Hansel and Gretel Differences

                              

Hansel and Gretel is a timeless fairytale about two children, brother and sister, who get lost in the woods and get found by an evil witch in her gingerbread house. In the story the children use bread crumbs to try to find their way back to the house but animals in the woods eat their crumb path and they can’t get home, allowing the witch to lore them to her delicious home.

There are differences however between the many versions of Hansel and Gretel. In the movie their biological mother was their mother. The mother cared for her family very much but she felt very useless because she couldn’t feed her family. One day their neighbor brought them milk and eggs and she made a casserole. Hansel accidentally let the donkey in the house and the donkey spilt all the milk and ate their casserole. When their mother found out she was very angry and told them to go pick berries out in the forest for their dinner. Hansel and Gretel went into the forbidden forest, which their father and mother told them to never do, and that’s how they got lost.

In the original version their real mother had died and it was their stepmother living with them. The stepmother convinced Hansel and Gretel’s father to take them into the woods and leave them in the forest so she didn’t have to feed them anymore. Hansel and Gretel heard their stepmother telling this to her husband and Hansel went and got pebbles so he could leave a path in the forest and they could find their way back home. The second night the stepmother locked the door so they had to use bread crumbs to make a path. As in the original version animals ate the bread crumbs and they became lost in the forest.

This is one of the main differences between the two versions of Hansel and Gretel. With the mother being the actual birth mother it made the story more family oriented. The act wasn’t as cruel as in the original version. A child watching two kids deaths being planned out wouldn’t like the story as much as if the two children simply got lost and their mother and father both were very worried and looking for them. The relationship between the mother and children is more loving and caring in the movie version than in the original. This makes the movie more relatable and once again, more family oriented.

The similarities were kept because it keeps the message the same; children can overcome obstacles and you shouldn’t underestimate them. Hansel and Gretel had all the odds against them in the forest and when they got caught by the witches gingerbread house trap everyone thought they were goners, but they weren’t. They beat the odds, and give children hope that they too can beat the odds in life.