Orality of Hansel and Gretel

I was very disappointed in Hansel and Gretel because I thought that for the story to be balanced, they should have eaten the witch at the end before they went home. Anyone in Montana should know that you don't just kill without eating it-- it's a waste!!

I suppose the problem with that, however, is that planned cannibalism is bad/frightening enough in a children's story that actually implementing the cannibalism, regardless of who is being eaten, is fairly inappropriate. Many critics/scholars have interpreted Hansel and Gretel as being about children's oral obsessions. While this is a rather Freudian interpretation, it can hardly be thrown out with the bath water.

The whole story, especially the Grimm's version and the one Tatar chose to put in the book, revolves around food and eating. In the beginning, the family does not have enough food, so the mother sends the children into the forest to get lost so that her and the husband will have enough food. I would even argue that everyone in the story who currently does NOT have food has better luck with getting it. The mother sends both Hansel and Gretel into the forest with a crust of bread so they don't starve as quickly. The children don't come back because they get lost, and after three days or so, they don't have any food, which causes their luck to turn, so then they find the witch and the candy house, which helps them fill their tummies. But at the time that they find the witch, she doesn't have any food, so she then has better luck than the children in keeping them locked up for fattening up for food for later. Then, since she feeds Hansel lots of food, but Gretel only crab shells, Gretel becomes lacking in food once again, and so is able to triumph over the witch, and pushes her into the oven.

Since their mother died when they were away in the forest and the father was still hungry, he then has good luck in getting his children back, since he didn't really want them to be sent out into the forest to die in the first place. So in the end, everyone gets their food, except the mother and the witch, who (by the way) can be seen as different facets of the maternal figure, which is why one couldn't survive without the other. So when the witch died, the mother had to die too. This is even more Freudian than the issue of an oral fixation, but is not at all unfeasible. Orality is a reasonable theme in a fairy tale for children, since children, themselves, often lead lives centered around food. Mom, I'm hungry. Mom, I wanna go to McDonald's. Mom, I need that candy at the grocery store! Literature as well as advertisements often reflect the audience that it is directed towards.