Little Red Riding Hood is a classic fairy tale found in Maria Tatar’s book, which involves characters like a young girl, a wolf, a grandmother, a mother, and a huntsman. The tale’s setting involves little red being sent by her mother to visit her sick grandmother, who resided in the woods in a house that stands under three huge oak trees and a nut tree just below it. Her mother instructs her to avoid running off the path, and she gives her some pieces of cake and a bottle of wine to take to the ill grandmother. On her way into the woods, she comes across the wolf who asks her about her destination. She informs the wolf she is on her way to her grandmother’s house, and the wolf distracts her by encouraging her to pick flowers as he rushes to the grandmother’s house. In the end, the wolf devours on both the grandmother and girl, who are later saved by a passing huntsman. Therefore, from the tale’s plot, the major theme and moral lesson is the importance of obeying parents because if you do not obey your parents, bad things tend to happen (Aspan).
To enumerate the theme, the mother tells little red hood at the beginning of the story that she must stay on the path up until she reaches her grandmother’s house. Instead, the girl forgets her promise and is deceived by the wolf. For this reason, disobeying her mother causes her and her grandmother to be eaten up. Therefore, obeying your parents is the strongest theme and one best supported by the ending of the tale. Therefore, the first literacy element presented here is the setting. The setting is the place comprising of the date and time where the classic fairy tale takes place. The setting helps the reader to memorize the tale more efficiently. When the little girl tells the wolf where her grandmother’s house is, she talks about the setting, that is, “A good quarter of a league farther into the wood. Her house is under three huge oak trees, just below the nut trees” (Aspan).
Dramatic irony is another literacy device in the classic fairy tale involving the girl and the wolf. When the author exposes the wolf’s notions about his evil schemes to eat the little Red Riding Hood, he reveals what he is about to do and what is about to happen. In the tale, the wolf thought to himself, “what a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful; she will taste better than the grandmother. I must act cautiously to eat both”. This is dramatic irony because readers of the tale were aware that the wolf had evil intentions, while the little girl did not.
Nonetheless, this builds up so much tension and keeps readers interested because they want to know the fate of Little Red. Additionally, the climax is a literacy element in Little Red Riding Hood, a classic fairy tale. The climax is the point of greatest tensions between the protagonist, the little girl, and the antagonist, the wolf. When the wolf gulps the little girl, the readers feel a lot of emotions. For instance, “and the wolf pounced out of bed, and swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood.” This is the tale’s climax because the climax is when readers get the most emotion, such as excitement and tension. The climax is vital in any fairy story because readers would get bored without it and would not have any emotion while reading the tale. The falling action follows the climax, and the falling action involves the author telling the readers what would happen next after the great confrontation in the climax. Therefore, next is the passing huntsman, who spots the wolf and decides to cut it open, saving the girl and the grandmother (Pegalajar-Heredia).
In the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, there are many instances where personification is used as a literacy style. First, when Little Red was on her way to her grandmother’s house, she met the wolf, and he said to her, “Good day, Little Red Riding Hood.” This is personification because it is described as when authors give animals or object human characteristics or traits. In the tale, personifying the wolf made readers worried since wolves are known to be very dangerous, and if the wolf had a speaking character in the tale, he was bound to be dangerous. Nevertheless, numerous works of literature revolve around a type of conflict between the main role with whom readers can sympathize, that is, the protagonist, and an antagonist, that is a character that distracts the protagonist from achieving their objectives (Aspan).
An example of conflict in the tale includes the time when Little Red Riding Hood defeated the wolf. Her grandmother instructed little Red Riding Hood to bring the sausages, and its smell reached the wolf who sniffed, peeped down, and then stretched out his neck, causing him to slip down the roof straight into the trough, and was drowned. This is a conflict since this is the moment when the protagonist and antagonist finally fight. Conflict is an important literary style as it keeps the reader intrigued and enables him or her to comprehend more about all the characters in the role (Steuber).
Works Cited
Aspán, Margareta. “The Tale of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf as a Multi-literacy Tool for Reflection and Embodied Learning.” International Journal of Education & the Arts 21.18 (2020).
Pegalajar-Heredia, Cristina. “Little Red Riding Hood: A Critical and Teaching Approach to Three Versions of the Tale.” (2021).
Steuber, Sophia Marie. “Justified Violence: Modernizing Themes of Virtue from “The Friar’s Tale” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” (2020).
