Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

By Vegard Melum

Fairy tales has been an essential part of almost everyone’s youth. When you are young, you will hear them all the time. Whether it is your parents telling you a story before bed, or your teacher trying to teach you something. What most kids are not aware of is that fairy tales are meant to make them think and reflect. However, that is not what we are going to look at in this blogpost. Here we will be looking at “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” by Roald Dahl (Revolting Rhymes) and comparing it to the original fairy tale.

Once you get older and tired of reading and hearing the same old fairy tales repeatedly, you could check out “Revolting Rhymes” by Roald Dahl. What the famous author does in this book is quite funny. He takes fairy tales such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella”, and breathe new life into them. These Revolting Rhymes are written as poems, easy to understand and surprisingly funny. The other thing that really distinguishes the Revolting Rhymes from the originales is how grotesque thay are, which you will see for yourself further along in this texts.

In the original fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, she goes to see her grandma, meets the big bad wolf, the wolf eats her grandma and disguises himself. Later when “Red” enters her grandmother’s cabin, she has a long discussion with the wolf about “grandma’s” appearance. We all know the rest of the story.

Whereas in Roald Dahl’s revolting rhyme, everything seems like the original fairy tale at first, until “Red” suddenly does something unexpected:

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, “But Grandma,
what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.”

“That’s wrong!” cried the Wolf. “Have you forgot

To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?
Ah well, not matter what you say,
I’m going to eat you anyway.”

The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature’s head
And bang, bang, bang, she shoots him dead.

A few weeks later, in the wood,

I came across Miss Riding Hood.

But what a change! No cloak of red,

No silly hood upon her head.

She said, "Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat."

I personally think this type of literature is hysterical, and I highly recommend other people to read more from Roald Dahl's "Revolting Rhymes".

Roald Dahl (1982) -Revolting Rhymes - Penguin Toung Readers Group, 2009