Comparing and contrasting Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin (Essay Sample)

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Comparing and contrasting Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin
Traditional fairytales such as Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin are often passed down by earlier generations to children mainly as cautionary stories that are intended to deter bad behavior. Fairytales basically operate ideologically in order to indoctrinate young children so that they can follow the dominant societal standards that are not essentially created in their behalf. Usually, the audience is directed at children primarily because children do not yet know the distinction between what is acceptable in their culture, and what is actually unacceptable, molding the way they view society. When looking at fairytales such as Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin, there is an obvious picture of wrong and right, and who is intrinsically evil and good. In this essay, the chief purpose is to develop a thesis statement between 2 primary sources that compares and contrasts two different short stories. These two short stories are Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin, and they are chosen from the Brothers Grimm. A comparison of Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin would show that both narratives both belong to the genre of fairytale, and therefore are told primarily to young children. However, Rumpelstiltskin is more suitable for older audiences while Hansel and Gretel is more apt for younger audiences.
In the extensively known version of Hansel and Gretel, the readers of this fairytale hear of 2 children who become lost inside the woods, in the end finding their way to a gingerbread house belonging to an evil witch. These two little children, the boy named Hansel and the girl named Gretel, end up being enslaved for a period of time as the wicked witch prepares them for eating. However, these children decipher their way out and toss the witch in a fire and they escape (Warner 16). In essence, the witch, who is an aged woman locks one of the child, Hansel, inside a cage and would ask Gretel to give him food. At one moment, the witch told the girl to make a fire oven, and Gretel asked her, “How will I tell if the fire is hot enough, the door is very small” (Maria 6). The witch replied “you silly girl, it is not very small” (Maria 6). To demonstrate to the girl how much room was actually there, the old witch put her own head inside the oven. Speedily, the young girl pushed the old cruel witch inside the oven and closed the door. The girl then ran to the stable and freed Hansel out of the cage in which the witch had put him in. “She is dead and we are free” (Maria 7) Gretel said.
In The Lost Children, the French version of Hansel and Gretel, a devil takes the place of a witch. The impious old devil is tricked by the children just as it happened in the original narrative Hansel and Gretel, but the devil understands it and it quickly puts together a saw-horse to place one of the children on to bleed. The two children act as if they do not know how to get on the sawhorse so the wife of the devil illustrates how to do it. Whilst she is lying down, the children cut her throat and escape (Cohon and Deustch 5).
When the two children arrived home, their father was very happy to see them and he leaped up with joy given that he never wanted to leave them inside the woodland. Their father said, “Thank the stars you are safe. My children, I promise never to leave you again” (Warner 17). The stepmother acted as though she was also happy, but in reality she was angry that the children have returned after they abandoned them in the woodland.
The fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin is somehow different from Hansel and Gretel in that instead of sanitizing the original, it was actually altered by the original author in order to make it more ghastly and grisly. In the original story, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold for a young girl, queen, who is facing death unless she can do the feat. Rumpelstiltskin, in return, asks for her first born child. The girl agrees. However, when the time comes for handing over the child, the girl cannot do it (Warner 18). The queen is told by Rumpelstiltskin that he would let her off the bargain if the girl can correctly guess his name. The queen eavesdrops and hears him singing his name by a fire and therefore she was able to guess it correctly. Angry, Rumpelstiltskin runs away and he is never seen again. However, in the revised version, he is very infuriated of the girl’s correct guess that he actually drives one of his foot into the floor, and takes hold of his left leg and rips himself in half thereby killing himself (Cohon and Deutsch 6).
These two narratives are similar in some aspects and different in other aspects. The key similarity is that both fairy tales illustrate how people are disconnected from civilization. For instance, forests are uninhabited and unexplored by man. The two texts illustrated this point when they indicated that neither Gretel nor Hansel, nor the miller’s daughter – the natural human characters of the two narratives – lived directly inside the forest. Instead, they lived on the periphery of the forest’s borders. To demonstrate, the author states that Gretel and Hansel “dwelt nearby a forest” (Warner 16), and the miller’s daughter dwelt “by the side of a wood” (Warner 16).
As such, in the absence of a civilized population, forests tend to be rendered into a sort of mystic or spiritualist reality in that people know that they exist but what they do not know is what actually exists in them. This ambiguity serves to open up a realm of possibility that is favorable to the notion that supernatural beings, for instance hobgoblins and witches, could actually live inside forests. In Hansel and Gretel, the author states that the stepmother, the father and the children went “deeper into the forest” (Maria 7). Therefore, since only unnatural creatures dwell within the forest, the reader is guided to immediately disclaim those beings who inhabit the forest. It is of note that the father of Gretel and Hansel, and their stepmother deliberately abandoned them inside the forest and never wanted them back since they were running short on food.
The other similarity between the Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin is that both show a clear picture of evil and good; in both there is a definite evil and a good. While the actions of the villains – the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel, and the little man in Rumpelstiltskin – might be seen as evil, the reader has nothing to sympathize with. The good are illustrated as having soft features, or as victims, and the evil as some sort of monster in whichever form such as a witch, an old woman, or a little man. In Hansel and Gretel, the two children have to get past the old woman who wanted to eat them; she is the evil one in the narrative. In Rumpelstiltskin, the evil one is the little man who the reader sees as a monster since he wanted to take away the child of miller’s daughter, and was very infuriated for not getting what he wanted that he actually ripped himself apart. Moreover, in both narratives and just like in other fairytales, the reader is given an antagonist and protagonists, although the reader is only given the protagonist’s story. No past of the antagonist is provided, just an object that the protagonist needs to get past for there to be a happy ending (Maria 8).
Nonetheless, the two texts are different regarding the timing in which the woodland residences of their villains are revealed. This is a major point since the earlier the readers are able to repudiate a villain, the longer they have to strongly ground their repudiation of that villain in evidence. In addition, whenever such opinions are justly and resolutely grounded, the ill-fate that the villain encounters upon her or his demise is significantly more comprehensible (Cohon and Deutsch 11). By being able to understand not just the reason as to why the villain was punished, but also to comprehend why such punishments are necessary is of great importance for the reader of the fairytale.
The other key difference is with regard to the repudiation of the villains in the two texts. The Hansel and Gretel text guides the reader to an early repudiation of the witch whereas in Rumpelstiltskin, the villain is repudiated at the end of the narrative. In essence, while there is immediate repudiation of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, it is only until the end of the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin that readers come to repudiate their character. As such, since the reader has had less time of acquainting himself with the malevolence of Rumpelstilskin the character, it is particularly hard for the reader to develop a full repudiation of the character of Rumpelstiltskin and therefore to comprehend the justifiability in his punishment. This is a vital reason regarding why the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale is a more appropriate text for younger audiences compared to Rumpelstiltskin.
The other way in which the author of Hansel and Gretel narrative helps in guiding readers to an early repudiation of the villain is through overtly and quickly disclosing the evil intention of the witch. For instance, the author states that, “the aged woman had only pretended to be very caring and benign, when she was actually a cruel witch who lay and wait for children. The moment a child fell into her power; this cruel witch would kill it, cook it and eat it” (Maria 8). Note the usage of the word it; meaning that the witch did not consider children as humans but as food that she can eat. Therefore, by reading this paragraph, the reader is informed of how nasty the witch is, and readers are guided to an early repudiation of the witch.
In Rumpelstiltskin narrative, there is no way in which the...