Jack and the Beanstalk

I haven't blogged for a bit, mainly because nothing worth blogging has come to me. I know I have a few different things I need to continue blogging on, such as the logical fallacies, the "10 worst arguments" series, or general apologetic essays, but I just haven't been inspired to do so as of late, and when I try to write such things on a dry tank, it comes out barely worth reading.

One thing I thought might be worth a few words, however, was reading "Jack and the Beanstalk" for the first time in several years the other night. My daughter found the story in one of her children's story collections, and we included it in the queue for bedtime reading.

A lot of times when we read stories like this, we talk for a bit about the moral afterward. After all, a great many fairy tales and bedtime stories were written to pass on some wisdom nugget or to help children develop a moral compass.

But with "Jack and the Beanstalk", I came up empty.

Let's recap the story: A down-on-her-luck mother sends her son Jack, out of desperation, to sell the family cow. The son makes a foolish decision (trading it for a handful of "magic" beans") and the mother tosses them out the window in anger. The beans grow into a towering stalk, which the boy climbs, finding himself in the palace of a giant. Jack makes several trips to the giant's palace, stealing his gold, his gold-egg-laying hen, and his enchanted harp. When the giant discovers what is happening, he tries to follow the little thief down the beanstalk, but Jack chops it down and kills the giant. He and his mother then live happily ever after, their financial problems gone now that he had looted the giant's wealth.

So ... what is the moral, exactly?

• That we should make risky, knee-jerk financial decisions with complete strangers? (such as trading a valuable cow for "magic" beans)
• That we will be rewarded for making such bad decisions? (the beans really turn out to be magic)
• That it is okay to steal from others if they have more than us?
• That it is okay to steal from others if they are large and awkward?
• That when a large and awkward person comes back for the stuff we took from him, it is okay to kill him?

Really, I'm not trying to be a prude, but I'm just stuck trying to figure out what redeeming qualities one can find in Jack.

Something tells me, though, that with the type of rhetoric one hears in contemporary election years, this might be something of a popular story among a great number of the voting masses.