The Animal Unleashed

While still on the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood", our class has been taking a closer look at the character of the Wolf of late.  He has proven to be a fascinating study, as he can be interpreted to symbolize so many different things: the villain, an object of fear and evil, darkness, man, the seductive manipulator, a sexual predator, and even a victim.

I lean towards the theories of seductive manipulator and sexual predator myself.  As seen in the video clip below, the Wolf in Sondheim's musical "Into the Woods" is a shining example of this persona (and he's anatomically correct too).

Hello Little Girl - Into the Woods, OBC

Perhaps Sondheim got his inspiration for his Wolf character from the one in Charles Perrault's version of "Little Red Riding Hood".  Perrault's wolf has quite the seduction scene where Red exclaims over the wolf/grandmother's features as each new part is exposed. From the Perrault version, "The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me."

Taken from www.deviantart.com, a drawing of the wolf from "Into the Woods" by Selinelle.

Clearly, in the video clip above and the drawing, he is not an animal in the conventional sense of the word.  He looks all man, well, all animalistic man.  Arrrooo....