Never take candy from stranger
Never take candy from strangerNever Take Candy From Strangers
During the times the story was written, there was much child abuse in society. The child's welfare was often put aside because the family was more important. The unknown author of the Fairy Tale "Hansel and Gretel" used many rhetorical devices such as symbolism and diction to intensify the purpose of the story, to alert society of the abuse that existed against children.
The recurring theme of the wicked stepmother has appeared throughout many of the fairy tales. In the tale of "Hansel and Gretel", the unknown author goes into great detail describing the full extent of the stepmother's bad nature. The author carefully selects his diction in order to convey the negativity of the stepmother's character. He or she uses such words as "cruel" or "wicked" wherever the stepmother is being described by the author, which intensifies the negativity the reader perceives. This device of careful word selection is immediately followed up by "She kept Hansel and Gretel under lock and key". The rhetorical technique of description and example furthers our understanding of the depths of the stepmother's cruelty in the tale. The author paints a picture of both Hansel and Gretel imprisoned in a room in the vivid imagery. The stepmother "often ill-treated the children" and "she kept on trying to persuade her husband to abandon his children�" This is a key indicator of the abuse that Hansel and Gretel suffered under their cruel stepmother. During the times the author lived in, child abuse was common in society. The anonymous author uses the character of the wicked stepmother to convey the abuse a child would suffer during those times. The wife of the woodcutter "was forever nagging" him to "abandon" the "two brats". This is only one of the levels of child abuse children had to suffer.
Parents often abused their children. Just like today, children had to be aware of predators that searched for children to prey on back in the times of the author. The unknown author has his characters, Hansel and Gretel, encounter an old witch in a candy cottage. "Unluckily for Hansel and Gretel, however, the sugar candy cottage belonged to an old witch, her trap for catching unwary victims. At this point of the story,...
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