A Visionary Character

Astounding. That is what Elijah Carter would consider his books. It was a very bold choice of him to parade so much about his book when, it had just come out and people had not yet expressed their opinion. But indeed, the books were astonishing. He would select a classic fairy tale, such as Cinderella, or Snow White, and he would add a twist that would make it very pleasant to read. Whether it was Hansel and Gretel in a dystopian setting, or Sleeping Beauty in a modern high school atmosphere, he always found a way to hook people. Carter would make his audience want to read stories people have been hearing about all their lives and turn it into something new and inventive that everyone would love to read. In total, he has written 14 adaptions of traditional stories. The most famous story is called, “A Hideous Murder” (2016). This is a twist on the ugly duckling which adds a murder plot to this fairy tale. In this story, whilst they are making fun of the ugly duck, one of the ducklings gets murdered, and when they find the murderer, they realise that making fun of the duckling for being ugly is pointless, because what matters is how beautiful you are at heart, not from appearance. His initial story ever written was called “A Slumber before Prom” (2014). This took the tale Sleeping Beauty, which Carter explained was his favourite novel, and transformed it into a modern high school romance story. This novel was bestseller as soon as it came out, everyone enjoyed it and wanted more. So that is what Elijah Carter did, he wrote 13 more tales.

In a way, the new element that he put in traditional fairy tales had been there all along, but it was not developed enough, for people to find out. For instance, the book he made about Hansel and Gretel, called “The Food Distraction” was changed by mixing a dystopian environment into the batter. But, to certain extent, in the original fairy tale created by the Grimm Brothers, it was already dystopian. Since it is a world where adults barely have enough money to survive, where they kick out their children with no place to go, and where inside the woods are starving witches hidden away in candy houses. I am not taking any credit away from Elijah Carter, I think that, if not him, few people would be able to elaborate so well these books. Contrarily, I am providing him more credit because he was able to elaborate on something, that was very subtly already there. Another thing that I found genuinely interesting about his books was the fact that the titles were very ingenious. Not only did they have the meaning of what the book was about, but also the words he used, they could make the title have a metaphorical meaning. Let us take, for example, “An Out-Of-This-World Beauty”, which is the retelling of Snow White adding Science Fiction. This genre is being added by having the dwarves come from outer space and come to the woods to rescue Snow White from the cyborg hunter. They come from a different atmosphere, literally, and this can also be identified by the way that they always walk in unison, as if they were one, and the need they have for mining. Carter explains the mining by saying that they come from a world where, if they do not mine, they will not have the resources to live. Here, the title has a play on words since Out-Of-This-World has a double meaning. It can be used to describe Snow White’s beauty, which is so much that her stepmother gets jealous, but also, since the dwarves are theoretically from another planet, they are indeed coming from out of this world. Other examples might be: “A Sublime Switch”; Jack and the Beanstalk mixed with romance; or “A Stroll Through Death”; little Red Riding Hood as a murder mystery.

His childhood, he said, was what inspired him to write altered versions of fairy tales. Carter was always reading and thinking about fairy tales but was getting tired of always reading the same ones repeatedly. This is what gave him the inspiration for retelling fairy tales. He lived in Alabama, where he grew up being the youngest amongst his three brothers: Noah, Lucas, and Liam. Carter’s mother passed away when Elijah was born, so he grew up with no mother. He lived in a family full of boys, who wanted him to play football and go outside. But he preferred staying inside his house and reading stories.

Carter did not always want to become a writer, in fact; he wanted to become an actor. It was in the streets of New York where he discovered he wanted to write stories for a living. When he was 20 years old, he moved to New York to be able to have more opportunities in order to reach his dream. One day, while he was walking through the streets of New York, he found a newspaper which said that a magazine company needed a writer to be able to write some articles for the magazine and for other newspapers. In that moment, the young author was in need for a job, so he decided to take it. He soon discovered that he loved writing articles and started writing more in his free time. Carter became remarkably good at it until he quit the article job and decided to write books of his own. He started writing and eventually his books got published and became very popular.

Elijah Carter had a very unorganised, some would even say chaotic, way of living. In an interview, he called it a creative lifestyle. He did not like routines at all, and always did what he desired to do in that moment. While being an author does take a lot of work and many hours, it is not such a demanding schedule as could be a job in an office, so if he felt like waking up at two in the morning to write a chapter, he would do just that. When you entered his house, you could clearly see that it was a writer’s house. It was filled with notepads everywhere. The author explained this was so that whenever he had an idea, he could note it down before he forgot it.

Sadly, Elijah Carter passed away due to health problems, and they have selected me to write this article about him. And with all of this said, I feel honoured to have been able to recap his life and stories. He was, with no doubt, a visionary character to the modern fairy tale that is life.