Red Riding Hood

Excluding the tales by Thurber and Dahl, what differences do you notice between the protagonists in the various Red Riding Hood tales?

In "The Story of Grandmother," the little girl is naïve and easily distracted. She is naïve because she actually stopped to talk to the wolf and told him where she was going. The little girl did not know that the wolf had evil intentions. She was easily distracted because picked up needles along the path. The little girl tricked the wolf and saved herself from being eaten, but she did not kill the wolf.

In Perrault’s "Little Red Riding Hood," Red is also naïve and easily distracted. She did not know that it was dangerous to talk to wolves and she told him exactly where her grandmother lived. Red was easily distracted because she played in the woods instead of going straight there. The little girl is eaten by the wolf.

In the Brothers Grimm's "Little Red Cap," Red is also naïve and too trustworthy. She did not know that wolves were dangerous and she let him walk with her to her grandmother’s house. The wolf tricked her into wasting time picking flowers. Red and the grandmother were saved by a hunter from the belly of the wolf, but the girl ultimately killed him by placing stones in his belly. The girl and her grandmother later have another run-in with the wolf, and this time they outsmart him and kill him themselves.

In Calvino’s "The False Grandmother," the girl realized that an ogress was pretending to be her grandmother. She saved herself by outsmarting the ogress and escaping.

In Chiang Mi’s "Goldflower and the Bear," the girl was clever and brave instead of naïve. In the firelight, she noticed that a bear was impersonating her grandmother. The girl outsmarted the bear several times by tying the rope around a pot, showing her reflection in the water, and pretending to feed the bear pears on a spear. She killed the bear and saved herself and her brother.