Language and Meaning

"Bedtime Story" uses the form of a folktale to tell a story about the end of humanity and to pose a moral. Folktales are short narratives usually in prose form but sometimes in verse, which have been transmitted orally from generation to generation. Their original author is unknown, if there ever were an original author, and the tale itself changes over time as it is repeated and changed little by little. Myths and fables are two common forms of folk tales; both are attempts to explain natural phenomena and human behavior. MacBeth's poem takes on the features of a folktale in how it attempts to explain the past and the disappearance of human beings from the planet. The narrator tells us that it was humanity that was responsible for the extinction of animals, whose name the narrator and his ilk (a non-human, or post-human species) can...