays an active role in his salvation by striving for reconciliation with the Savior, seeking him out again and again, and living with others as if the Savior were present.

In the book At One Ment, Thomas Wirthlin McConkie writes of this journey, “To at-one, then is not a singular act so much as a natural process. It is the nature of Nature. Atonement stands revealed in the evolving reality of Christ in our own developing godhood, that all may be One” (202). Reconciliation is a process of repentance and one-ing that takes a lifetime. 

The Giant does this. He spends his life reconciling, and then, at the end of the story, long after the first Eucatastrophe, he dies. In death, he meets Christ again. “Who art thou?” he asks. “And a strange awe [falls] on him, and he [kneels] before the little child.”

In this second Eucatastrophe, the Giant meets his Savior again and hears, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by Wladimir Dowgialo, Everett Shinn (1876–1953), Lisbeth Zwerger, and Walter Crane (1845–1915).

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Goblin Market

Click above to read the poem “Goblin Market” by British writer Christina Rossetti (1830–1894).

Most of the scholars who have studied and interpreted “Goblin Market” have found meaning in the way it explores issues of sexual purity or addiction and the way that it portrays markets and trade. It is a complex fairy story that could be read and interpreted in myriad ways, not all of them relevant to our current discussion. But the first image that stands out in our context of Atonement metaphors in fairy stories is the very dangerous and very seductive fruit the Goblins give Laura.

Each of the stories we have read so far contains a fruit, and in the way we are reading these stories, each of these fruits is a vehicle for sin. However, the shapes of the stories change the meaning of sin, what it is, and who we are. 

In “Snow White,” sin is death.

Snow White’s apple is crafted by the evil queen to trick Snow White into eating it: “The outside looked very rosy and tempting, but whoever tasted it was sure to die.” The queen even goes so far as to make only one side of the apple poisonous so that she can take a harmless bite to demonstrate the safety of the apple to Snow. This matches one telling of the story of Eve, where she is tricked into eating the fruit by the devil, she sins when she does this, and, because of her actions, all people are cursed to die physically and spiritually.

In Beauty and the Beast, sin is criminality.

The rose is not the literal fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, plucked by one person and leading to the condemnation of all. Instead, the fruit is the sins that mortals commit. The merchant breaks the Beast’s law when he picks a single, beautiful rose from the garden, and justice requires payment.

How is Goblin Market different? In Goblin Market, two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, are tempted by the Goblin men to buy their fruits. We hear the repeated refrain, “Come buy, Come buy:”

Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.
(lines 25–31)

Lizzie resists, but Laura does not. With a lock of her hair, she buys the Goblin fruit. It turns out that you can get a lot of fruit for one lock of hair:

She suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She suck’d until her lips were sore” 
(lines 134–136).

It is not against the law to eat Goblin fruit, so no beast or angel or sheriff shows up to arrest Laura for eating it. And it does not bring instant death—although eating it can lead to eventual death. So what happens when Laura eats it?

She gets sick.

In “Goblin Market,” sin is not death, and sin is not criminality. Sin is woundedness.

Woundedness

All three of these metaphors use fruit to represent sin, but as discussed in the previous essay, conceptual metaphors “provide us with a partial understanding of what [sin and Atonement] are and . . .  in doing this, they hide other aspects of these concepts” (Lakoff and Johnson 12). The differences between death, criminality, and woundedness are immense.

In All Things New, Fiona and Terryl Givens present a thorough analysis of what we can gain from looking at sin as woundedness. They argue that the metaphor of woundedness emphasizes “the larger context in which sin operates—which context is the purpose for our mortal journey” (101).  They write:

Woundedness is essential and inevitable in the Great Plan’s unfolding. It is through our necessary experience of the bitter that we may learn to prize the sweetness of what is good and pure and beautiful—the sweetness that is Christ. . . . We learn that certain choices we make . . . take us to a place that is “contrary to the nature of happiness (Alma 41:11).” (106)

Laura’s decision to eat the goblin fruit takes her to this place that is contrary to the nature of happiness. Lips sore, not knowing night from day, she goes home and almost immediately begins to pine. Her desire for more of the goblin fruit makes her ill.

The first mention of her sickness doesn’t sound too serious. Lizzie, it says, is “content,” while Laura is “sick in part” (line 212). But as the poem continues, the descriptions of Laura’s bad health become more frequent and more vivid until it is clear that she is very sick indeed:

Her tree of life dropped from the root (line 260)
Her hair grew thin and gray (line 277)
She had “sunk eyes and faded mouth” (line 288)
Sat “listless . . . and would not eat.” (lines 297–298)
Till Laura dwindling/Seemed knocking at Death’s door (lines 320–321)

Eventually, Laura is near the point of death, and she knows from the example of her friend Jeanie, who “fell sick and died/in her gay prime” (lines 315–316) that this sickness has only one end. She is going to die.

Or at least, she would if she were left on her own. She would continue to dwindle, always craving more and more goblin fruit, until she wasted away. The fruit has twisted her, broken her, and wounded a part of her that she cannot heal. Hers is a death of longing, an addiction that she cannot overcome on her own. But she is not the only character in this fairy story. And if she is a vehicle for each of us—lost in our sins, looking for wholeness—her sister Lizzie is a vehicle for Christ.

Then Lizzie weigh'd no more
Better and worse;
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kiss'd Laura, cross'd the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight, halted by the brook:
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look. (lines 322–328)

Lizzie condescends to go back to the Goblin Market to save her sister. She listens to what the market has to offer. She looks at what is going on there, sharing Laura’s experiences, but only to a point, only to save her.

Why Is the Healing so Radical?

When sin is woundedness, Atonement is radical healing, and the “radical” is very important.

Healing is an everyday, mundane part of our lives—think scraped knees, sunburns, and white blood cells fighting off the latest mutation of the latest virus. But radical healing is a grand, supernatural miracle—think Christ healing the blind man (John 9), the woman with an issue of blood (Luke 8:43–48), or the ten lepers (Luke 17:11–19).

If we used the metaphor of everyday healing to explain the Atonement, it would be very similar to the metaphor of restoration. After all, when an injury or sickness is healed, the injured party has been restored to health. But “radical healing” is about more than mere restoration in the same way that Christ healing the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) is a greater miracle than the recovery I made after the cold I had last fall.

Alma preached that Christ would “go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people” (Alma 7:11). Similarly, Isaiah writes that “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Jesus Christ is a healer. During his mortal ministry, he continually healed the sick and the wounded, and he didn’t discriminate between healing physical and spiritual wounds. The story of the man who was sick of the palsy offers a great example of how Christ looked after both spiritual and physical needs:

He said unto the sick of the palsy, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”

But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts,

“Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?” . . .

[And he said unto them] “Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy)

I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.” (Mark 2:5–11)

This story shows Christ ministering to a whole person. The man is forgiven—healed from sin—and he is healed physically, to witness that the spiritual healing is true. Fiona and Terryl Givens write, “Sinning is a type of woundedness, like blindness or lameness. It is an infirmity, a brokenness. As a Healer, He ministers to the entire range of our afflictions: psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual” (All Things New, 140).

Lizzie’s Miracle

As a Christ figure, Lizzie has a lot to teach us about ministering. When she returns to the goblin market, she returns full of love, wanting nothing more than to save her sister Laura.

She has been with Laura from the beginning. She warns her sister of the dangers of the fruit, and then after Laura eats it, she is the first to hear Laura’s story and plans to return and buy more fruit later. Lizzie does not reject Laura for her decision but stays with her:

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings,
They lay down in their curtain’d bed: . . . 
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Lock’d together in one nest.
(lines 185–191)

Lizzie’s love never wavers, but in addition to perfect love, Lizzie brings another gift: she never tastes of the goblin fruit. Her miracle is then made through the combination of her love and her perfection.

Lizzie returns to the market, which feels like a vehicle for Christ’s condescension to the world. She meets the temptations of the goblin fruit. She tosses her penny at the men, asking for fruits to carry home to her sister, but they will not.

“Nay, take a seat with us,” they say,

“Honour and eat with us,”
They answer'd grinning:
"Our feast is but beginning.” (lines 368–371). 

But Lizzie doesn’t eat with them.

“Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us.” (lines 380–382). 

But Lizzie doesn’t sit with them. She thinks only of Laura.

When the goblins see that she will not be tempted, they try a different approach, becoming violent and aggressive. But still, they cannot force her. She doesn’t eat a single bite. First, she is not tempted, and then, when the goblins become violent, she is still unmoved, thinking only of her sister.

Lizzie utter’d not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in:
(lines 430–432)

And it works! When the Goblins tire of tormenting her, when they give up on trying to force the fruit into Lizzie’s mouth, she returns to Laura, her face and neck dripping with the juice that her sister has been longing for.

Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.
(lines 471–474)

Here, Lizzie is not only a savior for Laura, she becomes, in essence, the Eucharist. “Eat me, drink me, love me;” she cries to her sister. For Laura’s sake, she went to the market in search of a moment of relief for her sister. But the sticky fruit Lizzie carries gives Laura more than a moment of relief from her longing, it radically heals her. When Laura kisses her sister, tasting that forbidden fruit on her sister’s lips, “she loathe[s] the feast” (line 495). She doesn’t desire the fruit anymore. Fire fills her veins as it burns out her wounds and sickness. “Life out of Death,” the poem says as Laura is made whole (line 524).

Lizzie is Laura’s savior. But she doesn’t justify her; she heals her. Her tender care of Laura during convalescence offers us a wonderful metaphor for a Christ who is gentle, caring, and present for our healing.

That night long Lizzie watch’d by her,
Counted her pulse’s flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cool’d her face
With tears and fanning leaves:
(lines 525–529)

This is a beautiful Eucatastrophe. Laura avoids certain death and is wiser and stronger after the experience. The sisters go on to live long lives together, even becoming mothers who tell the story of their miracle to their children.

In On Fairy Stories, as Tolkien describes what fairy stories are good for, he uses the word recovery, defining it first as “a return and renewal of health” and second as “a re-gaining of a clear view” (66–67). This idea—that we are better able to see the world and ourselves through the lens of fantasy—is also shared by writer and folklorist Jane Yolen, who explains that the best stories “are the most potent kind of magic, these tales, for they catch a glimpse of the soul beneath the skin” (57).  Fairy tales give us newer, clearer visions of ourselves as they throw us into situations and relationships that force us to confront our inner souls. This confrontation with the self can be a powerful teacher, helping us find healing and preparing us to go out into the real world with optimism, looking for meaning and purpose.

That is what this story does to me. When my soul is sick, when I feel like life has battered and bruised me, I can read about Lizzie and understand my Savior a little bit more. I can peek into the dark forest and see him there, a stalwart and unmoving oak filled with birds and squirrels. For “he doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world” (2 Nephi: 24). 

And just as Laura’s miracle was enabled by Lizzie’s resistance to temptation, the same resistance enables Christ’s greatest miracle: his Atonement. He saw and felt—he experienced—all that I have. He “suffered temptations, but gave no heed unto them” (D&C 20:22). I don’t know why and how his perfections give him the ability to perform this miracle, just like I don’t know why and how Lizzie’s second visit to the Goblin Market saves Laura, but it does.

Like Laura, we are wounded emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Our wounds are deep: grief, trauma, addiction, violence, hurt, depression, war, abuse, extortion, anxiety, pain. At times, our woundedness seems hopeless to cure. But we have a Savior with the requisite love, mercy, and capacity to overcome it anyway. He loves us; he understands us; he understands our mortal experiences. He has seen it all and felt it all, and then, even after all of that, has never given in to sin. He is our happy ending.

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by John Byam Shaw (1872-1919), Frank Craig (1902-1951), Florence Harrison (1877-1955), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Hilda Koe (1872-1936), Arthur Rackham (1867-1939).

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Beauty and the Beast

Click above to read an English translation (Andrew Lang) of the classic French fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” originally written by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (1685–1755) and abridged and summarized by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780). 

The justification metaphor dominated my religious education growing up. This is partly because the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, rely so heavily on this metaphor, but also because some of the great stories that inspired feelings of gratitude and love for my Savior used this framework for understanding.

Although it has many variants and can get as complicated as we let it, the basics of the justification metaphor can be explained simply.

When we break God’s laws (sin), we are declared unfit to return to God. Jesus Christ then steps in as our Savior, pays the price for our sins, and, in essence, buys or earns salvation for those who follow him. Boyd K. Packer’s “The Mediator,” which I mentioned in the introduction, uses this metaphor and has deeply influenced my understanding of the Atonement. Aslan (spoiler ahead!) giving his life for Edmund in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is another metaphor that conceptualizes the Atonement as justification.

Nephi teaches about the Atonement using this metaphor in the Book of Mormon:

And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever. Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for. . . .  Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law. . . . (2 Nephi 2:5–7)

Others also look at the Atonement in this way. Mosiah does when he writes that God gave “the Son power to make intercession for the children of men . . . standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice” (Mosiah 15: 8–9).

Beauty and the Beast

Many fairy stories illustrate this metaphor, but Beauty and the Beast is an excellent example because it is a popular story with metaphorical possibilities that often go unnoticed. Those who watch, hear, and read this tale are often so absorbed with the story’s drama that they don’t think about what is going on metaphorically. This is also a lovely example of justification because its conclusion expands the idea of justification to create a powerful eucatastrophe worthy of the powers of the Atonement. We will look at that conclusion at the end of this essay, but first, let’s look at how the story begins. 

Much like in the Book of Job, there is a merchant—a family man with a big house, many children, and riches to spare. He has “until this moment prospered in all ways.” Then his house burns down, and his “books, pictures, gold, silver, and precious goods” are gone. He is betrayed by his clerks in distant countries, his ships sink, and he and his family are left in poverty. Unlike Job, his children do not die, but they are—with one exception—upset at him, and they moan and murmur about their newly impoverished state, especially after all of their friends desert them.

When the merchant and his family move, impoverished, to the woods, his daughter Beauty is more fully introduced. She has never been upset at her father, nor has she had any trouble adjusting to her new simple life. She is the most beautiful, kindest, hardest working, and just all-around best person in the story. Like in the story of Snow White, her beauty—and other positive traits—indicates her goodness. She is the hero of this story, and we can see her as a vehicle for the Savior.

Beauty is the only one of the merchant’s children who is cautious when good news arrives that their fortune may soon be restored, and while her sisters ask their father for fancy ball gowns and jewelry when he returns from a trip in search of his lost wealth, Beauty asks her father to bring her a single rose.

The merchant does not find a fortune and ends up “as poor as when he started.” Then, on his return trip, he gets lost in the woods (often a vehicle for life in the world) on a cold, dark, and stormy night, and the real story begins.

He wanders into a castle. Although the merchant doesn’t know it yet, the castle belongs to the Beast, and the Beast allows him to roam freely within, provides a dry stable and food for the merchant’s horse, food and drink for the merchant, shelter and a place to sleep, and allows the merchant into his enchanted garden where, “though it was winter everywhere else, here the sun shone, and the birds sang, and the flowers bloomed, and the air was soft and sweet.” The garden is a magical paradise, a perfect place where all things bloom and grow (I hope you can see what it could represent). When the merchant sees the roses blooming so abundantly in the garden, he is reminded of his promise to Beauty, and he plucks a rose for her.

The rose is almost universally seen as a symbol of love, and we can easily see the rose as a representation of the love the merchant has for his daughter. But we can also see the rose as a more complicated religious symbol, one relevant to our discussion of Atonement. It is a red rose, the color of blood, and along with the beautiful blossom of the rose come sharp thorns. Much like Snow White’s apple, readers might recognize it as a vehicle for the fruit of the Garden of Eden. A fruit that is both desirable and dangerous. Immediately as he picks it, the merchant meets the Beast, who condemns him to death. 

The Beast is an imposing figure. He is frightful, terrible, angry. He has been a generous host to the merchant, but picking a rose is taking the Beast’s hospitality too far, and now the Beast decrees that the only way that the merchant’s life will be spared is if one of his daughters takes his place in the Beast’s castle. But she must “come willingly.” She must be “courageous enough,” and love her father “well enough to come and save [his] life.”

This is the moment where Beauty steps into the role of Christ and makes the choice that will lead to the justification of her father. She agrees to set things right. She takes the punishment that should be her father’s and, in so doing, justifies him in the law laid down by the Beast. Her father is then spared from death and allowed to return to his family.

The Power of Metaphor

The idea of justification that is represented in this story—of bringing ourselves in line with justice through the assistance of a savior or mediator—is so common and widely accepted in the Church that much of the language we use when we talk about the Atonement carries the idea of justification with it. In writing about other metaphors in this series, I struggled not to use words like law, justice, and “paying the debt.”

The idea is so common that we hear it everywhere, including in these lyrics from several of our sacrament hymns. Although the metaphor of justification might not be  intended as the main subject of each of these hymns (it probably is in some of them), the language alludes to justification throughout the entire set:

Hymn 187: He died in holy innocence, / A broken law to recompense.

Hymn 190: The body bruised, the lifeblood shed, / A sinless ransom for our sake.

Hymn 191: Behold the great Redeemer die, / A broken law to satisfy.

Hymn 193: That he should extend his great love unto such as I, / Sufficient to own, to redeem, and to justify.

Hymn 194: There was no other good enough / To pay the price of sin.

Hymn 195: How great, how glorious, how complete / Redemption’s grand design, / Where justice, love, and mercy meet / In harmony divine!

Hymn 197: By heaven’s plan appointed, / To ransom us, our King.

Other phrases that carry with them the implication of justification include bought with his blood and died for our sins. The titles Advocate, Mediator, and Judge are decidedly legal terms. And Christ, Messiah, Lamb of God, and Scapegoat are linked to ancient Hebrew purification practices of animal sacrifice, Christ and Messiah meaning “Anointed,” referring to the preparation of the animal being sacrificed in the stead of the sinner. 

The prevalence of this metaphor brings about an interesting change in the way the metaphor operates. Instead of justification being merely one way of looking at the Atonement, the idea begins to structure our understanding of Atonement more directly. It becomes a conceptual metaphor.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson first discussed conceptual metaphors in their book Metaphors We Live By, where they propose that conceptual metaphors have the power to change the very structure of their tenors in the minds of those who use them. Conceptual metaphors become so ingrained into our lives and language that they inform the way we interact with, experience, and behave when confronted with the concepts they represent. This, in turn, can affect our entire way of being, our actions, our relationships, and our thoughts.

Lakoff and Johnson use the conceptual metaphor “time is money” to illustrate this. In Western culture, we talk about time as money, we spend it, save it, budget it, and even run out of it. This concept has changed the way we think of time. We could think of the abstract idea of time in many ways, but we have structured our understanding of it in this particular way, viewing it as a valuable commodity and a limited resource. 

These kinds of conceptual metaphors occur in many facets of life, and they can also change our religious understanding. If we conceptualize the Atonement as a legal process—which we do—it changes our relationship with our Savior. It demands certain actions, shapes the way we view ourselves, and forms the basis of our understanding of the plan of salvation. And if that is the only metaphor we live by, then we will have a relationship with our Savior that is based on good things like gratitude for saving us from our debts or defending us in court, but also potentially harmful things like seeing Christ as a businessman counting his money or God as a judge determined to condemn as many of his children as possible.

This metaphor has received scathing criticism (a good introduction to the criticisms of this metaphor can be read in chapter 13 of All Things New, by Fiona and Terryl Givens) for the way that it turns all of mankind into criminals, the way that it makes Christ’s mission about suffering instead of succoring, and the way that it frames God as distant and uncaring, willing to condemn either mankind or Jesus Christ to eternal suffering.

The justification metaphor can be explained simply, but as we look at the ways it could be interpreted, we find that it doesn’t stay simple for long. There are many variations on the theme of justification. I have been lumping a lot of different Atonement theories together under this single “justification” umbrella because they all relate to condemnation and justice, but whole libraries have been written analyzing and explaining their variations. We won’t be able to do these discussions justice, but we do have time to discuss a few elements of the conversation here as we continue our look at Beauty and the Beast.

Complicating Justification

The earliest examples of this metaphor give the power of judgment not to God but to Satan.

Benjamin Dearden writes in “Why Do We Need an Atonement?” of the classic Atonement paradigm found in such scriptures as Matthew 20:28, which says that “Christ will give his life a ransom for many.” This ransom metaphor posits that once a person sins, they belong to the Devil and that Christ, through his Atonement, pays the Devil’s ransom and purchases sinners with his blood.

This is a fascinating theory to think about with Beauty and the Beast in mind. If we metaphorically name Beauty’s father as the vehicle for mankind, the Beast as the vehicle for the Devil, and Beauty as the vehicle for Jesus Christ, this part of the story cleanly illustrates how a broken law could condemn a man and how another could step in to save him.

Most modern discussions of Atonement do not allow Satan the power to hold God’s children for ransom. More often now, God himself condemns mankind because we fall short of heavenly standards. This gives the power to justice itself. This variation of the justification metaphor posits that all of God’s children must stand before him as he serves as a judge and is forced to condemn those who fall short of the demands of justice. As they receive their guilty verdict, even during their sentencing, Christ steps forward as a scapegoat and acts as the substitute for them, taking their punishments himself and meeting justice’s demands.

This variation of the metaphor is often referred to as penal substitution and is the theory that Alma describes to his son Corianton:

And thus we see that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence.

And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an Atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also. (Alma 42:14–15)

By this theory, Christ atoned for the sins of the world not to pay the price to the adversary, but to justice itself, and to God, whose eternal laws demand certain punishments for certain sins.

There are a few key details in Beauty and the Beast that allow for this interpretation. First, the Beast is an immovable force. His strength and power make him a good stand-in for God’s justice, which is seen as similarly immovable. Justice cannot be robbed (Alma 42:25). It cannot be changed. It is a fixed law that none can escape.

The second detail that allows us to interpret the story in this way is Beauty’s goodness. She would, in the context of this metaphor, represent mercy, who chooses out of her great love to take this punishment. As Alma explains in the same chapter, when “justice exerciseth all his demands . . . mercy claimeth all which is her own” (Alma 42:24). Beauty claims her father and his punishment when she volunteers to take his place.

Alma’s explanation of the metaphor of penal substitution is very persuasive, but Amulek, his friend and missionary companion, took issue with it. He agrees with Alma that it is expedient that an Atonement should be made, but asserts that it would not be a simple substitution. The atoning sacrifice must be greater:

Now there is not any man that can sacrifice his own blood which will atone for the sins of another. Now, if a man murdereth, behold will our law, which is just, take the life of his brother? I say unto you, Nay.

But the law requireth the life of him who hath murdered; therefore there can be nothing which is short of an infinite Atonement which will suffice for the sins of the world.

Therefore, it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice. (Alma 34:11–13)

This argument leads to an understanding of justification that goes beyond the simple math of “A punishment is owed, and I can’t pay it, so Christ is paying it for me.” In Amulek’s justification theory, Christ must suffer an infinite punishment, paying an infinite price. That infinity is great enough to cover all of justice’s demands eternally. Amulek’s justification is not about giving Satan what he is owed or appeasing the law on an individual level, it is about Christ breaking justice and carrying out a mission of infinite mercy, a mission that can save everyone who comes to him.

Does Beauty do this?

Return to Eucatastrophe 

After Beauty enters the Beast’s castle to save her father, the story veers into beautiful, new territory when Beauty redeems not only her father but others as well.

Remember, this story is not an allegory, and none of the characters perfectly represent single players in the plan of salvation. That is why, in one moment, the merchant can represent Adam, plucking a rose in the garden to his condemnation, and the next, he can represent each of us. The Beast can be Satan in one reader’s eyes and justice in another. And Beauty, who I have stated represents Jesus Christ as she saves her father from condemnation, can quickly come to represent each of us as she learns to love the unlovable, the Beast being foremost among them (I like to hope I can one day be like her).

No one interpretation is “the true interpretation,” but I think some interesting spiritual ideas resonate through the happy ending—the eucatastrophe—of the story. Here, Beauty goes beyond mathematical justification or penal substitution. I wouldn’t say her act of sacrifice is infinite or eternal, but the consequences of her action are certainly magnified.

First, she not only frees her father from death, but she also frees her entire family from poverty and suffering because when she stays in the castle, her father is given the riches that her siblings have so long desired. She restores them to wealth and prosperity.

Then, Beauty has beautiful dreams about a handsome prince who is calling for her to save him. This prince is the Beast, and when he is freed from his curse in the end, he and his mother are also made happy.

In possibly the most popular film version of the story (the Disney animated feature), the prince’s entire household is also cursed. His whole kingdom has fallen into disrepair and despair, every member of his court transformed with him. Beauty saves them all.

This is the power of justification. It may look like a simple mathematical equation or a righting of a wrong, but when Christ chose to atone for mankind, he did not atone mathematically; his sacrifice wasn’t about numbers, economics or arithmetic. He atoned infinitely, and his infinite sacrifice brings forth infinite and eternal joy and consolation. When Beauty agrees to go to the Beast’s castle in her father’s place, she does it out of love for her father, and that love is magnified. It ripples through the story to save everyone: her father and siblings, the Beast and his family and people. Beauty saves them all in a miraculous and unexpected ending that reminds us that the Atonement isn’t a legal math equation but an infinite and eternal justification of all creation.  

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by Edmund Dulac (1882-1953), Paul Woodroffe (1875-1954), Margaret Tarrant (1888-1959), John Hassall (1868-1948), Anne Anderson (1874-1952), Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825-1916), Beauge Bertall (1820-1882), Walter Crane (1845-1915), Warwick Goble (1862-1943).

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Snow White

Click the link above to read the first English translation (Edgar Taylor) of the classic German fairy story Sneewittchen, by Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859) Grimm.

Snow White dies, and then she is restored to life.

Paul writes, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).

The resurrection is a joyous part of the Atonement. It is also much easier to comprehend than the other part. And since resurrection is a restoration of life to one who has died, prophets, teachers, and authors of scripture have repeatedly applied the concept of restoration to the Atonement as a whole, teaching that Atonement is restoration.

We see this clearly in the Book of Mormon, where Amulek bears witness that “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost, but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Alma 40:23).  The Prophet Samuel argues that beyond the physical restoration, a spiritual restoration will take place, with mixed results: “Ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil and have that which is evil restored unto you” (Helaman 14:3).

Here, Samuel clarifies a feature of restoration: A person cannot have something restored to them that wasn’t theirs to begin with. Life can be restored to the dead because they were once alive. Good can be restored to the good, and evil to those who are evil, but ultimately, restoration is returning that which was once lost.

This metaphor is a part of our understanding of Christ’s Atonement, and “Snow White” illustrates this metaphor particularly well.

Snow White and the Language of Metaphor

Snow White is as familiar a fairy story as can be found. Even in 2025, movies are still being made of this story. Most people encounter it sometime during childhood. And it is fairly easy to remember. The broad strokes of the story are these:

Snow White’s mother wishes for a beautiful daughter, and then beautiful Snow White is born. Her mother dies, and her father, the king, marries an evil witch. This witch is jealous of Snow’s beauty and orders her to be killed, but her executioner spares her, and she is exiled to the woods instead. She meets seven dwarves who take her in. The witch uses her magic, including a magic mirror, to find Snow White in hiding and give her a poisoned apple. When Snow White takes a bite, she dies. The dwarves lay her in a glass case where she lies beautifully and magically preserved until a prince finds her, loves her, brings her back to life, and carries her away to marry her in his kingdom.

In the fairy stories we’ll consider in this series, many metaphors (representational symbols and elements) can be identified or interpolated. Scholars use the term vehicle for the concrete and comprehensible element of the metaphor—for example, a handsome prince who restores a poisoned princess to life and to her royal birthright—and the term tenor for the abstract concept needing illustration—for instance, our Savior capable of restoring life to all mankind. 

The forest in “Snow White” works as a vehicle for the tenor of the world. The witch can be seen as a vehicle for Satan, and the apple can be seen as a vehicle for the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil—which is a little on the nose, but also very fitting, as both the apple and the fruit bring death.

It is important here to distinguish metaphor from allegory. An allegory is generally written to purposely illustrate a lesson through one-to-one representation. Parables and fables are allegories. They are constructed with intention, each vehicle representing only one tenor, and all parts lock together to tell two stories at once.

Metaphor, as we are using it, is a bit more wibbly wobbly. “Snow White” is not an allegory. It was not designed to teach us about the Atonement in the same way the parable of the sower (Matthew 13: 3–8) was designed to teach us about how the growth of our faith is dependent upon the condition of our hearts, or Aesop’s fable “The Ants & the Grasshopper” was designed to teach us that “there’s a time for work and a time for play.”

Snow White is messier. It has loose ends, and many pieces of the story do not fit the lesson. This is a feature of metaphor that brings with it some wonderful advantages, one being its malleability. Unlike most allegories, the story of Snow White can be interpreted in many ways. I have already offered the idea that the prince can be seen as a vehicle for Christ. If we take that interpretation, Snow becomes a vehicle for each of us. Just as Snow took a bite of a poisoned apple, we partake of the forbidden fruit of sin. And just as the prince restores her to life, so Christ enables each of us to be resurrected. In another interpretation of the story, Snow could represent Eve, who is the first to partake of this forbidden fruit. When she dies, those who love her are sad because death has entered their world. In this interpretation, the prince might be Adam. 

We could also look at Snow as a vehicle for Christ. She is born to be the future monarch, she is a pure and spotless lamb, perfect and innocent. Her beauty represents her goodness and purity. (Yes, it is problematic to equate whiteness with goodness; we can acknowledge that while still learning from this metaphorical possibility.) In this reading of the story, the queen wants Snow’s glory. If Snow is dead,  the queen will be the fairest in the land. The queen kills Snow, but then, a miracle occurs: Snow defies death, is restored to her rightful place as nobility, and defeats the queen.

I don’t believe that any of these interpretations is “correct,” but each offers us a perspective we can learn from. These interpretations of the fairy story give us different views of the plan of salvation and the role of our Savior and other players in that plan. The malleability of metaphor allows us to consider multiple readings of a story and gain multiple levels of insight. We can learn from the way Snow White’s experience resonates with our own experiences in life, but also the way it resonates with our understanding of the Savior and his mission.

Sometimes, the Pieces Don’t Fit Together

The malleability of metaphor is a great strength, but it can create problems when vehicles never fully represent their tenors. As we look at this story and ponder the metaphorical implications of Snow and her villainous foe, we find that there is no perfect metaphor. Even allegories are not perfect; the closer we zoom in to any representational story, the more flaws we find in the comparisons, but metaphor can have glaring problems.

We can have meaningful insights about our journey through life or the relationship between sin and death as we read Snow White, even when parts of the story don’t mean anything to us. We could ask questions about potential symbols that never give us a satisfactory answer. If Snow is the Savior, as in one possible offered interpretation, then who does the prince represent? If Snow is us, then who are the dwarves metaphorically? What is the metaphorical meaning behind the three temptations Snow White faces? And what about the mirror? Is it a vehicle for the whisperings of the adversary? For the whisperings of the spirit?

Sometimes these kinds of questions can lead to insightful realizations, and sometimes they go nowhere, and that is okay. All metaphors have loose ends and imperfect elements. The only truly perfect metaphor would be one that compared a thing to itself (for example, Forests are like very large areas of land that are full of trees and undergrowth), but those are not metaphors, they are definitions, and definitions can help us understand concepts, but aren’t very helpful when the concepts are as complex as the Atonement.  

This is what happens when we read stories through any specific lens. We find meanings that the author never intended, and we can learn a lot about our specific topic of study, but it will never be perfect.

So, we will not create a clean chart for each of these fairy stories, the vehicles on the left—princess, apple, dwarves, coffin, prince, witch—and their corresponding tenors on the right—as such would limit our thoughts and responses. These objects and characters aren’t static, independent metaphors, they are woven together in a narrative. Instead of looking at these stories as lists of symbols to be decoded, I would rather read fairy stories to find how they resonate with the scriptures and how they carry emotions and meaning in their contexts. I would rather follow symbolic trails of white rocks and bread crumbs until they disappear into the forest where we can’t follow. There is value in these lines of thought, even when the metaphors are not perfect.

Mixing Metaphors

One problem with reading Snow White as a story about Atonement as restoration is that the restoration of Snow White to life and her birthright comes at no cost. She is dead one minute, and then alive the next, the prince having merely jostled her coffin, but not giving anything to save her. This doesn’t feel very satisfying as a single metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ, who suffered, bled from every pore, and died on the cross. But we don’t have to stick with this one, lonely conceptualization. We can mix metaphors, taking several vehicles up individually, or examining them together.

The scriptures are great at this. In one verse of scripture, Christ is paying the price for our sins (1 Cor. 6:20). In another, he is healing our wounds (3 Nephi 9:13); then Atonement is a reconciliation unto God (2 Nephi 10:24). Christ is our advocate with the Father (Moro. 7:28). Christ is the first and the last (Rev. 1:17). He is a mother hen guiding her chicks to safety (Matt. 23:37).

In his own teachings, Christ mixed his metaphors with great frequency and speed. Look at this line from John:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)

Here we get three metaphors in rapid succession, all teaching us something about Christ’s identity. This verse is interesting not only because it lists three metaphors in one line, but also because all of its concepts—way, truth, and life—are both abstract and easily recognizable. We can relate to the ideas of a way, a truth, or life. These metaphors help us realize how truly essential Christ is to our very lives (I mean, he is the life, after all).

Elsewhere in the book of John, Christ calls himself the bread (John 6:35), the resurrection (John 11:25, the light of the world (John 9:5), and the true vine (John 15:1). By studying these metaphors all together, we can begin to understand who he is and what kind of relationship he wants with us. These metaphors give us insights and understanding that can be enlightening. So, if you are finding the metaphor of restoration limiting, hold on, we have several more to explore, and all together they make up a clearer picture of the whole.

The Consolation of the Happy Ending

Snow White’s greatest strength as an Atonement story is shared by many of the other stories featured in this series: its happy ending. 

Fairy stories are famous for their happy endings. How often, when things have gone wrong, have we heard someone say, “Well, we don’t live in a fairy tale”? Or, similarly, how often have we heard of a movie that has a “fairy-tale ending,” a phrase that is understood to mean that it ends happily.

Writers and folklorists have long noted the power of this happy ending. Italo Calvino calls fairy stories “consolatory fables,” arguing that consolation is their greatest feature (37–42).  And Harvard Professor Maria Tatar takes this idea a step further when she declares that fairy tales contain a “utopian promise” (18).

This idea of fairy stories “promising” a sort of utopia is in line with Tolkien’s thoughts in “On Fairy-stories,” in which he argues that as “tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function . . . the opposite is true of Fairy-story.” Then, he adds, “Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite—I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic story is the true form of fairy-story, and its highest function” (75).

Tolkien’s term Eucatastrophe not only gives a name to the fairy story ending but also ties this ending to the Atonement. Eucatastrophe means the good catastrophe, but it can also be seen as a portmanteau of Eucharist—the traditional name for the Catholic version of our sacrament—and catastrophe. 

The Eucharist is already a powerful metaphor for Christ’s sacrifice, evoking blood and body, living water and the bread of eternal life, sin and death, resurrection and redemption. Connecting the word “Eucharist” to the word “catastrophe” connects that rich, religious metaphor to the ending of stories.

A catastrophe is the literary name for the finale of a tragedy, the action that brings a tragedy to its conclusion. But if catastrophe is tragic, a good fairy-story ending—Eucatastrophe—is redeeming. A good catastrophe is an ending that overcomes tragedy and turns it into something greater: a reminder of the Atonement.

Tolkien described the feeling that the Eucatastrophe can give the reader as a “catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art” (75–76). He then describes three gifts this ending gives readers: recovery, escape, and consolation. 

Just as the Atonement brings restoration to each of us, a literary Eucatastrophe brings restoration to the reader—it lifts spirits and hearts, brings hope, and renews our belief in miracles.

Almost at the end of Snow White, all hope is lost. She is dead. The dwarves are distraught, the kingdom is in the hands of a madwoman. The story could end with Snow lying in her glass coffin for eternity as princes and passersby look at her with sorrow. It could end that way, and it would be a beautiful tragedy, or a cautionary tale meant to teach children not to accept gifts from strangers. But it doesn’t end there. Instead, it ends with her recovery, her escape from death, and consolation for her friends. It sparks a ray of hope for the future.

We love fairy stories because they show us that no matter how dark or evil things get—whether we are lying dead in a glass coffin, in the belly of a wolf, or cursed to become a monster—light and goodness win. And we love the metaphor of Atonement as restoration because we want all things to be restored to us: our health and youth, our families, our innocence, even every hair that was once on our heads (Alma 40:23).

Snow White gives us an example of that restoration, and while it is not scripture, the Eucatastrophe at its end reminds us of the very real Atonement Christ has performed for us. It invites us to remain open to the possibility of miraculous recovery. Tolkien argues that the gospel “hallows” these miraculous endings, allowing them to serve as reminders that Christ will restore what is lost to those who follow him (78).

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Art by Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), Franz Jüttner (1865–1926), Thekla Brauer (1898), Eugen Klimsch (1839–1896), and Warwick Goble (1862–1943).

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At age four, I attended my first funeral. I was very confused about death and what it was, but my mother explained to me that everybody dies and gets buried in the ground, and we don’t see them anymore. Then she reassured me that it was all okay because Christ died for us a long time ago and then came back to life, and now we will all (even my great-uncle Leon, lying in front of me in a casket) come back to life.

This is the first Atonement lesson I can remember, and I spent the entire year after that asking my mom over and over again when my Uncle Leon would come back to life. I thought I understood what Christ had done for me, but my understanding was as if I had seen a single picture of an oak tree and then declared that I understood the forest.

James E. Talmage writes, “Simple as is the plan of redemption in its general features, it is confessedly a mystery in detail to the finite mind” (pp. 76).  This resonates with my experience. 

The Atonement is difficult to comprehend. Since that first lesson, I have had many more lessons and conversations about the Atonement with family members, teachers, friends, missionary companions, and the Spirit itself. And sometimes I feel like I am still four years old, trying to wrap my head around a concept I don’t have the capacity to understand. It is difficult to comprehend something that is infinite and eternal while also being both intensely personal and full of enabling power, but I want to try. I want to do all I can to understand the Atonement so that I can fully appreciate my Savior and access the miracles he has made possible.

I believe Christ has performed the Atonement, but faith is not the same thing as understanding. My faith has grown through personal, powerful experiences of heavenly love. My understanding has only come through stories.

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Atonement

Humans are wired to enjoy and learn from stories. We use them to make sense of the world and our experiences, and we use them to communicate those thoughts and experiences with each other. By the time I was fourteen, I had heard the story of the Atonement many times and in many ways, and I thought I had a pretty good understanding of it. Then I heard Elder Boyd K. Packer’s 1977 talk “The Mediator.”

It was powerful.

This story is about a man who cannot pay his debts. Then a mediator steps in, pays them, and renegotiates the debt payment schedule so that the man won’t have to go to prison or lose his possessions. When I heard this, a cartoon light bulb in my head turned on. It was a complete paradigm shift. I felt like all of my prior understanding had been childish, and that I was now, finally, understanding the Atonement for the first time.

Was I finally understanding? No. Well, yes. I had seen a picture of the forest floor, dotted with moss and toadstools, dappled light landing in a beautiful pattern on the fallen leaves. I was understanding something new about what Christ had done for me, but still not the whole picture.

I had similar experiences with other stories, including Steven Robinson’s Parable of the Bicycle, the biblical story of Abraham and Issac, C. S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s story of brothers rock climbing in “Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet,” and George MacDonald’s The Light Princess. Each of these helped me conceptualize facets of the Atonement that I hadn’t understood before. 

When we talk about the Atonement, we talk about it slant. We talk about bicycles or piano lessons, about war heroes or schoolboys who volunteer to take each other’s whippings. We talk about the enabling power of pure love, the greatness of a mortal sacrifice, and mountains of debts being paid by wealthy benefactors. We talk about cruises and parents, lions, princes, prophets, heart surgeons, and airplane pilots, even forests.

We talk about real-world experiences that are concrete and observable. These are experiences that we hope others can understand and relate to. When we talk about the Atonement, we use concrete, earthly symbols to explain the Savior and his mission.

The more I learn, as a creative writer, a Latter-day Saint, and as a reader and lover of fairy tales, the more I am convinced that the best tool available to help us understand the great and eternal sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, is the symbols and metaphors we find in stories. 

Of course, the scriptures are full of good stories and powerful metaphors that can give us understanding, but they are not the only place these metaphors can be found.

Why Fairy Stories?

On March 8, 1938, J. R. R. Tolkien gave an Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The title of the lecture was “On Fairy Stories,” and it is one of Tolkien’s most influential non-fiction works.  In the lecture, he answers several questions: What are fairy stories? What is their origin? and—most relevant to our project—What is the use of them?

Tolkien defines fairy stories as those that contain “the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.” According to Tolkien, fairy stories must contain enchantment and fantasy. They transport readers to a land where strange and wonderful things happen and where miracles are taken seriously.

C. S. Lewis, one of Tolkien’s close friends, gave us the perfect example of that perilous realm when he wrote of Narnia. Magic is woven into the very foundations of Narnia. Animals talk, witches cast spells that turn those same animals into stone, and the spells are then broken with the breath of a lion (who is not tame). There is great enchantment in Narnia, along with adventure, fantasy, good, evil, and even death. Reading about this magical land is so fun that readers can forget that the stories of that secondary world contain truths about our primary world and how it operates. But reading fairy stories can allow gospel lessons and insights to “distil upon [our] soul[s] as the dews from heaven” (DC 121:45).

Writing for the New York Times in 1956, Lewis admits that he did not begin writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by asking himself how he “could say something about Christianity to children.” Instead, the story came to him one image at a time, as many stories do. He saw images of a faun, a sledge, and a lion in his mind. And then, only after he figured out what story they belonged to, did he decide to write it as a fairy story.

He made that choice because he saw how stories of Faërie “could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of [his] own religion in childhood.” He asks:

“Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. . . . But supposing that by casting all of these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency.”

Books have been written illuminating what the scriptures have to say about the Atonement, but fairy stories have some new ideas to bring to the conversation. 

They offer us a realm full of enchantment, a potent form of art that brings with it, as Tolkien said in his lecture, “arresting strangeness” (pp. 59–60).  Both Tolkien and Lewis delighted in the ways that enchantment connects us to the impossible and activates our minds to imagine things not present in the world. The fantastic magic of Faërie offers us metaphors for Atonement and salvation that are not accessible in reality. This allows a magic spell, an enchanted fruit, or a beast to lift the heavy weight of symbolism. Combined with the disarming power of fairy stories, these symbols and metaphors open up powerful possibilities for enlightenment.

The Project of this Series

In this series, I will use six fairy stories as springboards for discussing different ways we sometimes conceptualize Christ’s Atonement, referencing scriptures and the words of modern scholars and prophets as we go. After each fairy story, an essay will look at the metaphor the story uses for salvation and discuss what it can teach us about Atonement.

• The Grimm Brother’s Snow White and Atonement as restoration

• Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast and Atonement as justification

• Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Atonement as radical healing

• Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant and Atonement as reconciliation

• Francis James Child’s Ballad 39A: Tam Lin and Atonement as love/rebirth

• Hans Christian Andersen’s The Most Incredible Thing and Atonement as the most incredible thing

After we have studied these fairy stories, we will draw some final conclusions.

This series is not intended to present any kind of definitive interpretations of the stories it discusses. Readers will likely also see other themes in the stories, including themes of morality, politics, sexuality, gender, addiction, economics, and community. That’s okay. I intend to interpret these stories through one lens, but there are many other possible interpretations.

As I explore these metaphors, I am not trying to criticize and tear them down, seeking to expose all of the weaknesses in each one. I am also not interested in pitting the metaphors against each other in any kind of competition, narrowing the options until the best metaphor is found. It is only through looking at the metaphors together that we can begin to understand our subject. Tad Callister explains this in his book, The Infinite Atonement:

A person studying the Atonement is somewhat like the man who retreats to his mountain cabin to enjoy the scenery. If he looks out the window to the east, he will see the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies; but if he fails to examine the view on the west, he will miss the crimson-streaked sunset on the horizon; if he neglects the scene to the north, he will never see the shimmering emerald lake; and if he bypasses the window on the south, he will fail to witness the wild flowers in all their brilliant glory, dancing in the gentle mountain breeze. . . . So it is with Atonement (p. 1). 

Each of the fairy stories and metaphors we look at will explore a single, infinitesimal part of the Atonement, but after we look at the pieces together, I hope that we will have a greater understanding of what Jesus Christ has done for us. 

Importantly, these fairy stories and discussions don’t offer a list of rules or strict, capital-T truths to base a life on. Yes, I will operate from the Christian perspective that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man can come to be restored, justified, healed, reconciled, or saved without him. But I do not intend to offer any other path to salvation, no breakdown of steps, no easy answers.

In 1 Timothy, Paul warns, “Neither give heed to fables . . . which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith” (1 Timothy 1:4), and this series isn’t intended to do so. I don’t want to encourage replacing scripture study with the study of fairy stories or suggest that these stories be taken as scripture. Nor is it my intention to offer up endless questions with no answers. The answer is, and always will be, Jesus Christ.

Here, we will explore, discuss, and edify—hike through the forested trails provided by these stories, find the good in each of them, and learn what we can.

And we will start with one of the most famous and beloved fairy stories of all time. The Grimm Brothers’ “Sneewittchen” or “Snow White.”

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Chanel Earl is a writer—mostly of fiction—who currently teaches writing at Brigham Young University.

Original illustrations by Pauline Baynes (1922-2008) from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis (1898-1963).

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