Essay on Literary Analysis of The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

The main theme of this story was to show the miraculous and courageous struggle of one loving and devoted family, who put their own lives at stake to protect the lives of many others. Every night, before they were placed in the concentration camp, the tiny family of three read a scripture from the Bible. While in the “hell”, they prayed that God would forgive the retched and brutal souls of the Nazi guards who beat and killed many people. They put their Christian beliefs above all else. It was more important to them that they gave up their lives to rescue others because it was the Christian thing to do

Born in Poland, Henia Weit was the youngest of nine children in her family. She lived in a town by the name of Sambor. Unfortunately, the town was bombarded by German soldiers shortly after Hitler started his reign of terror on the Jews. Henia’s family was forced to do laborious work in a ghetto until they were all deported to a concentration camp. Fortunately for Henia, she was able to escape and never went to the concentration camp herself. Instead, she had to survive for several years alone, with only her sister to turn to.

Describe: Liesel and her best friend, Rudy Steiner, has been walking through town when a woman in a window above them looks to the streets and announces, “Die Juden;” The Jews. This is when a vast amount of Jewish prisoners begins to march their way down Munich Street while Nazi soldiers barked orders at them. To everyone, especially Liesel (who had a Jewish person living in her basement), this was the furthest thing from a pleasant sight. And apparently, Hans Hubermann had enough of this, as if being controlled by God himself, Hans walked over and offered a particularly weak Jew a piece of bread out of pure sympathy, only to be beaten by overlooking Nazis.

Throughout history many tragedies have taken place and affected humanity for generations to come. The Holocaust is one of history’s most influential events to take place. The Holocaust had long-term effects that changed people for the rest of their lives and each person after them. An example of the effects that the Holocaust had on people and their descendents who have experienced it, is seen in the book Night, by Elie Weisel. Because of the Holocaust, Elie’s family and himself were affected by changing their outlook on loss, religion, and struggle.

The “Gypsies” were said , by the Nazi’s, to have evil powers and would only bring sorrow and misfortune to the villagers. The fear and suspicion quickly turned into hostility. The villagers poked, prodded, kicked, whipped and tortured the boy for days while other watched and laughed “My body burned from the slashes of the whip...”(Kosinski 17). As time passed, a plague spread throughout the village, they believed that the boy must have brought the misfortune to them. They believed that if they rid themselves of the “Gypsy boy”, they would be free of the misfortune. Enraged, the villagers threw the boy into the river in hopes of his death by drowning. The actions of the villagers were compelled by their prejudice against the boys’ perceived ethnic origins. The alienation and loneliness the boy feels after being separated from his parents and the only other person that has taken care of him is gone, now he is all alone. The boy learns that he will have to learn to cope with the alienation and loneliness in order to survive this world. The unknown causes people to be quick to judge. The fear and hate of the unknown causes people to commit horrible acts, which only gets easier when they are sanctioned by state authority.

While comparing the two poems, "Gretel in Darkness" by Louise Gluck and "Hansel and Gretel" by Anne Sexton with the original Brothers Grimm tale "Hansel and Gretel", different perspectives, point of views and messages are shown.

There are many similarities and differences between the movie "Beowulf and Grendel", to the poem. Major differences between the movie and the poem would be Grendel himself. In the poem, he is described as an evil monster born from two demons. In the movie, Grendel is actually human, but known as a troll to the warriors and Danes. The poem doesn’t give the background of Grendel or show how the Danes killed his father and the possible reason of his revenge, like in the movie. If the witch, Selma, was not included in the storyline of the movie, the audience would not have known key information that she was used to show from more flashbacks. The witch gives more of an idea about Grendel’s past life that could have been the possibility to

Terrorizing a town for 12 years Grendel kills countless men and woman in the epic of Beowulf. Banished to an underwater dwelling when descendants of Cain were banished and killed, many warriors faced him but few survived. Many have herd of Grendel and his tale of horror, but who is Grendel?

In the folktale “The Blue Beard” written by Charles Perrault, conforms to both Dworkin’s and Lurie’s representations of fairy tale heroines. Perrault states, “The fatal effects of curiosity, particularly female curiosity, have of course long seen the subject of report” (133). Andrea Dworkin author of “Women Hating” and Alison Lurie author of “Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups” explain their different views regarding the heroines in fairy tales.

It was said by an anonymous author, that war changes the inherently good and unique spirit of the human race into the brute savages that they once had been. In The True Story of Hansel and Gretel characters have never known freedom from this war torn Europe. Bloodshed and violence are all that these characters have lived with and therefore we see no other traits other than those that are a direct result of these unfortunate and gruesome circumstances. Throughout this book, the actions of Major Frankel, although looked upon as always evil, give the reader a sense that before these atrocities were committed he had an inherently good heart.

After reading Clever Hans there’s some things I can say about this story. For starters this story involved a lot of repetition. One of the repetition patterns that I noticed was between Hans and her mother. It usually went like this, “Where you off to, Hans?” Hans answers: `To Gretel’s Behave yourself, Hans. ` I will. `Bye, mother.` `Bye, Hans.’ Another pattern I noticed was between Hans and Gretel and their conversation was the same everyday, “Good-day, Gretel.` `Good-day, Hans. Brought me something nice?” `Brought nothing. Like being given.` Gretel gives Hans a knife.` `Bye, Gretel.` `Bye, Hans.’. The whole story setting was a repetition between Hans and the Mom and Hans and Gretel.

Throughout the story, the characterization is heavily influenced by gender roles and sexist stereotypes. The role of the stepmother and stepsisters is to solely use their power as a source of evil in order to bring down Cinderella, while Cinderella is depicted to be beautiful yet weak and

He quotes or cites text from 45 works by 36 authors as evidence for his claims. It can be observed that this textual evidence has neither been directly extracted from, nor been Haase’s interpretations of, fairy tales. He gives the example of various “contemporary literary version[s] of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’” (362), in lieu of using his own interpretations of the original story. By making sure that he does not impose his own interpretations of fairy tales on the readers, he saves his essay from falling into duplicitous hypocrisy, and maintains the crux of his argument, which is to allow “both adults and children to assert their own proprietary rights to meaning” (363). Nevertheless, the various citations do not always blend seamlessly together, and this leads to certain disharmonious vagaries in the essay, which when read with some attention, reveal themselves to be a somewhat convoluted web of contradictions and conflicts with regard to the views expressed by the author. This can be discerned when Haase takes a critical view on the nationalistic claims of fairy tales, suggesting that they lead to the development of stereotypical images of the identity of the people who belong to the nation claiming ownership, defining explicitly the stereotypical German image: “such social characteristics as

The setting of the book is in World War II where many people were forced to abandoned their homes because of the holocaust. Like Max, many Jews had to hide or be forced to concentration camps and leave their families. Liesel has to grow up in period of fear, hate, and guilt. An example of this is when Hans gives bread to a dying Jewish man and is beaten and called a Jew lover. This example illustrates why Jewish people had so much to fear.

First of all, a rather sexist view of women has emerged from the evolution of a variety fairy tales. In older versions of many fairy tales, on can see the female dominant, matriarchal societies through the strong female protagonists. For example, as Yolen reminds, “Cinderella until lately has never been a passive dreamer….The forerunners of the Ash-girl have been hardy, active heroines” (33). One of the earlier Cinderellas belonged to a hunting community where “most important is the function of a female. She was at the center of this society and maintained a nurturing element” (194). As time went by Zipes concludes, women lost their supremacy and “fairy tales…reinforced the patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender” (qtd. in Tatar 338). As Zipes explains, “the heroines in these fairy tales remain pathetic , passive, and pale in comparison to the more active characters”, usually the men, when compared to those of the first generation of fairy