So many of our folktales have lessons in them that every child needs to hear for it can one day help save their life.
Recently there was a story about a teenage girl being kidnapped and held hostage in an underground bunker. The police had searched for her for ten days, the one and only break in the case came when a text message was received from the girl. Apparently she stole her kidnappers phone while he was sleeping and sent the text message. That text message allowed them to find her and bring her home alive. According to the experts the one thing that keeps a child alive is not giving into the assailant.
For Hansel and Grethel their bad guy may have been a wicked witch who would lure children into her home with candy and sweets, she was still a predator none the less. What is the difference between a candy house and a stranger in the car holding out some candy? Hansel and Grethel fell into the trap but they didn't give into their assailant. They did what they could to hold her off and out wit her. They came home alive in the end because they did not give in to their kidnapper.
The point of these folktales were not to scare little children of witches but to illustrate what can happen to a person if they are caught in a dangerous situation. The children could have just given in and accepted their fate as they saw it but they fought back and were rewarded for it in the end. This is a lesson that is worth the possibility of a few nightmares.
Too often the lessons put forth by folktales are left out because they are too scary or are deemed politically incorrect. The tragedy of this is two fold; when we change a folktale we distort our history and rob future generations from being able to enjoy these classics in their natural form. Keeping true to these stories is a way that each of us can participate in history preservation.
Folktales are the original cautionary tales for children giving warnings about the world around them in a way that they can comprehend. So that one day if a child was walking home from the schoolhouse and just happened to come across a person they didn't know offering them something really nice like candy, they would remember what happened to Hansel and Grethel, how they nearly ended up in someone's oven. The child would turn and run the other way from this person in fear of being made into someone's dinner. The world is not always a nice place. Why should our folktales reflect something different?
