Little Red Riding Hood

Context: This piece is was an interview that I directly copied every word said. The participants name is Jonathan. I had asked the participate in advance over phone if he had any folklore and he asked what I meant by that. After giving a few example he said he actually did have something to share. So we met in his apartment a few hour later. We entered the kitchen and sat down at the table. Main Piece: Ok so this was a long long time ago before technology. So there was this little girl named Red Riding Hood. She was called that cuz she wore a red sweater that had a hoody and she like had the hood on all the time. So the story goes that she.. she took care of her grandmother who was really old already. Like she couldn’t really leave the house. She kinda just stayed in bed the whole day and Red Riding would go into the forest… ooh yea she live in a cabin in the middle of a large forest. So she went to the forest to scavenge for food… she would carry like a basket and fill it with apples. ( coughed to clear throat). One day she went home and went to her grandma’s bedside. She told her grandma (raised the pitch of voice) “what big hands you have”…(with the same high pitch voice) “What big feet you have”. What was the other one? Uuhh… I can’t remember but then a man jumped out of the bed and tried to kill little red riding hood. He used an axe. So red riding screamed and a wolf came to rescue her. The wolf killed the mad and ate him. The wolf then used his nose to find little red riding hood’s mother. I think they found her in the closet locked in. They then lived happily ever after.  Background: Jonathan is a 19-year-old college student whose ethnicity is half Cuban and Half Mexican. He is a sophomore attending UCLA. He learned this version from a roommate he had in college. The roommate was Brazilian. Analysis:  This collection is a different variation of the famous tale of Little Red Riding hood. It is interesting to hear of a tale that has a famous motif inverted. The wolf is a famous motif representing a villain or an antagonist. It is seen in tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, the three little pigs, and the boy who cried wolf. However, in this Tale the wolf is the hero. If you want to read a variation of this tale in which the wolf does serve as a motif for a villain you can check out the book Little Red Riding Hood by Trina Schart Hyman.