How old is gretel in hansel and gretel

They take over the novel and drive the plot, but research gives the novelist ideas, and the setting of any story becomes part of its power. The Bialowieza Forest is one of the last patches of primeval growth in Europe.

It seems like the perfect setting for a fairy tale, a place where stories might both emerge and endure, almost outside of time. How did you find out about this forest, and have you ever actually been there? I have never visited the forest. I learned of it while watching television! It was a program on the Bialowieza Forest, and it was like watching a film about a country in your dreams.

I saw the program several years before I began the book, and vaguely thought it would be a wonderful place to set the Magda story, if I ever wrote it. Many people identify the Holocaust with Germany and have less information about the events that took place in Poland.

Is this a reason why you chose to set the story in Poland rather than in Germany? The German master plan was to kill all the Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and leaders in Poland, then starve off the old and the very young, leaving a work force to build cities for the new German world order. At the end of the building, all the remaining Polish workers would be killed in the camps. Setting a novel in this place allowed me to show the horrors of war against children and civilians and put my characters in situations where they had to make hard decisions daily.

With other characters, including some of the Polish citizens and Major Frankel in particular, you step away from such absolute characteristics and tread more in the realm of psychological ambiguity.

Guilty though these characters are, you make them human beings. Was this difficult, especially when writing about such an iconic and horrific event? Major Frankel is a very different type. He is a man in a dirty war who began as a patriot. He is every soldier, a normal man caught up in the dehumanizing actions that war demands. Did you ever get just plain depressed by the actions some of the characters take or are forced to take , and did you ever feel the urge to make parts of the book less graphic and therefore less painful?

How difficult was it to envision a happy ending? The research was so chilling that sometimes I would leave the library and take a walk in the sun, but writing the story, I could create a rescuer like Magda.

I could save the children from death, which made a happy ending tempered by tragedy. When I finished the writing, I realized that I had not killed a single child in the novel. You hear of children dying, but do not see it. This was unconscious on my part and quite unrealistic since Poland lost over twenty percent of her children. It was terrible to kill a character I loved so much even though she is only a part of my imagination. Though the novel is called The True Story of Hansel and Gretel, it is also the story of the father and stepmother, of Magda and her brother, and of the entire village of Piaski.

How did you incorporate so many different voices into one narrative? Were any of these characters based on real people? None of the characters were based on people I know. When I write a novel, I seem to create characters who are people I would like to meet, people I hope exist, people I hope to become myself someday, or people that frighten me.

How important was it to you, as the author, to let there be satisfaction for certain characters, and justice for others? Did you feel a responsibility to lend a kind of moral balance to a situation that was distinctly unjust? Like most people who read about the Holocaust and the circumstances of any people occupied and at war, I long for justice.

The story of Father Piotr and his final actions is a very complicated effort to show a man yearning for justice for himself and his family. The responsibility of the artist is to try and find the truth, regardless of whether it is comfortable or not, but the moral balance is ultimately on the side of good people who manage to save children by courageous action. The ultimate goal of the story seems to be to pass on hope, and to praise the value of love; this is certainly how Magda, as the narrator, frames the tale.

How difficult was it to keep the idea of love meaningful while also writing so unflinchingly about evil? I never really thought in terms of what abstract ideas I was presenting or not presenting while writing. Most novel writers become so involved in creating the characters and the plot, we leave the analysis to others. It is after the novel is completed that we find out what we, in our deepest heart, believe about life, and that is our own truth we give the world in our art.

I believe there are as many truths about life as there are artists. You dedicate this novel to your son. What are your thoughts about passing on memories and knowledge about the Holocaust to younger generations? Is this topic one that you plan to keep to in future writing, or do you feel that now you will move on? Watching my son and a daughter become adults, I have been impressed with how much harder their decisions are than when I was growing up.

The fluidity of values, the availability of drugs, the commonplace of divorce and the movement of people every few years to find work has changed our world. I hope, perhaps too optimistically, that by showing the darkness of the Holocaust to our young adults, we will teach them to reject racism and war. I was born in , perhaps the darkest year the world has ever seen. Because I was born in the United States, I survived, but felt compelled to understand the time of my own birth.

It is too huge, too terrible to categorize or comprehend, but this novel is the best I can do to present the period that so deeply disturbs me.

I doubt that I will write about this again. Though they do differ substantially from the European narrative structures, the African tale is the most similar. It tells the story of three children, banished by their father after letting his magical milk-producing bird loose.

This time, the plot is reversed, and the children benevolently rescue the adults from a famine sweeping the country. It has been translated into almost every language, and very excitingly, is continuing to evolve in the present day.

View all Books Featuring this Story. Hansel and Gretel. Although a source of food and shelter for many, it was also seen as a harbinger of magic and danger — a location where people normally did not travel What all of these early versions have in common, is the basic aspect of survival. Tales from Grimm — Illustrated by Wanda Gag. Then a soft voice cried from the parlor -. Hansel, who liked the taste of the roof, tore down a great piece of it, and Gretel pushed out the whole of one round window-pane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with it.

Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. Hansel and Gretel were so terribly frightened that they let fall what they had in their hands. The old woman, however, nodded her head, and said, "Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here?

Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you. She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them, and thought they were in heaven.

The old woman had only pretended to be so kind. She was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent like the beasts, and are aware when human beings draw near.

When Hansel and Gretel came into her neighborhood, she laughed with malice, and said mockingly, "I have them, they shall not escape me again. Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw both of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump and rosy cheeks, she muttered to herself, that will be a dainty mouthful. Then she seized Hansel with her shrivelled hand, carried him into a little stable, and locked him in behind a grated door.

Scream as he might, it would not help him. Then she went to Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried, "Get up, lazy thing, fetch some water, and cook something good for your brother, he is in the stable outside, and is to be made fat. When he is fat, I will eat him. Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain, for she was forced to do what the wicked witch commanded. And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel, but Gretel got nothing but crab-shells.

Every morning the woman crept to the little stable, and cried, "Hansel, stretch out your finger that I may feel if you will soon be fat. Hansel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and thought it was Hansel's finger, and was astonished that there was no way of fattening him.

When four weeks had gone by, and Hansel still remained thin, she was seized with impatience and would not wait any longer. Let Hansel be fat or lean, to-morrow I will kill him, and cook him.

Ah, how the poor little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water, and how her tears did flow down her cheeks. Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the cauldron with the water, and light the fire. But Gretel saw what she had in mind, and said, "I do not know how I am to do it. Storyline Edit. Siblings, Gretel and Hansel live in the countryside with their mother. When times are hard and Gretel can't find work, their mother sends them out to fend for themselves.

As they journey through the dark forest without clothes nor supplies, they come upon a house with good-smelling food, and decide to temporarily stay there in care of an old woman. As they recover from fatigue, they uncover odd things which might prevent them from getting out alive. A grim fairy tale. Fantasy Horror Mystery Thriller. Did you know Edit.

Trivia At one point a song floats over the soundtrack: "My mother, she killed me, my father, he ate me, and my little sister, my bones she kept, what a pretty bird am I!

In it, a spiteful mother beheads her stepson and blames it on her daughter. She then cooks the corpse and feeds it to his husband, as the daughter picks up the bones from under the table and plants it under a juniper tree on the family's garden.

A small bird appears from the grave, singing the song in question while picking a pair of new shoes, a gold chain and a mill stone, and then carries them to the house.

The bird then gives the shoes to the daughter, the chain to the father and drops the stone on the stepmother, killing her. As she dies, the bird turns into a boy again and the story ends. The film borrows some thematic elements this tale.

Goofs Gretel and Hansel talk while sitting on a bed in the foreground. On the adjoining bed in the background a cat stands up and jumps to the floor. However the cat reappears on the bed and disappears several times throughout the scene.

Quotes The Hunter : Kindness is its own reward. User reviews Review.