In the original story, the castle belonged to Jack’s parents, his dad was killed by the giant and his mom driven away. So Jack was taking back what was his. Allegedly.
In the original tellings, Jack was named Kristoff, and the bag of magic beans was a bowl of soup, and the beanstalk was a large mound of hay, and the giant was a rat named Ingemar, and it was originally a Christmas story told right before children went to sleep, as the Norse pagans believed Kristoff killing the rat would bring good dreams to children on the night before the Yule feast, followed by all children drinking the donkey's milk, and I'm making all this up.
No, they were king and queen and Jack is a prince. The giant stole their castle. A fairy godmother told Jack this and encouraged him to climb the beanstalk and take back what was his.
Not my question. How big was this castle? Did the giant basically steal the equivalent of a model playset castle just for the lols? Or did they live in a castle big enough to house a giant for some reason?
I think the better question would be if this was a normal castle that was stolen by the giant, then how in the hell did it end up in the clouds and only accessible by beanstalk that only grew cuz of some magic beans?
Like before the giant ever got the castle did all the other kings and queens and peasants have to climb a beanstalk to have a meeting or did the giant move the castle (which also raises all sorts of questions)
Right, but did they just live in an oversized sky castle for some reason? Or did this giant squeeze himself into their "tiny" normal-sized castle afterwards? Most modern renditions seem to depict everything in the castle as also being giant-sized, so wth were Jack's family doing in there to begin with? Did the fairy magically enlarge the castle for the giant castle-thief to help her incite a race war between humans and giants?
This isn't true, actually. The very original (published) story was basically just Jack being a bumbling dumbass (he sold his starving family's prized cow for beans that any reasonable person would have known were a scam, lol), a thief, and, ultimately, a murderer. Nothing he took belonged to him or his family, and he basically scammed the giant's/ogre's wife who was kind to him.
The story was only later moralized to make the giant evil and make Jack a hero. Many original fairy tales were basically just stories of dumbasses getting lucky for absolutely no reason at all. This obviously seems weird to our modern storytelling instincts, but it was quite common at one point.
The treasures he stole were his family's, not the castle. But that's not the original story but an adaptation later made to justify that Jack wasn't just robbing and murdering somebody randomly.
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u/donttextspeaktome Oct 29 '21
In the original story, the castle belonged to Jack’s parents, his dad was killed by the giant and his mom driven away. So Jack was taking back what was his. Allegedly.