Brothers Grimm
HÄNSEL AND GRETEL
September 12, 2015
MGM vs. Grimm
This is a comparison and contrast of the MGM and Original
Brothers Grimm versions of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel.
how are they similar?
The skeleton of the stories is the same in both versions.
The children level the house, use bread crumbs to come back, birds eat the
bread crumbs, Hansel and Gretel lose their way, find a witch’s house, she plans
to cook and eat the children, but they escape, and find their way back to their
father. The theme within the story also stays the same. The theme being how far
one can be pushed in times of hardship. I’m referring to the mother and the
children. The mother (in a broad sense) in both tales has the children leave
due to the poverty state the family was in. The children also displayed this
theme when the witch had Hansel in the cage and Gretel was forced to take
action. It is at this point that she is pushed to the edge and forced to break
out of original character.
How are the different?
The mother in the original tale wanted the children to leave
due to the family’s lack of food. (To stop her from starving sooner). In the
film, the Mother made the children leave because they had put a donkey in the
house that eat the food they had just received, so they were forced to leave to
gather berries. They made this change between mothers to stop the Mother from
seeming so heartless. The parents are
also more involved in the tale to give better understanding to the children’s
want to come home. The missing children mentioned earlier in the move turn out
to be the gingerbread men standing outside of her house to give the story a
happy ending.
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