Iron John
"Iron John" (aka Iron Hans or Der Eisenhans) is a German fairy tale found in the collections of the Brothers Grimm, tale number 136, about a wild man and a prince. (The original German title is Eisenhans, a compound of Eisen "iron" and Hans, like English John a common short form of the personal name Johannes) It represents Aarne-Thompson type 502, "The wild man as a helper".
Most people see the story as a parable about a boy maturing into adulthood. The story also became the basis for the book Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly which spawned the Men's Movement in the early 1990s after spending 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list.
Famous quotes containing the words iron and/or john:
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)