How the story of Blue Beard resembles an episode of Criminal Minds
This is a summary of Blue Beard, for those that know the story, you can skip this paragraph.
The story of Blue Beard is not everyone’s impression of a fairy tale, but indeed it is. Blue Beard is disliked by all the ladies, despite his amazing fortune. Not to mention, when he marries a women, she disappears. Well, one day, Blue Beard has a party, and a young lady decides that he’s not all bad. So, she marries him. Upon their marriage, he had to depart to attend to some business. He gives her the keys to his house but says don’t open the last door in the basement. The lady goes off, exploring her newly acquired fortune, when the curiosity nearly kills her. She goes down to the basement and opens the door. She finds all the dead bodies of his ex wives. So, in a panic, she runs back upstairs to notice that the key is stained with blood, and try as she might, it wouldn’t come off. Later that night, Blue Beard comes home to find the key full of blood. He asks her why she betrayed him, and demands that she be killed. She asks for a few minutes to pray, where she really summons her sister to find her brothers. She goes down to Blue Beard, and as he goes to kill her, the brothers walk in and kill Blue Beard. She lives and inherits his fortune.
When I heard this story, it reminded me of an episode of criminal minds I had saw a few days prior to hearing it. On this particular episode, the cops keep finding these dead bodies, so the Criminal Minds crew people are called. They notice that 13 of the deaths are all related, and they suspect a serial killer. The bodies where left in the fetal position, with no signs of raping or any type of abuse besides strangulation. Meanwhile, a truck driver tells his daughter (who is with foster parents because her mother died and her father can’t always be there) stories of how he tries to find a mother for her. Later, you find out that the truck driver has been kidnapping women he thinks might be sutable for his child, then after asking the question “Do you want kids?” and being that most were young, they would say “No.” and he would kill them. He would tell these stories to his daughter, (in a much less gruesome way) and tell her that she just wasn’t right for him. Well, one day, he finds a mom and a teenager stopping at a truck stop, and he kidnaps the mom, and leaves the teenager as a witness. The Criminal Minds people find out that he has a daughter, and find her to use her as a bribe. She tells him that she needs to hear the story of the newest princess (the women were refered to as princesses and he as the prince for story reasons). As the father is telling his story, the FBI takes the woman, and the father kills himself in front of the daughter.
In the Criminal Minds version of Blue Beard, the truck driver is Blue Beard, the woman kidnapped is the wife, and the FBI are the brothers. These stories are similar in the fact that the truck driver and Blue Beard are both looking for honest people, but have their own, demonic way of doing searching. They both just wanted someone to love, but I don’t think they really realized that them doing it the way they did was pulling people away from them. I think the reason they did it that way was because they didn’t have enough time. Blue Beard left his wife of their wedding night to go attend to business, and the truck driver was always on the road, so they probably didn’t have much time for courting young women.
These two stories are a little different though. For instance, Blue Beard hid the bodies, and the truck driver left them on the high way for everyone to see. Also, Blue Beard was looking for love, where the truck driver was more or like looking for a suitable mother for his daughter. Another difference is that Blue Beard is killed by the two brothers, where the truck driver kills himself. The story of Blue Beard ends a little happier, being that the woman is saved, and she inherits the fortune, where as in Criminal Minds, it’s really sad because the daughter is literally left with no one.
The story of Blue Beard and this certain episode of Criminal Minds have their differences, but they are more alike than different.
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