Intimations of eucatastrophe

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale--or other world--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.

-- J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Faerie Stories"

The other night, the girls watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs before they went to bed. My older daughter fell asleep halfway through, but my youngest hung on until the end. I watched her face during the movie's final scenes. She cupped her chin in her hands and stared solemnly as the weeping dwarfs gathered around Snow White's "deathbed." And when Snow White, sleeping on her glass bier, awoke to the Prince's kiss, my daughter's face shone as only a child's can, registering unadulterated, unabashed delight and deep satisfaction at the way in which the finale met her expectations. She is three, and has only the dimmest notion of "dyscatastrophe" -- of true sorrow and failure -- but I think, between the two of us, we managed to experience a moment of eucatastrophe. I brought to the moment an understanding of sorrow and failure, and she brought the look on her face, the glimpse of joy beyond the walls of the world that, at this stage of my life, no Disney movie could have inspired in me.