Demythification - Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH)

Source: from artposters.com

WARNING: Do not attempt to read any further if your intention is to retain your blissful memories of Fairy Tales...The Demythification Series promises to change your perspective of Fairy Tales such that you'll never view them in the same light ever again.

For those of you who have never read or forgot the story...A synopsis of the Story as told by the brothers Grimm (source from wiki, modified with some details ):

Source: Red Riding Hood and her mother-- from Trina Schart Hyman, Little Red Riding Hood (Holiday House, 1986)

It is about a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape or cloak she wears. The girl is told by her mother to deliver food to her sick grandmother who warns her to be careful of wolves in the forest.

In the first place, why would any mother allow her daughter, who is like just 5-years old lah, to deliver anything to anybody on her own? Much less via a forest infested with wolves who can talk! What are her motives for doing so? Why didn't she accompany her daughter to visit the Old Grandmother? What other matter could be more pressing than the safety of her daughter?

Source: Wiki

A wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.

Wait, shouldn't wolves be hunting bunnies and hamsters instead of humans?Wolves don't usually eat humans unless they are freaking hungry and have to....makes sense to eat smaller animals no? What? The wolf read Adolf Hitler's Mien Kampf or something? (Hey,if Mr Wolf can talk, outwit old granny, wear Granny's nightgown AND tie her bonnet onto his head, why can't he read?)

He approaches the girl, and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does.

Hmmm, if LRRH is so obedient...Might as well ask the girl to drop dead, follow him to some quiet place or better yet,keep still while he eats her yeah? Apparently he is smart enough to devise a plot to trap her but not smart enough to do so efficiently. And the girl....is she a blonde or something?

In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl.

Idiosyncracy must run in the family...enough said...

Source: Gustave

He swallows the grandmother whole, and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother. When the girl arrives, he swallows her whole too (after all the "Oh Grandmother! What big eyes/nose/teeth/hairy arms you have!")
A hunter, however, comes to the rescue and cuts the wolf's belly open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones, which kill him. Other versions of the story have had the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the hunter as the wolf advances on her rather than after she is eaten.

Hmmm, don't you go running, screaming and bursting into hysteria after being freed from a WOLF's STOMACH??? Who on Earth calmly gathers stones and filling the wolf (who must have been bleeding like hell after being cut opened) with them? Even if you take to the second version of the story in which the girl never got the chance to peek into the wolf's stomach, the experience must be traumatising enough to render her stunned or at least temporarily scared of wolves. If you ask me, such behaviour reflect the sadistic tendencies of LRRH and her grandmother (which probably explains why LRRH's mother sent her into a wolf-infested woods in the first place, they've been plotting to kill each other right from the beginning). In which case, the premise should be that wolves should steer clear of little girls and their grandmothers rather than the other way around.

Anyway, if LRRH and her entire family had an IQ that low, its surprising they managed to stay alive for so long, especially the Grandmother.

And they lived HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Oi!You retarded or what?!?! No one "lives happily ever after" after such a traumatising experience...definitely not the quillions of abuse victims out there.

Source: Wiki

Basically what all these children have been reading is a tale with non-existential logic, cloaking its darker roots.Personally, its good to explore such aspects of fairy tales and give a harmless outlet to logical(or was it illogical?) discrepancies but I'm of the opinion that having said that, fairy tales should be read as they are, innocent and illogical.

Depending on response, the next part of the series will likely examine:

Cinderella