”A Kiss to Wake the Sleeper” by Rabih Alameddine

Rabih Alamed­dine was born in Am­man, Jordan to Le­banese par­ents, and grew up in Kuwait and Le­banon. He was edu­cated in Eng­land and Amer­ica, and has an en­gin­eer­ing de­gree from UCLA and an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of San Francisco. 

Rabih   Alamed­dine on the present tale: 

The tale of the sleep­ing prin­cess (com­monly known as “Sleep­ing Beauty”but known as “The Sleep­ing Beauty in the Wood” in French) has had a hold on my ima­gin­a­tion for as long as I can re­mem­ber. I have tried in the last ten years to write stor­ies in­formed by the fairy tale, vari­ations around a leit­motif. This is the first at­tempt where the main prot­ag­on­ist is neither the sleeper nor the waker.

The title of the story is A Kiss to Wake the Sleeper, a very sug­gest­ive and fairytale-like title but de­ceiv­ing when talk­ing about ex­pect­a­tions and pre­dict­ab­il­ity. The title is ironic in con­trast to the story it­self be­cause it took more than a kiss to wake the sleeper. 

The story starts with a girl who had SCID, Severe Com­bined Im­mun­ode­fi­ciency, and she had lived for thir­teen years in a pro­tect­ive room, which was clear and safe for her. Her mother finds out one day that some­where in a desert live some nuns that can cure her daugh­ter. The girl leaves house for the first time, but with a spe­cial suit and oxy­gen mask.. The nuns tell her that she has to walk through the desert alone to a castle where she would find a sleep­ing beauty. The way to the castle is very harsh and the girl might die try­ing, but this is her only chance. Once ar­rived at the castle, she has to be care­ful not to awake the sleeper and wait to be ma­gic­ally cured. Even­tu­ally, she reaches the des­ol­ate castle. Every form of life and ve­get­a­tion has died around the castle as the girl de­scribes it:

…noth­ing out­side the heal­ing cham­ber sur­vived. Life flour­ished within, death without – a re­verse Disneyland. 

In the castle she finds only one left cham­ber with a prin­cess sleep­ing calmly on her bed, with no one else around her, but skel­et­ons of the ones who used to be her ser­vants or her fam­ily. The girl spends a few days there. Time is un­bear­able. She is bored and hungry. Noth­ing hap­pens in this sleep-sunken cham­ber where “the slow and steady breath­ing of the sleeper was the only sound to be heard”. In the blink of an eye, the chaos erupts in the death-like tran­quil­ity of the castle. Abund­ant ve­get­a­tion grows in­stantly around it. Snakes, in­sects and princes come ra­ging into the tower, and try to get in the “sleeper’s pristine cham­ber”, killing each other, a mas­sacre. There is a “prince gen­o­cide”, as the girl de­scribes it. There is one prince who man­ages to enter the room and kisses the sleep­ing beauty, who “had not wakened, had not moved, in a hun­dred years”. But the prin­cess would not wake up with a kiss. Then the prince tears off her clothes and makes love to her in a very pas­sion­ate way. The girl re­mains in the room, but she can’t speak or move, she is more like a ghost pres­ence. She doesn’t just wit­ness the scene but takes part to it, identi­fy­ing her­self with the sleep­ing, now awakened beauty: 

She screamed in ec­stasy. I screamed in ec­stasy. […] The prin­cess growled. I mewled. […] The prince entered the prin­cess bru­tally. … My body shook and spasmed. The lava reached my groin. 

After the cli­max mo­ment, the two bod­ies, of the prince and of the prin­cess be­come one and the same, like a “sol­ida­morph­ous shape on the bed.” The girl re­gains her senses and she is able to leave the room and re­turn to her mother healthy and happy. 

The prot­ag­on­ist of the story is a thir­teen-year-old girl who is not given a name. She has lived for thir­teen years in a pro­tect­ive bubble, which she even­tu­ally leaves for the first time and faces the out­side dan­ger­ous world. The text doesn’t con­tain any de­tails about her phys­ical ap­pear­ance, but she con­siders her­self a “mess…a fine mess […] A walk­ing, talk­ing gos­samer”. The first epis­odes of the story are centered around her, but when she reaches the sleep­ing  beauty’s cham­ber, she be­comes a third-party observer. 

An­other char­ac­ter from the story is the girl’s mother, who is the one that takes care of the girl in or­der for her to be clean and safe. Her act­ive po­s­i­tion in the story ends with the mo­ment of her daughter’s de­par­ture to the castle.

The three nuns who guide and ad­vice the girl in her quest might be re­garded as a col­lect­ive char­ac­ter of the story be­cause the nar­rator never refers to them as sep­ar­ate individuals.

A fourth char­ac­ter, who is very em­blem­atic, is an old wo­man, maybe a witch, who ap­pears at the win­dow of the heal­ing cham­ber with a hy­ena at her side. The girl de­scribes her as an “old wo­man (with) an awk­ward gait, an aged walk… (with) white wild hair like a halo about her head”. 

The no­tion of time in this story can be dis­cussed from vari­ous per­spect­ives. The time of the nar­rat­ive is not ex­pli­citly men­tioned by the nar­rator, but the reader might guess that the story is set in con­tem­por­ary days. We can rely our ar­gu­ment on the girl’s com­plaint of when she was bored, in the sleeper’s cham­ber, hav­ing “no magazines, no tele­vi­sion”. Also, her men­tion about Dis­ney­land, her en­tire dis­course and be­ha­vior re­flect a typ­ical today’s rebel teen­ager. All the epis­odes that pre­cede the girl’s ar­rival to the castle seem nor­mal and oc­cur in a real-life time di­men­sion. After the girl reaches the heal­ing cham­ber, she enters in a ma­gical and mys­tical time. The castle is full of skel­et­ons of the sleeper’s ser­vants and of her en­tire fam­ily and she is plunged in an eternal sleep. The time seems to stop as long as the girl re­flects over the things that sur­round her. And then, in the blink of an eye, a chaos des­troys the tran­quil­ity of the mo­ment. The girl wit­nesses, from the win­dow of the cham­ber, the re­birth of nature that grows into abund­ant and dense ve­get­a­tion in an in­stant, thus sur­round­ing the castle. An in­va­sion of in­sects, snakes and princes rush into the castle, fight and die in a breath-long mo­ment. It is like a time-lapse that over­laps in front of the girl’s eyes. 

As men­tioned be­fore, the at­mo­sphere of the epis­odes that pre­cede the girl’s ar­rival to the castle is as real­istic as pos­sible. But once she enters the heal­ing cham­ber, the at­mo­sphere be­comes ma­gical and fant­astic and the time de­fies the lo­gic of clock measurements. 

The story starts with a girl’s real­istic re­col­lec­tion of a day from her past. She is at home with her mother, who gives her the hope that there is a cure for her dis­ease. The se­quel of the story presents some su­per­nat­ural facts and events, that I un­der­stood as an al­legory for a girl’s ini­ti­ation pro­cess, who starts as a child and ends up by reach­ing womanhood. 

The pro­tect­ive shel­ter in which she was kept by her mother sym­bol­izes child­hood and in­no­cence. But the trip that she takes through the desert to the castle ex­poses the girl to the real world and an­ti­cip­ates her be­com­ing. The ini­ti­ation pro­cess reaches the cli­max when the girl takes part as an ob­server to the erotic act of the amor­ous couple and shares their emotions.

When she leaves the cham­ber, she be­gins to have her period, be­cause she no­tices spots of blood on her legs and on the sand un­der­neath her feet, which rep­res­ents that her ini­ti­ation is com­plete and she’s no longer a child. “Blood­ied and bleed­ing, re­freshed and re­ju­ven­ated, upon my head a tiara of thorns, I re­turned to Mother”: She doesn’t  re­turn  to  mother  to  seek  shel­ter  and  pro­tec­tion any­more, but to af­firm her independence. 

There are also other im­port­ant sym­bols in the story that an­ti­cip­ate the course of the events. The sleep­ing beauty may rep­res­ent the girl’s al­ter ego, her own re­flec­tion in the mir­ror that gets trans­formed. The first re­flec­tion sym­bol­izes child­hood: At first, the sleep­ing prin­cess em­an­ated “the scent of sum­mer flowers, jas­mine and lilac, of sum­mer days, never vary­ing, never end­ing. […] She never needed to be bathed, her hair never needed comb­ing, or un­tangling. She was pristine in slum­ber, per­fec­tion in hu­man form.” After the trans­form­a­tion, the sleep­ing prin­cess: “reeked of sweat, of brine and yeast, of un­covered and un­cooked meat, of rank hu­man­ity”. This is very sug­gest­ive for the trans­form­a­tions that pu­berty brings in the lives of the ones who yes­ter­day were still ‘pristine’ chil­dren. An­other im­port­ant epis­ode that shows the girl’s trans­form­a­tion is the erotic act between the prince and the sleep­ing beauty, that is in­tensely shared by the girl. As I said, the sleeper be­comes her al­ter ego,  through which she evades from a child’s shell into a  woman’s body: 

She screamed in ec­stasy. I screamed in ec­stasy. […] The room was stifling. My body was stifling… The prin­cess growled. I mewled. […] The prince entered the prin­cess bru­tally. … My body shook and spasmed. The lava reached my groin.

There are also two im­port­ant sym­bols – the but­ter­fly and the snake – that can be un­der­stood in re­la­tion to the girl’s trans­form­a­tion. When she reaches the castle, everything looks calm and des­ol­ated. A but­ter­fly ap­pears at the win­dow, flut­ter­ing its yel­low and red spot­ted wings. The but­ter­fly stands for the child­hood it­self, calm and beau­ti­ful, bright but tran­si­ent, like a butterfly’s life.  When the dessert starts chan­ging into a forest, a heavy snake ap­pears at the win­dow and tries to break in. This snake an­ti­cip­ates the storm that is about to start in the girl’s life. Then she per­ceives from dis­tance “an awk­ward gait, an aged walk, it was an older wo­man… an old fairy” or a witch, ap­proach­ing with a hy­ena at her side. When the wo­man is close enough, she speaks to the girl: “The time has come, god­daugh­ter”. It was time for the girl to be­come a woman. 

Even  if  the  text  doesn’t  look  like  a  fairy  tale,  it  still pre­serves the struc­ture and some ty­po­lo­gies of char­ac­ters. To prove that this is still a fairy tale in a de­ceiv­ing con­tem­por­ary form, I tried to identify ten func­tions pro­posed by Propp in his struc­tur­al­ist ana­lysis of the fairy tale. Also, I will ex­plain on­go­ing the ty­po­lo­gies of char­ac­ters sug­ges­ted by Propp.

1. Ini­tial situation/ con­text: the girl is at home, in her “an­ti­sep­tic bubble” with her mother.
2. Me­di­ation: the mother finds out about some nuns that can cure her daugh­ter and starts the jour­ney. The mis­for­tune in made known. 
3. De­par­ture: the girl leaves home and be­comes, in  terms of char­ac­ters’ ty­po­logy, the seeker: she goes through a desert alone to find the cure for her dis­ease. Sym­bol­ic­ally, this might be her search for an­swers, an­swers that even­tu­ally come when she ex­per­i­ences the trans­form­a­tion from a girl into a wo­man. This is the typ­ical pro­cess of ini­ti­ation com­mon to al­most all fairy tales. 
4. Guid­ance: the seeker reaches the castle after a harsh trip through the desert. 
5. Test­ing: the girl is given three loaves of bread and three eggs when start­ing to­wards the heal­ing cham­ber. This might be a test for her be­cause she has to par­cel the food care­fully, in or­der to suf­fice her as long as she has to stay in the cham­ber and she has to pre­serve enough en­ergy for the re­turn trip. The three nuns that give her food and guid­ance might be re­garded as donors. The three loaves of bread and the three boiled eggs stand for help­ers, not with a ma­gical func­tion, but still tools that help the seeker in her quest. 
6. Re­ac­tion: the girl takes the test. She has mo­ments when she is over­come with hun­ger, and she al­most gives up: “I was hungry… My belly twis­ted and spasmed, my stom­ach grumbled and growled, and at least once every hour, a mewl es­caped my lips. Yet dare I touch the last egg? I dared not.” 
7. Struggle: the cli­max of the girl’s ini­ti­ation pro­cess is marked by her in­terior con­flict and trans­form­a­tion. She has to as­sist to the prince and the sleeper’s in­tense sexual ex­per­i­ence that be­comes her own ex­per­i­ence. The struggle is not with an out­sider, but with her own feel­ings and emotions. 
8. Brand­ing: After the sexual act is con­sumed, the girl, ex­it­ing the cham­ber, no­tices spots of blood on her legs and on the desert’s sand. That’s when she knows that she’s got her first period and she’s no longer a child. 
9. Res­ol­u­tion: The girl is ma­gic­ally healed, and she is ready for the trip back.
10. Re­turn: The girl re­turns home: “Blood­ied and bleed­ing re­freshed and re­ju­ven­ated, upon my head a tiara of thorns, I re­turned to Mother”

Ac­cord­ing to Aarne-Thom­son in­dex I think that the story might be clas­si­fied as a Tale of Ma­gic, sub­type Su­per­nat­ural Task, be­cause the girl is given an al­most im­possible mis­sion: to sur­vive alone out­side her pro­tect­ive “bubble”. But if we read this story as an al­legory of every woman’s be­com­ing, we could also af­fil­i­ate this story with the Real­istic novella, sub­type: Tale of fate.

The title of the text re­calls the “Sleep­ing Beauty” fairy tale. The text also pre­serves two of its most im­port­ant char­ac­ters: the sleeper and the wake‑r. The girl’s con­di­tion that forces her to stay cap­tive in an an­ti­sep­tic bubble is sym­bolic for the prin­cess who is held cap­tive in her own sleep. The text also pre­serves the struc­ture of a fairytale, as dis­cussed above, and some typ­ical char­ac­ters. Ex­cept for the similes men­tioned here, all the other ele­ments that com­pose the text de­part from the ori­ginal fairy tale or from any tra­di­tional fairy tale. 

We have a first-per­son nar­ra­tion of a girl who is also the prot­ag­on­ist of the story. There is also an im­plied self-ref­er­en­ti­al­ity. There is a mono-per­spect­ive and sub­ject­ive nar­ra­tion and the text looks like a di­ary entry or like a mono­logue. There­fore, we can’t find a tar­get audi­ence, t he nar­ra­tion  doesn’t ad­dress to a reader, but on the con­trary, it seems that she is re­flect­ing on a series of events she has been through. 

I think that the “up­side-down” nature of this fairy tale lies in the fact that everything is sym­bol­ical: facts and events are not what they seem to be. The mean­ing and the mes­sage of the story has to be searched deeply. An­other up­side-down as­pect is the prot­ag­on­ist, a thir­teen-year-old girl who is not a heroine, nor a vic­tim, but a seeker. This kind of prot­ag­on­ist is not com­mon to the tra­di­tional fairy tale. I dare to con­sider this a res­ult of the evol­u­tion of gender roles, mainly be­cause the au­thor of this story is a man who writes from a young girl’s perspective. 

In con­tra­dic­tion to the mono­logue-like form of the text stands the dis­course and the lan­guage which can be con­fus­ing here and there. Phrases like “it sucked… it double sucked. I’m a walk­ing talk­ing gos­samer” or “No magazines, no television…boring, bor­ing, bor­ing” testify to a typ­ical mod­ern teenager’s lan­guage. These are also the only samples of con­tem­por­ary dis­course. But po­etic phrases such as: “Yet dare I touch the egg? I dared not” or “As for the egg, as long as it rest next to the prin­cess, rot it would not” and all the de­scrip­tion of the beauty who sleeps on her bed are surely not com­mon to a girl’s di­ary entry.

The sleeper’s slow and steady breath­ing was the only sound to be heard, never vary­ing, never ending.

The whole cham­ber smelled of her… the scent of sum­mer flowers, jas­mine and lilac, of sum­mer days, never vary­ing, never ending.”

The prin­cess reeked ok sweat, of brine and yeast, of un­covered and un­cooked meat, of rank humanity.

All these con­tour the author’s style, which is some­times sol­emn and con­tem­plat­ive, and some­times depth­less and banal. 

Even if I don’t deal with co-au­thor­ing in this text, we can as­sume, at all risks, that the text is ad­dressed to a vast con­tem­por­ary pub­lic, ex­clud­ing chil­dren. From my point of view, this is not a fairy tale for chil­dren be­cause of its ex­pli­cit sexual con­tent and be­cause of its al­leg­or­ical mean­ing that can be hardly un­der­stood by children. 

As a teacher, I would not pro­pose my stu­dents to read this story (yet), mostly be­cause its ex­pli­cit sexual con­tent. How­ever, I think that parts of this text might be used when teach­ing vocab­u­lary or grammar. 

An­dreea Bledea

Bibliography:

Alamed­dine, Rabih, A Kiss to wake the Sleeper. Pdf

Hansea, “A Kiss to Wake the Sleeper”, hansea10​.word​press​.com., April 9, 2013, url: https://hansea10.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a‑kiss-to- wake-the-sleep­er/, ac­cessed in Janu­ary 27, 2018.