Hungry Like the Wolf Trivia Quiz

Answer: Grandmother and Little Red both are eaten by the wolf and are not rescued.

In Perrault's version, the story ends with Red Riding Hood being gobbled up by the wolf, and neither she nor her grandmother comes back to life. Earlier (in Maria Tatar's translation) the wolf "threw himself on the good woman and devoured her in no time, for he had eaten nothing in the last three days" - hungry like the wolf, indeed. Perrault follows the tale with a moral that makes it clear that seduction and rape are implied and that "young girls, pretty, well-bred and genteel" should beware of "charming" wolves: "the most dangerous of all" (from "The Classic Fairy Tales" edited by Maria Tatar for the Norton Critical Edition).

Answer: She is in bed, under the covers, with the wolf.

In the censored version recorded by the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Red Riding Hood is standing beside the bed, looking inside the bed curtain during their conversation, until the climactic moment when the wolf jumps out of bed and eats her up.

However, in Perrault's version and in another French version called "The Story of Grandmother" (which most scholars believe to be earlier than both Perrault and Grimm), Little Red Riding Hood takes off her clothes and gets into bed with the wolf.

In the earlier version, the little girl escapes when the wolf ties a rope to her so she can go outside to pee, but in Perrault's cautionary tale, she is eaten and presumably digested.

Answer: A piece of cake and a bottle of wine

It's cake and wine in the Grimm version. The mother warns Little Red to stay on the path and to "walk properly" or she might break the glass, leaving Grandmother hungry. She also instructs the child to mind her manners and greet her grandmother with respect.

Although the little girl is moralistically expected to receive the blame for straying and for talking with a stranger, critics argue that the admonition never to question adult authority makes her more vulnerable to predators.

Answer: They attract the wolf with the smell of sausages and he falls off the roof into boiling water.

While the story doesn't include eating the wolf, the implication of the eater being eaten is possible. The Grimm brothers put the alternative endings together, explaining their difference as two separate enounters with two different wolves. However, it is in the nature of oral tradition for stories to change as the times change or as individual storytellers put their own spin on the tales. Philip Pullman in "A New English Version" of "Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm" suggests that the huntsman enters the story after the Thirty Years War when noblemen wanted to see the forest primarily as a place for manly recreational pursuits like hunting.

Many readers (including nannywoo) tend to prefer the ending in which the women use wisdom and ingenuity to overcome danger and violence.

Answer: She has shared the food she brought for the grandmother with a river and a gate, and they pay her back by letting her pass.

In Italo Calvino's translation, on the way to Grandmother's house the girl gives some "ring-shaped cakes" to the Jordan River (with echoes of the Bible) and gives some bread with oil to a Rake Gate. So when she makes her escape, the little girl is allowed through while the ogress is drowned in the river (again, with echoes of Exodus, in the Bible).

A recurring motif in early versions of the Little Red Riding Hood story appears here, when the little girl is allowed to go outside, tied to a rope, to take care of her bodily needs.

In this tale, she ties the rope to a nanny goat, and the ogress doesn't realize the switch has been made until she drags the goat up by the rope.

Answer: Seven young kids

The title of the Grimm tale is translated "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" or "The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats." While the "chinny chin chin" line doesn't appear in this Grimm story about goats, scholars speculate that it was applied to goats in a version of the tale that didn't get written down. Ironically, the familiar story of "The Three Little Pigs" was popularized in English by Joseph Jacobs, a Jewish scholar who was born in Australia, lived in England, and eventually became an American citizen.

In the Grimm story of the young kids, only one sibling escapes being eaten when the wolf comes to the door, but the mother is able to cut the others out and fill the wolf's belly with rocks, echoing a motif in some versions of "Little Red Riding Hood." The wolf drowns when the stones cause him to fall into the well.

Answer: Fox

Fox is able to trick Wolf because Wolf is always so hungry he can think of nothing else. In one story, when Wolf is injured with lye, the uninjured Fox pretends to be beaten and tricks Wolf into carrying him home. Fox criticizes Wolf for being gluttonous and greedy, and in one tale, they get away with eating one lamb, but Wolf gets beaten when he goes back for seconds.

When Fox brings stolen pancakes to Wolf, Wolf wolfs them down then again gets in trouble when he goes back for more and makes too much noise. Fox looks ahead by making sure he can fit through the escape tunnel, but Wolf doesn't think ahead, so gets stuck and is beaten to death. Fox is known for his cleverness, whereas Wolf is known for his inordinate hunger.

Answer: She sings to him, and he goes to sleep long enough for her to get a head start.

In the Gunniwolf story, the little girl wanders away from home when her mother is gone, picking flowers to surprise her mother, singing, and gradually going outside the gate and deeper into the woods. In this version of the Little Red Riding Hood story, the wolf seems less hungry for food than longing to hear the lullaby that repeatedly puts him to sleep.

As the little girl runs, her feet go "pit-pat" and the wolf's paws go "hunker-chaw" as he pursues her, a chilling difference in onomatapoeia that hints at danger but leaves the wolf's motives unclear. Wilhelmina Harper, who collected American folk tales, is known for two publications of the story, with different illustrators, in the early 20th century. I read a version by Jeffry S.

Hepple, in a series called "Da's Story Time" (dedicated to his grandfather, Edward Van Buskirk who, he says, taught him the story).

Answer: The Old Sow and the Three Shoats

The sow, of course, is a mother hog, and young pigs are called shoats. Written in dialect to reflect the storyteller's voice as heard on recordings from the mountains of North Carolina, "The Old Sow and the Three Shoats" has the fox gradually being allowed into the house of Jack, the pig who has listened to his mama and built his house out of bricks, to get in from the winter cold.

When Jack, who is cooking peas, hears the fox mumbling "Bakebilly boo...pig and peas for supper" Jack says he hears "the King comin' with all his pack of foxhounds" and offers to hide the fox in a churn, then nails him in and cooks him over the fire. Sweet little story.

Answer: The girl is sleeping "between the paws of the tender wolf" in her dead (eaten) grandmother's bed.

All of these quotations appear in the story, although I have toned down the language of one of them a bit. The story ends with the wolf eating the grandmother, but with the young girl seducing the wolf rather than the other way around: "She will lay his fearful head on her lap and she will pick out the lice from his pelt and perhaps she will put the lice in her mouth and eat them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savage marriage ceremony." Nanny Woo has read this story with a few hundred college students over the years, and the majority of them tend to be shocked by the ending.

It's hard to get past the notion that all versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tales are intended for children. Even when they are - and this one is not - there is always more underneath the surface for adults to chew on. Pun intended.