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).
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).