Beauty and Death,Stories about Apples:
The Symbolic Fruit of Life and Death
The apple,the fruit of the genus Malus,belongs to the Rosaceae family .It is the most widely cultivated tree fruit and there are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apple today .Not only does it have a delicious sweet and sour taste, it is also visually beautiful thanks to its heart shape and vivid red and green colors. Apples have been extensively used in both literature and mythology.
There are four story that related to the symbolic of apple, I think that everyone will interest about those story. The first story , Adam’s Apple, this story occurred in the Garden of the Eden . The forbidden fruit ,the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil stuck on account of his prompt and stealthy eating .Adam and Eve were subsequently expelled from the garden of the Eden ,and lost there immortality .Since than ,the larynx is often referred to as the ‘’Adam’s apple’’.The second story ,Snow White, a fairy tale heroine experienced the threshold of death. She ate the poisoned part of a red apple offered by the queen,her step mother who was racked with jealousy of her beauty .The tale is analogous with the experiences of Paris in Greek mythology .The wicked queen mirrors Eris, but this time the apple seeks to liquidate the most beautiful woman in the land .Well, The ending is widely known: the prince’s servants carry the coffin of Snow White and stumble on some bushes. The movement causes the piece of poisoned apple to dislodge from her throat, and awakens Snow White. The third story, William Tell,’ had I shot my child, know that it would not have missed your heart”, our next story calls for a different type of ‘’war’ motivated my apple .The hero is famous William Tell who shot an apple off his son’s head .In this year 1307,Gessler ,the newly appointed Austrian Vogt (local governor) of Altdor (the capital of the Swiss Canton of Uri) set a hat on a pole as a symbol of imperial power, and demanded that everyone bow before it .On this day ,a mountaineer of the name Wilhelm Tell passed by the hat without saluting, and was at once seized. As Tell was known to be an expert marksman with the crossbow, Gessler ordered him to shoot an apple off the head of his own son. Tell had been promised freedom if he shot the apple, if he failed both would be execute. He bent his bow, the arrow sped, and the apple split with a singer bolt from his crossbow, without hurting a child, but Gessler noticed that Tell ,before shooting ,had stuck another arrow into his belt ,so he asked him ‘why’.’’It was for you,’’ replied tell.’’Had I shot my child,know that it would not have missed your heart’’.Tell’s courage sparked collective defiance:the locals rose up in rebellion against their ruler ,the Swiss Confederation was formed,and it defeated the Austrian Habsburg forces at the Battle of Morgarten in 1315.The last story,The Judgment of Paris ,’’the haps and mishaps of life are next door neighbors’’.
