Desert

The Desert is the remote setting where the Witch exiles Rapunzel after cutting off her hair and where, years later, the blind Prince finds her and their twin children. It links the story’s harshest separation to its recovery: the Prince follows Rapunzel’s familiar song, and her tears restore his sight before the family returns to his kingdom.

Exile and Hardship

After Rapunzel’s secret meetings with the Prince are discovered, the Witch cuts her long hair and takes her to the Desert. There Rapunzel must live a miserable and unhappy life, far from the tower where the Witch had kept her. The change of setting follows the severing of Rapunzel’s hair: the device that had connected her to the tower and enabled the Witch to enter is gone, and Rapunzel is cast into an exposed place of hardship instead.

By the time the Prince reaches the Desert, Rapunzel is barely managing to survive there with the twins she has given birth to, a boy and a girl. The narrative thus makes the Desert more than a place of solitary banishment: Rapunzel’s life there has also become a family life, formed under difficult conditions and without the Prince.

The Prince’s Arrival

After the Witch deceives him at the tower, the Prince leaps from its height, survives, and loses his sight when the brambles where he lands scratch his eyes. For many years he wanders in misery, unable to see and finding only roots and berries to eat. His eventual arrival in the Desert brings his wandering to the place where Rapunzel has been living, joining the consequences of the tower’s deception to the possibility of reunion.

The Prince is led toward Rapunzel by a voice that sounds familiar. He follows the singing until he comes close enough for Rapunzel to recognize him. Song, previously heard by the Prince from outside the tower, becomes the means by which he finds her again after years apart.

Reunion and Restoration

Rapunzel throws her arms around the Prince and weeps. Two of her tears fall into his eyes, and he suddenly sees clearly again. The reunion therefore reverses the bodily loss caused by his fall: the same man who had wandered unable to see now regains his sight in the Desert, through Rapunzel’s tears.

The ending carries the family out of the place of exile. The Prince returns to his kingdom with Rapunzel, where a great celebration is held, and they live happily for many years. The Desert’s role in the story is consequently defined by this reversal: it is where Rapunzel suffers banishment and raises the twins amid hardship, but also where the separated couple find one another and begin their return together.