Little Red Riding Hood
Roal Dahl’s rewriting of the famous fairy tale
Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf
As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma’s door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, “May I come in?”
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
“He’s going to eat me up!” she cried.
And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, “That’s not enough!
I haven’t yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!”
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
“I’ve got to have a second helping!”
Then added with a frightful leer,
“I’m therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood.”
He quickly put on Grandma’s clothes,
(Of course he hadn’t eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma’s chair.
In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said,
“What great big ears you have, Grandma.”
“All the better to hear you with,” the Wolf replied.
“What great big eyes you have, Grandma.”
said Little Red Riding Hood.
“All the better to see you with,” the Wolf replied.
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I’m going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma
She’s going to taste like caviar.
Then Little Red Riding Hood said, “But Grandma,
what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.”
“That’s wrong!” cried Wolf. “Have you forgot
To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I’m going to eat you anyway.”
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature’s head
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, “Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.”
And now it is your turn. What is your rewriting of the fairy tale? Remember, I want an unexpected development, a twist in the tale!
Angela Carter’s re-visitation of Little Red Riding Hood, “The Warewolf”, ends in a quite unexpected way. A violent and gory story with a different morale from the traditional fairy tale. Leave your comments. Write what your impressions of this revisitation are.
cristiana ziraldo 
I liked some aspects of the rewrite of the tradition fairytale Little Red Ridinghood which Angela Carter offers in he collection “The Bloody Chamber”. I enjoyed the message she wants to convey which in my opion could be the fact that you have to been aware that someone near you could be evil and that you can’t base judgement by the apperances a person has. I thought it was interesting how the writer made it so that the little girl was the evil and ruthless one, particulary after she has cut of the wolf’s forepaw with her knife and “wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron, wrapped up the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes”. I kind the juxtaposition between the immage of a little girl who carries presents to her sick grandmother and a fearless and cruel girl who is capable of hurting a wolf. Although I found this story interesting it is very violent and crude, with her worlds, Angela Carter can really portray a horrific visual image.
Cold. Fretful. Wicked. Angela Carter’s version of Little Red Riding Hood, freakes me out. There’s anger in her hard-edged words. There’s a cautionary message that drives fear into the heart of the reader. I loved the fact that the protagonist fights off the wolf because, for once, she’s not the whimpering little girl that gets either eaten or saved by some MAN. No, she shlashes off the animal’s paw, takes it with her as a sort of prize.
And last but not least, she is clever enough to face the truth: her grandma has tryed to kill her and is a warewolf AND a witch.
The protagonist, now wearing a sheepskin coat instead of a red velvet cap, is not an innocent girl anymore. I loved and appreciated that.
I liked Angela Carter re-visitation of Little Red Riding Hood because I liked the idea of showing peaple that the original story and it-s moral could even change, and show how a little girl can even act like a strong woman.
I even liked the way the story started, showing the cultures of a northen country.
I think the writer wanted to surprise people by adding violent and bloody details.
I like Angela Carter’s revisitation of Little Red Riding Hood. It wonder where she got her inspiration. Perhaps, being a feminist, she was inspired by the condition of women in society and she decided to subvert it. Women were always painted like negative and unlucky people because the writers were men. I love the way she begins the story: she describes the place and the customs of the woodmen really well and this before the story begins. My favourite part is the description of northen people’s superstitions and the morale of the story.
THE WEREWOLF hit me, i felt melancholic…but I think the morale even if it may appear negative, it is not. I think the world is ambivalent and people tend to oversee this…Something that hurt you badly not necessarily is negative, tomorrow your father can leave your family in order to restart his life…or you can try to act in such a way people close to you won’t escape…as you sow what you reap…the devil being, in this case the little girl’s grandmother, the devil has been unfaihful to god, now another young god’s creature has killed a devilish thing…it’s so cruel, how can we say that god doesn’t take revenge, but his or her creatures do it? God did not take revenge of those who hurt him, but his creatures do. SO why shouldn’t God take revenge on us? THis explains why we suffer and I think Angela Carter develops this theme too.