The Big Bad Wolf Has Come to Collect: An Analysis of Riding in the Red
Nalo Hopkinson’s short story “Riding the Red” is a reinterpretation of the famous childhood folk tale "Little Red Riding Hood". With the use of literary devices, Hopkinson was able to write a story with two different messages. Reading the words on the page Hopkinson writes about a grandmother telling the story of big bad wolf. On the other hand, reading between the lines a whole new story emerges from the pages talking about love, innocence and growing up.
"Riding The Red"at first glance is a simple narrative with a grandmother telling a story about a wolf, but with further analyzation the two themes of first love and innocent become very clear. The author’s repetition of certain words like blood and dance directs your attention to a deeper meaning hinting and connections to the "Little Red Riding Hood" which reflects back to the underlining message of what happens when a girl grows up.
Hopkinson’s allusions to the old folk tale "Little Red Riding Hood" are evident throughout the entire story. Her use of symbolic settings, items and phrases integrate the connection between the two stories, forcing the readers to use prior knowledge of the old folk tale to understand her reinterpretation.“Riding the Red”(Hopkinson), “my cottage in the forest” (Hopkinson) and “red hood”(Hopkinson) are specific examples of allusive language Hopkinson uses to emphasize the connections between the two stories. By engaging the readers fundamental knowledge of the "Little Red Riding Hood" the author is able to strengthen the morals of her story and allow the reader to make connections with their childhood memories. These allusions incorporated throughout the short story ensuring the reader is more likely to understand her intended message the destruction of innocence when becoming a young woman.
The intention of repetition throughout a story is to signify a word and draw attention, among many others the word blood was repeated numerous times placing a great significance of the word. The context of the word varies from sentence to sentence, but always circles back to the original sense of sexual desire and virginity. “drunk on the smell of my own young blood
Prologues are often an author’s way of introducing important information or topics needed to understand the body of writing on a deeper level or as a way to direct the reader to a certain line of thought or specific interpretation of the writing. Anne Sexton writes a prologue for every single one of her poems in her compilation of fairytale poetry throughout Transformations. She gives the reader so many hints throughout her prologues on what the reader should pay attention to. In “Red Riding Hood”, Sexton draw immense attention to the issues of deception in real life though the importance she places on these issues in her poem. She calls out not only the frequency of deception in life but she calls attention specifically to the deception of a mother’s security.
The stories ?Little Red Riding Hood,? by Charles Perrault, and ?Little Red Cap,? by the Brothers Grimm, are similar and different. Moreover, both stories differ from the American version. The stories have a similar moral at the end, each with a slight twist. This story, in each of its translations, is representative of a girl?s loss of innocence, her move from childhood or adolescence into adulthood. The way women are treated within each story is different. Little Red in the French version was eaten; whereas in the German version, she is rescued by the woodsman, and this further emphasizes the cultural differences.
Little red riding hood is about a girl on a trip to her sick grandmother’s house but she had met a wolf on her way there. There are many different versions of this story, the Perrault version and Grimm version. There was also a parody of Little Red Riding Hood called Hoodwinked!. In all of the stories they all start with a mother giving something to give to her daughter. For her daughter to travel into the forest to give her grandmother what her mother had made.
the plot.The recurring imagery of blood is used as a symbol to demonstrate the constant feelings of guilt. The blood imagery impacted the play and the characters into making decisions. Without the bloody imagery, the story line would not have went the way it did which is is characterized by not only guilt but also by all the deaths and which was present during the play.
The folk tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” has numerous variations and interpretations depending on what recorded version is being read or analyzed. “Little Red Cap,” by the Grimm Brothers, and “The Grandmother,” as collected by Achille Millien, are different in numerous ways: the depth of the narrative structure, characters involved, length – yet, the moral lesson is largely unchanged between the two versions. One of the more glaring differences between the two versions is the way that the narrator and the actions of the characters are used to describe the young girl, female, and the wolf, male. Being either female or male are matters of biological makeup. The characteristics of femininity and masculinity that are associated with being
“I've told her and I've told her: daughter, you have to teach that child the facts of life before it's too late” (Hopkinson 1). These are the first three lines of Nalo Hopkinson's short story “Riding the Red”, a modern adaptation of Charles Perrault's “Little Red Riding Hood”. In his fairy tale Perrault prevents girls from men's nature. In Hopkinson's adaptation, the goal remains the same: through the grandmother biographic narration, the author elaborates a slightly revisited plot without altering the moral: young girls should beware of men; especially when they seem innocent.
In the story, “The Scarlet Ibis”, Hurst uses the power of love to demonstrate how hard one can push themselves to be happy. In addition, how pride within a person can cause destruction around them if used in selfish or negative ways. Psychologically, a child’s need to be proud is mostly to avoid feeling shame, much like this story. This means our actions, though they may be wrong, are helpful to alleviate our own embarrassment. May it be of a family member, the way they look, the clothes they wear, and many other reasons, one can be shameful of many things. Usually, the author shows this by using symbolism. In this tale, James Hurst portrays the color red and dying as key symbols of pride and pushing past one’s limits.
Of all the different versions of the Little Red Riding Hood, they have one common factor, which is the wolf. In the versions I have mentioned above, the wolf stays the same throughout the stories; he is very malicious and calculated. He waits for the little girl, or girls in the story of "The Chinese Red Riding Hoods," as there are three sisters whose mother left to go visit the grandmother. While the wolf was outside and overheard the mother asking for the oldest daughter to watch for her younger sisters. When it was dark, he disguised himself as an elderly woman and knocked at the door of the three girls' house (Chang 1). In the other two versions, the wolf comes upon Little Red Riding Hood as she enters the forest and asks her where she is traveling to. In the version of The Brothers Grimm, he comes right on out and asks her where her grandmother lives. On the way to the cottage, the wolf distracts the girl by asking her why she doesn't look
The Red Pony by author John Steinbeck is a very notable book for young adults. The central and recurring theme of the four stories told within this short novel is life and death. The stories also deal with conflict between old and new. Unlike most novels for young adults this book is different because John Steinbeck does not try to soften or hide old age and death, but instead presents these themes as they are in reality. The stories tell how the main character, Jody Tiflin, becomes more responsible as he deals with the disappointments and sadness, as well as the successes of real life.
Perrault’s version warns against wandering away from the safety formed by civilized society. A scholar, Eric Fromm considers the red riding hood to be a “symbol for menstruation” (1), symbolizing that Little Red Riding Hood is entering puberty and therefore womanhood and in turn moving away from the guidance of her mother and grandmother. This is also understood when she forgets her mother’s warning to stay on the path, and goes off picking flowers and chasing butterflies with childlike innocence. The sexual undertones were obvious in a culture that would outcast a young woman who lost her virginity. Perrault’s story gained popularity in a time when high society parents were concerned with their children ruining their family names. This is illustrated in the end of the story where the wolf kills and eats the girl and her
When imaging the ideal audience of fairytales, children are quick to come to mind, although, our perception of Little Red Riding Hood as an innocent fable is far from the truth. Alternatively, the origins of this story are derived from Italo Calvino’s “The False Grandmother”, a story immersed in symbolism and metaphorical symbols intended strictly for a mature audience. The preceding tale was “Little Red Cap “written by Charles Perrault and then later the “Little Red Riding” written by the Brothers Grimm. Although the details of these tales vary, they all maintain similar storylines. The stories revolve around the young female character Little Red Riding Hood who is sent off on a mission to bring her grandmother a basket of goods. During her adventure she encounters a wolf who engages in a hot pursuit to eat both the Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood, only to succeed in the earlier rendition of the story. In this essay I will prove that when the Grimm’s Brothers and Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood stories are critically analyzed, it becomes evident that they are inappropriate tales for children as they exemplify the consequences of a minor transgression by Little Red Riding Hood as being the misleading cause of the violence and seduction that occurs thereafter.
In this essay, I examine what Zipes means by institutionalised, define what makes a fairy tale and evaluate how different versions of Little Red Riding Hood reflect the social ideology of the period.
Carter remains consistent with the original story of Red Riding Hood, and elaborates on the girl's nature at the time the story takes place. Red's cheeks are scarlet, indicative of her becoming a woman; in contrast, "she is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel...she does not know how to shiver" (2234). A reader may think this emphasis of her sexual inexperience reveals her naivety. However, Carter's exaggeration of Red's purity may be her way of questioning readers' assumption that since Red is an innocent woman, she will be victimized. The combination of Red's sexual maturity, contrasted with hyperbolic description of her innocence, and the climax of the story contribute to this possibility.
Folktales are a way to represent situations analyzing different prospects about gender, through the stories that contribute with the reality of the culture in which they develop while these provide ideas about the behavior and roles of a specific sex building a culture of womanhood, manhood and childhood. This is what the stories of Little Red Riding Hood of Charles Perrault (1697) and Little Red-Cap of the Grimm Brothers (1812) show. This essay will describe some ideas about gender in different ways. First, the use of symbolic characters allows getting general ideas about the environment in the society rather than individuals. Second, it is possible to identify ideas about gender from the plot from the applied vocabulary providing a
This shows us that the mother is already aware of Little Red Riding Hood’s curiosity and bad behaviours. She expects her daughter to forget about her sick grandmother and give into her Id, which she does. Little Red Riding Hood has the primitive mind of a baby – all Id -- guided by her needs and feelings. She does not think about the consequences of her actions and follows only one rule: “the pleasure principle”. She does not think about the outcome of her decisions in a world of reality, but instead in her own world ruled by pleasure.