The Godfather

I'll go ahead and tackle a different tale. The "Godfather Death" story is just bound to have a bad ending from the start. Rejecting God - bad move. It seems the beginning is taking a turn for the better when the poor man rejects the devil, too, but then he somehow makes an even worse choice by choosing death. This first story is in itself a lesson. God is wise in his choice of distributing wealth, the first part seems to imply, and happiness is paramount - more so than material wealth or perceived fairness. One can be happy without earthly pleasures (the devil) or fairness (death). Instead he chooses the path of the rich and famous. This is what the poor man thinks will make a man happy, never knowing need.

So then we have part 2: death's godson becomes a famous power by teaming up with death. The boy tries to outwit death and, unlike the other stories that have happy endings, he fails. While normally failing life's tests would result in hardship (like the boy in Iron Hans being sent to the court as a pauper servant), here the punishment is death. There is no learning from messing up (clearly the verbal rebuke is not enough). You never win by trying to cheat death. You also learn that death does not hold its promises. There's not much of a realm of forgiveness here or chance for the boy to grow by learning from his mistakes. So the lesson is either don't ever make mistakes (impossible) or don't try to be tricky when the stakes are high - realize that a beautiful princess and the kingdom are not as valuable as life.

My comment on the growth process we see the boy go through is that it's rather short since death decided to blow the candle out, but I think lessons can easily be taken from it by those who heard or read the story.