Sang Hyun Lee (David) English 110 Professor Patricia Nadir April, 2015 Beyond Two Dimensions: Discovering round characters in its adaptations This paper critically examines the representation of the monsters in Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poems, “The World’s Wives”. In this collection of poems, Duffy presents the characters anew for the readers to look at those that were previously presented as two dimensional characters within the bounds of original works. Duffy brings to life her own representation of the characters be it monster or victim providing a new insight. This paper focuses on two poems, “Medusa” and the “Little Red Cap”, to study how Duffy’s representations go beyond two dimensional representations to provide readers …show more content…
In Duffy’s re-telling, Little Red Riding Hood enters the woods knowing exactly what its darkness holds. The Little Red Cap is introduced in a confident voice from line 1; “At childhood’s end…” quickly distinguishes Duffy’s adaptation from the traditional fairytale. Readers understand that this retelling is not by a little girl being cautioned by her mother, but someone who recognizes how the wolf stood at the junction between her innocence and maturity as clearly evident in line 5. The persona’s catalogue belies that she knows exactly where everything is; she can’t be led astray by a wolf dressed in her grandmother’s …show more content…
I crawled in his wake, 15 my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night, breath of the wolf in my ear was the love poem. I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, 20 for what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws and went in search of a living bird – white dove – which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth? One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, 25 licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books. words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. But then I was young – and it took ten years 30 in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe
A History of Marriage by Stephanie Coontz speaks of the recent idealization of marriage based solely on love. Coontz doesn’t defame love, but touches on the many profound aspects that have created and bonded marriages through time. While love is still a large aspect Coontz wants us to see that a marriage needs more solid and less fickle aspects than just love.
Collins uses metaphors to teach the audience that with patience, poetry can be understanded easily. For instance, he tells the audience to “walk inside the poem’s
Just as the surroundings would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world from diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to the poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments that the readers should enjoy the poem in a way they would like to water ski.... ... middle of paper ... ...
These two scenarios from Anglo-Saxon and modern times are similar, as well. They are similar because of the continuity of “monsters” terrorizing a society being a great influence among audiences of the past and present. The two works of both eras demonstrate the continual interest in defeating villains and “feeding” it’s listeners with tales such as these.
In her transformation of the well-known fable "Little Red Riding Hood," Angela Carter plays upon the reader's familiarity. By echoing elements of the allegory intended to scare and thus caution young girls, she evokes preconceptions and stereotypes about gender roles. In the traditional tale, Red sticks to "the path," but needs to be rescued from the threatening wolf by a hunter or "woodsman." Carter retells the story with a modern perspective on women. By using fantasy metaphorically and hyperbolically, she can poignantly convey her unorthodox and underlying messages.
Carter and Perrault both offer interesting insight in their short stories depicting the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood by the symbolism of the wolf and flip in moral. In “Little Red Riding Hood”, Charles Perrault uses the wolf as both a religious symbol and a symbol for men who prey on those weaker and more naïve than themselves, usually women. The devilish wolf is sneaky and cunning and at every opportunity has “a very great mind to eat her up” in the woods, but instead makes a deal with her. Like the classic devil, he charms her with his manners and suavely offers her his assistance. The child herself is naïve, or as Perrault puts it, ...
As one might be able to see, the short story of Little Red Riding Hood has changed with the times. The moral of this short story seems to have faded away over the years and now it seems to be more of a story just for entertainment. It may be that people wanted to add a new twist to this long told story and it just happened to be that people changed the whole idea of the original story to something more entertaining for the people in that generation and while doing that, the original moral was completely demolished.
In most novel and movies monsters are known to be evil, committing numerous crimes against humanity and are normally the ones that we don’t sympathize with. However, this novel carefully shows the reader that monsters can be good creatures, with a decent heart and act based on the actions of others. The novel shows how the monster should be pitied, rather than criticised. Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein” manages to create sympathy for the creature through speech, actions and mistreatment the creature suffers.
released in 1982 by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story is told by a wife who reminisces the time she
Peter Brooks' essay "What Is a Monster" tackles many complex ideas within Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the main concept that is the title of the essay itself. What is the definition of a monster, or to be monstrous? Is a monster the classic representation we know, green skin, neck bolts, grunting and groaning? A cartoon wishing to deliver sugary cereal? or someone we dislike so greatly their qualities invade our language and affect our interpretation of their image and physical being? Brooks' essay approaches this question by using Shelley's narrative structure to examine how language, not nature, is mainly accountable for creating the idea of the monstrous body.
“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 fairy tale “Riding the Red”, a modern adaptation of Charles Perrault's “Little Red Riding Hood”. Perrault provided a moral to his fairy tales, the one from this one is to prevent girls from men's nature. In Hopkinson's adaptation, the goal remains the same: through the grandmother biographic narration, the author advances a revisited but still effective moral: beware of wolfs even though they seem innocent.
A Comparison of Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault and Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm
Little Red Riding Hood retold by the Brothers Grimm version by Paul Galdone includes a "sweet little maiden" (Galdone 1) who never wears anything else but a little red velvet cloak, given to her by her Grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood's mother asks her to take cake and a bottle of wine to her Grandmother. The wolf in the woods is very talented as in she is somewhat convincing in the story. She first approaches Little Red Riding Hood in the woods keeping her calm with polite conversation and convinces her then to pick the beautiful flowers, meanwhile, she scurried away to Grandmother's cottage to devour Grandmother; later to devour Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf later lay there in Grandmother's bed convincingly as Grandmother in Grandmother's cap down over her face. After convincing Little Red Riding Hood to approach the wolf then devours her. The heroin turns out to be a huntsman, whom "took a knife and began cutting open the sleeping wolf" (Galdone 26) when out popped Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood is victorious by putting all inside the wolf big stones, which weighed him down, ...
“Little Red Cap” quickly became a household tale among children and adults, due to the imperative lessons that it directs to children and their parents'. Behind the initial story lies a message which, ”Cautions young girls to mind their mothers and not stray from the path to wander in the forbidden woods” (Rholetter). The forest represents any unfamiliar place that children can easily become lost within, while the path to grandmother’s house can represent a place the child is accustomed to. As soon as Little Red Cap begins her journey, she is confronted by a wolf. When they first meet, the wolf acts as a polite gentleman would towards any young lady which earns Little Red Cap’s trust instantly, "Little Red Cap, just where does your grandmother live? said the Wolf. Little Red Cap eagerly replied, Her house is a good quarter hour from here in the woods, under the three large oak trees. There's a hedge of hazel bushes there. You must know the place”(Grimm). This portrays children being subjected to the danger of strangers acting as friends to others for their own personal gains. The Brothers Grimm version of “
Little Red Cap is the Brothers Grimm’s version of Charles Perrault’s original fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The original is written as a moralistic story, in which ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is eaten by the wolf, the moral being that children, particularly female, should not approach strangers. Feminist critics could argue that the original story is warning against curiosity and freedom. This is because in the original version Little Red Cap is told “not to run off the path” which implies she shouldn’t go beyond the social expectation of women. However, Duffy subverts the classic and as stated in her 2005 interview she “finds a truth which hadn’t been amplified previously”.