Morality in Pinocchio: Bridging the Gap Between Childhood and Adulthood

Teaching morality to children is kind of like explaining that the earth is round to people in 1000 BC. We are convinced we are right based on fact and experience, but they haven’t figured it out for themselves, so being didactic might not be the best approach. The lessons I gleaned from this week’s viewing of Pinocchio have little to do with the cut and dry messages intended for children. Instead, I learned a lot from the character of Geppetto, from the choices in animation, and I learned a lot about ignorance.

There is a trope in children’s media that often empowers children by making the adults seem stupid, clumsy, and goofy. The children in these stories know better and can often outsmart the adults. Instead of dividing child and adult, we need to be bridging that gap, and I think that the relationship between Geppetto and Pinocchio does this. Before his wish, Geppetto is a kind and nurturing caretaker. He loves his cat and his fish, and he is a masterful creator: giving attention and detail to each of his wooden creations of which there are hundreds.

Geppetto is full of love, and his wish isn’t riches or glory, but rather another soul to look after. He wishes to be a father, and because of his pure intentions, he is granted his wish. Geppetto’s unconditional love is almost childlike, which bridges the gap between child and adult. He isn’t ignorant or clumsy, but rather he embraces the aspects of childhood that Christ asks us to embrace: meekness, simplicity, the ease to love and forgive, and joy.

While Geppetto embraces the virtues of childhood, he has also learned the balance of maturity. Pinocchio’s sin that causes the conflict in the film is ignorance: he is new to existence and like Adam and Eve, is unaware of consequence and must make mistakes in order to progress. Pinocchio has not yet learned the difference between what is good for him and what is not so good, and he is easily persuaded by the snakes of the world. But when he gets in trouble and is taken away from his home, he with the help of his “conscience” Jiminy Cricket can only do so much to save himself. He is able to escape Pleasure Island only when he understands the consequences of his action, and through his mistakes he is able to shed the ignorance of childhood. As he sheds this ignorance the gap between child and adult is further narrowed. His ultimate redemption is when he seeks out Geppetto (it should be clear now that Geppetto is a Christ figure in this narrative) and they are able to escape the stomach of the whale and they receive their ultimate desire: for Pinocchio to become a real boy.

There are some obvious parallels to Christianity in this morality tale, which is interesting to me because a very preliminary reading of this film was that it is a simple black and white right versus wrong story. But if at it’s core is a Christian allegory, how can it be so black and white, when human morality goes beyond Christianity? Perhaps it seems straightforward for a WASP audience, but I am glad that children’s morality tales, while still stemming from traditions such as the wolf narrative, are showing signs of more nuance for a contemporary audience born in an age of diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. This weekend I watched Zootopia, which struck me as a fitting morality tale for our age, as it embraces ideas such as diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. I am fascinated by this evolution of the morality tale, which goes back to our discussion on how old fairy tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, are revisited and remixed as deemed necessary.