COMPARE AND CONTRAST

ORIGINAL GRIMM TALE VS. THE MGM VERSION

SAME:

·         Their father was a woodcutter

·         Their mother didn’t like them

·         Hansel tricked the witch to believe he was skinny by using a bone

·         Their family was poor

·         Hansel and Gretel love each other

Differences:

·         In the book the mother forced the father to send the kids into the woods but in the movie she did it out of anger when the kids messed up

·         In the book the parents make a fire in the woods when they leave behind the children but in the movie Hansel makes a fire using the striking rocks that a local man gave to him

·         Hansel never looked back at the house in the movie to see the animals that he saw in the book

·         Their mother died in the book

·         They were taking into the woods by their parents in the book but in the movie they were sent to pick berries

·         In the movie Gretel wakes up in the middle of the night and figures out the old lady is a witch but in the book they just wake up to find Hansel in the cage, then they realize she’s a witch

·         The father gets the children home in the end of the movie but in the book the children find their way home all by themselves

·         Hansel and Gretel save other children that were lost in north woods in the movie but in the book there’s no other children

I think directors made so many changes to the story in order to make the movie longer and to make the mother seem like less of the villain.