Grimm Brothers

Over the years, Grimm fairytales have become childhood favourites. Though children's tales were not what the Grimm brothers originally had in mind with their gruesome style of writing, the two authors have become tremendously popular amongst the ages. The stories of "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Cap" are both widely known and accepted fairytales. Both stories involve children wandering about the woods and facing a threatening mythical character. They each include the traditional "happily ever after" ending. However the most interesting themes that these two works share, are the uses and meanings of food and eating. Both stories show these themes using the ideas of capture and escape and hunger and famine.
The ideas of hunger and famine present themselves immediately in both of these stories. The stepmother in "Hansel and Gretel" convinces the woodcutter father to get rid of the children because of the famine that has swept across the country. In "Little Red Cap", the mother sends the young girl with wine and cake to her grandmother's house because she is "sick and weak and this will strengthen her". Both stories are set in the woods; however while the mother in "Little Red Cap" warns the girl not the stray from the path, Hansel and Gretel are left to wander aimlessly around the woods. The main characters in each of these stories are in the woods with one very important thing in common. Little Red Cap is the solution to her Grandmother's hunger, while Hansel and Gretel facilitate in their stepmother not having to "...starve to death”. The main idea in both of these tales is that sending the children out in the woods will cure hunger. The children in each story encounter threatening characters that plot secretly to eat them while lying through their teeth carrying a sugar coated smile. Little Red Cap meets a sly wolf, while Hansel and Gretel stumble upon a house made of bread and is fooled by the witch living inside of it. The wolf runs ahead and eats the