Kylie Kahlig Dr. Norton EN 420 Myth and Fairy Tales 11/5/14 Never Enough Food Food, as described by Maria Tartar, has the ability to shape the social world of fairy tales in very profound ways. The children portrayed in fairy tales were often troubled with the threat of famines, starvation, and cannibalistic fiends such as witches, step-mothers, ogres, and giants. Food, or lack thereof, has proved time and time again that it can drive people to irrational and avaricious actions. No other fairy tale illustrates this better than the stories of “Hansel and Gretel”. The clear and central theme is food: lack of food, houses made of food, children as food. This paper will compare, as well as contrast, “Hansel and Gretel” written by Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault’s “Little Thumbling”. The plot of both stories follows the same guideline – a famine falls across the country, forcing the parents to forsake their children deep in the woods, causing them to fend for themselves. There are vast differences in the characters however. In “Hansel and Gretel” we are introduced to Hansel, Gretel, the father, step-mother, and the old woman who lives in the woods, while in “Little Thumbling” we meet Thumbling, his six other brothers, the parents, and the family in …show more content…
The father pleads and begs with his wife that there must be another way but she is relentless in her own pestering until he finally surrenders. The step-mother’s sole intent in abandoning the children is to ensure that she is able to be fed; selfishness caused by hunger. In comparison, the parents of Little Thumbling brought their children to the woods only because they could not bear to see their children starve to death. The father states that he “refuses to watch them die of hunger before my very eyes, and I’ve made up my mind to take them out into the woods tomorrow and to leave them there” (Perrault, page