"The Role of Food in Hansel & Gretel"

In Hansel & Gretel, the bread plays an important role of the story. It appears in many forms with several metaphoric meanings.

There exist a quote that states "Bread is basically the food of the poor. It is also seen as the most basic life sustaining food" (Matthews 1962).

The struggle to provide bread for the children illustrates the family's poverty and quest for basic survival. To me the bread symbolizes hope, survival and transformation.

"The path from the production of the grain to the bread is a path of transformation of natual product into a specifically human form of nourishment" (Dieckmann 1986).

In the story of Hansel and Gretel, the food had lead them a dangerous situation. The idea of having a house made of cake is the idea of luring the children in. When they came across a house that are made of bread, cake, sugar, and peppermint, they began eating it because it was necessary for survival and even the witch told them they can eat as much as they want but they have no idea why. That was until later, the siblings found out that the old woman happens to be a witch. The witch wanted to feed the children so she can catch them, kill them, cook them and eat them.

"Werewolf and Little Red Riding Hood"

When I read the story about Bisclavret, I was shockingly surprised about the human soul of Bisclavret and how different were the society back then. De France informed us that she remiss to omit the lay of Bisclavret, a werewolf from the old days of Brittany. She begins her tale by introducing a noble and handsome baron who is loved by all in his home realm of Brittany. De France describes the werewolf as a savage beast who "eats men, wreaks evil, does no good", "he lives lives and roams in the deep wood". While I was reading the tale, one thing I didn't expect to happen is that the half man, half wolf sadly gets rejected by his wife after he confesses to her about his wolf transformation. That's when Marie reveals the wife's true feelings - she is disgusted and no longer "wished to lie with him". To me that sounds really harsh because the wife sees him as a brutal beast, the way he disappears into the woods and she would no longer accept him for who he is. I was actually surprised about the way the King reacted to the wolf, out of many people who fear and ran away, the King is the only person who sees the humanity within the wolf. What really surprised me is that the highest level of admiration is what lead the King to bring the wolf into his kingdom and to treat him with much love and care. Let's say the wolf attacks the wife or a thief, the king would simply stand by his side and believed in him instead of judging, and clarify the misunderstanding about the wolf attacking someone. Overall, it is an interesting story that I have read.

According to the class note "The Wolf as Symbol", the wolf came "to represent the unacceptable faces of society: sexual predation in LRRH just like the way he used to bully the Three Little Pigs. The sexual connotation is kind of odd, the part where LRRH (as a teenger rather than a child) seduces the werewolf in bed (rather than escaping from the wolf) and it shows the violent inner nature of a man.

"Red's Downfall"

After reading both Grimm's and Perrault's version of Little Red Riding Hood, I have come to the conclusion both of these versions made Red responsible for her own downfall. However, Red is not entirely responsible for her own downfall because she has only been following a direct order from her mother. Red's mother should have been even more responsible for her own safety and she should have taken this opportunity to give Red guidance about talking to strangers. Since Red's mother was in charge of her daughter, she should be held responsible for her downfall. Some people kept saying that it's Red's own fault for not following her mother's directions correctly, I don't think it's 100% true.

"Interpreting Little Red Riding Hood"

I mostly prefer Susan's interpretation about women being the victims of male violence because the reading mentions about LRRH and her grandmother being equally defenseless before the wolf's strength and cunning, they are both helpless, the wolf having to swallow both females and LRRH being a parable of rape. To me, it is mostly true. Susan believes that women are the target of male violence and because they were defenseless, they have no choice but to go through a difficult disaster unless someone steps in and save their lives.

"Unhappy Ending Between Disney and the Original Fairytales"

 After reading an article about the difference between Disney's happy ending and the original stories ending, I was terrified about the fact that every endings of each stories was eerie, disturbing, terrifying, and most of them has negative contents compared to every Disney films I've seen as a kid. As an adult, it is time to step in and get to know the real truth about the endings of the original fairytale's plot line. I like the way Disney created a much better world which is why I prefer the happy endings of Disney's versions of the fairytales storyline. The reason I prefer Disney's films rather reading the original fairytale's storyline is because it is incredibly entertaining, it always puts a smile on every children's face including mine, it is something that I am mostly comfortable with. In my opinion, Disney may have alternatively made some changes to the fairytales plot and storyline but it doesn't mean he actually ruined the classic fairytales; he wanted to make the viewers pleasurable and appeal to the American society by bringing us happy endings and yet he succeeded.

"Illustrations of Little Red Riding Hood"

These are illustrations of Little Red Riding Hood that was nicely hand drawn since 03/22/11 by Julie or by the user name "juliefofisss" from deviantart.com

As I observed this illustration, it looks quite similar to the Brothers' Grimm version. This image shows Little Red Riding Hood who is not an innocent, helpless little girl who gets eaten by the big bad wolf but a little girl who took over leadership and control of the wolf. Instead, she is depicted as a girl who is empowered, strong minded character, and she was able to show the big bad wolf who's boss. This image tells me that Little Red Riding Hood shows no mercy and would not let anybody get in her way.

"Breaking the Disney Spell" by Jack Zipes

In the article “Breaking the Disney Spell”, Zipes point out that because “Disney was so obsessed with the fairytale genre and he felt drawn to fairytales because they reflected his own struggles in life” (p.343), this is what led Disney to ruin the classics by making some changes from the original fairytales. I personally don’t think that Disney has ruined the fairytales, instead I think Disney made an expansion and accessible to many different people at different ages. I disagree with Zipes’ argument because it seems to me that Disney has succeeded in making alternatives changes in order to target audiences including children and he probably didn’t want most of the children to be exposed to several contents that are quite disturbing. What Disney had in mind is that, he wanted to take the original classic fairytales and turn it into something even more beautiful, colorful, and pleasurable for the viewers in order to attract more audiences by adding a happy ending, new background scenes, creating motion pictures, and redesigning the characters because he wanted to have much better dreams rather than following the original plot of the fairytales.