Many people have heard some version of the famous short story “Little Red Riding Hood”, originally written by Charles Perrault in 1697. Little Red Riding Hood is about a sweet and innocent little who goes to visit her ill grandmother. Along the way to her grandmother’s house, Little Red Riding Hood meets a mischievous wolf that will eventually eat her and her grandmother. Over the years, the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” has been modified to meet the needs of other cultures and languages resulting in different interpretations of the story. Some interpretations portray Little Red Riding Hood as a poor peasant girl in which her mother uses her by vicariously living through her while most other interpretations show Little Red Riding Hood as a naive little girl losing her virginity. Through the course of this paper, I will describe the theme of the short story, “Little Red Riding Hood”, identify two literary elements in this short story that contribute to the theme, and explain how the literary elements that I have chosen affect the narrative theme.
As stated by Clugston (2010), “theme in a story is a representation of the idea behind the story”. According to writer Bill Delaney, who wrote “Perrault’s LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD” in 2006, the apparent theme was simply that a little girl that was nicknamed “Little Red Riding Hood” was clearly living in a fantasy world. Delaney is in disbelief that Little Red Riding Hood’s mother made her a beautiful and grand red garment simply because “it seems odd that a peasant child whose wardrobe is probably limited to one faded dress should own such a luxury garment as a cloak intended to be worn for riding” (Delaney, 2006). The author adds “the mother would have made something more practical if she had the material to make anything at all” and continues to assume that “the little girl was given the red riding hood by some local Lady Bountiful whose daughter has outgrown it, and the little girl wears it all the time because she...