Annotation:

This CR exercise allows me to explore deep into the stories of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Little Red Cap”, especially their moral lessons in relation to their audience. While writing this CR exercise, I realized that “compared with ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Charles Perrault, [‘Little Red Cap’] does not focus on the danger to girls, but targets younger children”. Therefore, I decide to analyze “Little Red Cap” instead of “Little Red Riding Hood” as an example of the use of scenes of cruelty or tragedy in children’s stories: while both stories use such scenes as punishment to convey moral, “Little Red Cap” is more typical in being a story for children. In the paragraph in this CR exercise analyzing the moral lesson of “Little Red Cap”, I explain the message “children should obey their parents” by quoting Little Red Cap’s words directly stating the message and relating it to the mother’s warnings that foreshadow the danger. This explanation is included in my RA paper.

Hui Li (Judy)

Writing 39B

W17 5pm

Profrssor Shyam Patel

CR Exercise 1: Moral Lessons and Ethical Theories in Fairy Tale Plots

In Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault, the moral is directly stated in the “Moral” part at the end of the story. It says that children, especially young girls “are wrong to listen to just everyone”. In other words, they should be careful when they choose to trust people even when they appear to be good people (“tame wolves”). By telling this story, the writer seeks to warn children, especially young girls of the danger of trusting anyone and put them on their guard, to protect them from bad people and sexual assault. This is implied in the detail that the wolf tells the child to climb into bed with him. The story also holds children responsible for their own safety, by saying that “it’s not at all strange if a wolf ends up eating them” when they listen to bad people.

In Little Red Cap by brothers Grimm, the writer tells children that they should obey their parents. This purpose is evident in the girl’s thoughts in last sentence of the story: “never again will you stray from the path and go into the woods, when your mother has forbidden it”. This corresponds to the mother’s warning near the beginning of the story: “you’d better start now before it gets too hot. . . and don’t go peeping in every corner of the room”. The writer emphasizes the mother’s words to foreshadow the danger of the wolf, which represents the danger of not obeying their parents.

Compared with Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault, this story does not focus on the danger to girls, but targets younger children. This is evident in the extra happy ending of this story: the huntsman saves girl and grandmother and kills the wolf, giving the girl a chance to correct her fault and the readers some relief from the tension they experience as they follow the girl into the grandmother’s house and meet the wolf.

Childish naivete is not approved in either version of the story, for the wolf tricks the girl into straying from right path in both cases. Charles Perrault bases the theme of his story directly on this characteristic. Brothers Grimm add some dialogue in this scene: the wolf tricks girl into straying from path by tempting her play: “have you seen the beautiful flowers all about. . . yet it’s so heavenly out here in the woods”, and the girl goes for the flowers and strays from path. By adding to this scene, the writer shows that childish playfulness is also not approved. This, alone with their attitude towards naivete and the theme of obeying parents, suggest that the nature of kids is inhibited.

While Charles Perrault tells his readers to stay on guard, brothers Grimm tells them to be compliant in some circumstances; in this sense, the two versions of the story convey very different principles.