This story by Wackenroader can be classified as a fairy tale in that it contains fantastical creatures, magic spells, and a short succinct story with a happy ending. The tale takes place in an unknown world. This fantastical creature lives in a cave and is perpetually haunted by this fear that is a spell that has been cast on him. He has no rest as he is constantly hearing "the wheel of time." The spell is broken when he hears the music of love. This has tremendous power as it breaks the spell and is is not constrained anymore by his fears. This story definitely has a lot of the characteristics of the stories that we have previous read; however, there is a much deeper meaning in this literary fairy tale. Wackenroader was a Romantic writer and these ideals are very much present in his work. The story is of a creature that is haunted in his dark cave. He is saved by music, love and aesthetic beauty of the world around him, ideas that are all typical of Romanticism. The author concentrates on the aesthetic, picturesque world as highly desirable, and something that this creature desires to grasp. There is this contrast with feeling nothing and being haunted by time and constraints which could be compared to the Enlightenment, as Romanticism was a movement away from these ideas that transcended rationality. Nonetheless, though this is like the fairy tales we have seen in structure, in some of the elements that it contains, and its reflection of culture at the time, there is a much deeper meaning pertaining to politics and intellectual movements that make this story more complex.
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