Summerween Writing Challenge: SHADOW
The Fairy Tale that cast a long shadow on my imagination was Hansel and Gretal and that shadow was created in part by my Grandpa Bert who told me a version he probably crafted to a point on his own.
In the story my Grandpa told me, Hansel and Gretal get left in the forest because there is a famine. Their parents don’t have the heart to watch them starve to death so they take them out to the forest and leave them there to die.
I remember the parts Grandpa me about them killing the witch, I remember they escape her house after killing her ( she was blind, how hard could that have really been? ) in the end find their way home- instead of a Swan carrying them across the river to their home in the forest my Grandpa stuck with a spooky Ferryman dressed in black.
I remember they gave him something they had stolen from the Witch’s body after she had burned up in the oven, but I don’t remember what that was.
In his version my Grandpa said when Hansel and Gretal finally get home, they discover their Mother is dead but their Father is still alive- and he does not look like he’s been going without food, my Grandpa would say ominously.
I assumed at the end of the story the Father probably killed and cooked his wife and that Hansel and Gretal were going to meet the same fate in their Father’s house as they would have in the Witch’s house.
Hansel and Gretal and their Father were killers in my mind and I was far more afraid of them then the Witch.
AI artwork by WP
This is a short film by Robert Eggers- who is my FAVORITE Writer/Director of all time- I thought I’d toss this in because he takes Hansel and Gretal back to their very dark origins.