The law of conservation of mass states that mass is neither created nor destroyed in any ordinary chemical reaction.
One of the most puzzling aspects of "The Juniper Tree" is the boy’s transformation from human to animal and back to human, especially since the change to bird form and the return to human form both result in the brother breaking the law of conservation of mass. Granted, the folk fairy tale is allowed to take liberties with the natural order of things, but because I wonder where on the scale of human to bird the brother fits, I recall this particular law. As a result of this law, the answer would be that the boy dies forever and for always when his stepmother decapitates him with the lid of the trunk and that his corpse would be the physical mass left over, as mass is not destroyed (just separated). On the other hand, the bird’s appearance and the boy’s reappearance occur in puffs of smoke and flame, indicating that they have been constituted out of thin air. Again, the law of conservation of mass would beg to differ.
By the statutes of this law, the boy was always human and will always be human, dead or alive. Although the folk fairy tale permits his soul to reappear in bird form and, later, in a renewed human body, he could never be more than human, as he was created (and destroyed).
However, I am forgetting that this law states that “mass is neither created nor destroyed” in any ordinary chemical reaction. The situation presented in "The Juniper Tree" is clearly not “ordinary.” I do not know how human nor how bird he is, then. If I had to postulate, I would say that the boy as a being is tied more to his soul than to any sentient human or animal shell. In that case, it would be true that his soul is neither “created nor destroyed” and lives on, although the physical shell dies or transforms. (But can a “soul” count under the statutes of the law of conservation of mass?)
Thoughts?
I think you're thinking much too scientifically about the whole thing. I'm not saying you don't recognize that it's a fairy tale beyond the natural laws of the reality in which we live, it's just that if you start trying to apply logic and physics to these stories, you might end up with more problems than you would like. Personally, I'm most worried about the intelligence of the sister if she can't tell that a person is dead and really believes she is strong enough to decapitate somebody with her hand. Either way, I think these are both just things we have to accept as being part of the fairy tale world, no matter how ridiculous the concepts.
ReplyDeleteThough, indulging your first thought, it is possible that the law of conservation of mass was not broken. Though the boy may have appeared out of smoke and fire, not only does smoke contain mass but the body reformation process does not necessarily rule out the use of surrounding molecules and atoms to reform the boy. Although, I'm not sure physical laws apply to arguably imaginary concepts (i.e. the soul).