44 pages • 1 hour read
Adam GidwitzA Tale Dark and Grimm
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Importance of Supporting Others
The characters make sacrifices to support the people they care about. This often leads to a positive outcome, but sometimes, there are negative results before a situation improves. Through Johannes’s character arc and the various things Hansel and Gretel give up to help others, A Tale Dark and Grimm explores the impact of giving support.
Johannes’s character is built around faithfulness and the associated costs and benefits. In Chapter 1 while Johannes explains his role to the new king, he explores the difference between understanding and under-standing. The first, "understanding,” is the familiar definition—empathizing and gaining knowledge of another person. and Johannes defines the second, “under-standing,” as helping others by “[b]earing their troubles and their pains on my shoulders” (8).
Johannes’s desire to support his king leads to the novel’s strife. While the book ultimately has a happy ending, the road is long, complicated, and dark. After hearing the ravens discuss the ways the king could die, Johannes offers the ultimate support by going against what the king wants to ensure his survival. Johannes doesn’t explain why he does this until he’s about to die, as doing so will turn him to stone. This represents how people don’t always explain their actions in real life.
Often, situations are more complicated than they appear. What seems like betrayal—Johannes killing the horse, burning the dress, and appearing to kiss the princess—is later revealed to be the greatest type of support. Johannes shows that support doesn’t always come in a way we recognize, suggesting that we should look closer at actions before making snap judgments about them or the people who performed them.
Like Johannes, Hansel and Gretel offer support throughout the book. Foremost, they support one another by listening and having each other’s backs (with the exceptions of Chapters 5 and 6). In Chapter 1, Hansel and Gretel support each other by agreeing to leave so they aren’t beheaded again, showing how each cares about the fate of the other. This continues through the next two chapters with Hansel tricking the baker woman to keep Gretel from being cooked alive and Gretel trying to talk Hansel out of hunting so the forest won’t punish him for taking more than he needs.
When they stop supporting one another—Gretel because she believes Hansel is lost and Hansel because he is too absorbed in the hunt to support his sister—they are separated and face their greatest hardships. When both realize they need the other, they find themselves, showing that support brings people together.
Hansel and Gretel must learn the importance of supporting one another before they can support others. In the final third of the book, this allows them to take on more responsibility—ridding the kingdom of the dragon. Upon returning home, Hansel and Gretel realize that they have the most experience with hardship, and they want to support their home by defeating a threat to its existence. They ask the kingdom’s subjects for aid, and though people are scared and skeptical, they join the battle, showing that we can support someone even when our emotions tell us to do otherwise.
Though the battle against the dragon goes poorly, Hansel and Gretel don’t give up helping the kingdom. Their trials in the earlier chapters have taught them that support means fighting for what they believe in, and they believe the kingdom has the right to live without the dragon’s destruction. Ultimately, they discover the truth of the dragon because the aid they give one another and the support the people offer them make them feel like they must solve the problem; this shows how the right care allows us to do things we didn’t believe we could.
Support within A Tale Dark and Grimm waxes and wanes, but it ultimately stays true, allowing the characters to fulfill the tasks they set for themselves. Care can be life-changing on both an individual and massive level. When the book ends, Johannes, Hansel, and Gretel feel as though they’ve done as much as they could for others. Hansel and Gretel know they will have the support of the people moving forward, which will let them lead with confidence.
The Power of Storytelling
A Tale Dark and Grimm uses unconventional storytelling techniques to present a tale from many angles. In addition, it weaves together existing stories in order to create something new, showing the fluid nature of stories. Through the narrator, the interwoven tales, and repetition and symmetry, A Tale Dark and Grimm examines different aspects of how stories are told.
Gidwitz’s narrator offers a unique angle to Hansel and Gretel’s story. Throughout the book, they interject to offer additional context, humor, or words of wisdom, all toward fleshing out the events Hansel and Gretel face. At the end of the book, the narrator poses questions about the events of the story, asking, “[W]hat sense does any of it make? Is there any sense at all?” and answering: “I don’t know” (237). While the narrator knows all within the confines of the story, the greater meaning of the tales is beyond them. This reflects how only a story’s author can know exactly what is meant at any point in a book.
Gidwitz’s narrator serves to impart lessons and lessen the impact of darker subject matter. At points that might be confusing, the narrator pulls the reader away from the story to explain further. During some of the more violent sections, the narrator offers the reader comfort that things will get better while also noting that they might get worse in a humorous way. Overall, the narrator gives an outside perspective that changes the book from a story about Hansel and Gretel to a tale of lessons and knowledge that happens to center around two children. The narrator aims to make a dark narrative comical for young readers, mitigating its ominousness.
In addition to the narrator, the interwoven Grimm fairy tales offer a different angle on the book’s events. Chapter 2 tells Hansel and Gretel’s story in the form it’s most well-known—two children finding a house of sweets and nearly being eaten by its owner. By weaving this story in with the other fairy tales, Gidwitz makes a complete, self-contained story into a smaller part of a much larger adventure. “Faithful Johannes” is adapted into Hansel and Gretel’s backstory in Chapter 1. The original “Faithful Johannes” ends with the king and queen beheading and bringing back their children; Gidwitz using this as a catalyst shows how stories never truly end. Even when the original “end” is reached, there is always more that could be told. The interweaving of fairy tales shows how stories don’t exist in a vacuum—storytellers simply choose where to begin and end to convey events for maximum impact.
Gidwitz incorporates repetition and symmetry, both original and borrowed from the Grimm tales. Repetition is a large part of the fairy-tale tradition, partly because fairy tales were initially told orally, and repetition helped the listener remember since they couldn’t go back and reread. The fairy tales retold in A Tale Dark and Grimm used repetition in their original form—such as the boy coming across three devil curses in “The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs” and the sister asking three entities (sun, moon, stars) for aid in “The Seven Ravens.” Gidwitz keeps these repetitions intact as a nod to fairy tales and because they are a common pattern in storytelling.
Gidwitz also uses symmetry to tie the stories together. At the end of Chapter 1, the king asks the queen if she would sacrifice their children to bring back Johannes, much as the king does in the original tale. Gidwitz builds upon this in the final chapter by having Hansel and Gretel ask their mother, the queen, if she would kill her husband to stop the dragon. This brings deeper meaning to Chapter 1. By having Hansel and Gretel face what initially made them run away, they overcome their uncertainty and complete their character arcs.
Growing Up and Responsibility
The adults of A Tale Dark and Grimm make many mistakes, often while they are trying to do the best they can under difficult circumstances. The ways they handle their mistakes show the difficulties of growing up and accepting responsibility, and that being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean making good choices. The various adults of A Tale Dark and Grimm illustrate the struggles of adulthood and responsibility.
There are two types of grown-ups in A Tale Dark and Grimm—those who make poor choices while trying to take responsibility and those who make poor choices intentionally. In Chapter 6, after Hansel thinks there is nothing wrong with the lord and lady who took him in, the narrator remarks: “Is there ever nothing wrong with grown-ups? Certainly not in these stories” (123). This revelation is humorous as well as a commentary on grown-ups, both real and fictional. In the story world, adults do terrible things, sometimes because they falter in an attempt to do right and sometimes because they are trying to harm others. The reasons behind their actions mirror how much responsibility they are willing to take. Those who are trying to do good typically try to make up for harm they’ve caused while those intending to do harm try to evade consequences.
Hansel and Gretel’s parents exemplify the type of adults who take responsibility for their actions. They are reluctant to behead Hansel and Gretel because they love their children, but they also feel as though they have unjustly harmed Johannes. When they see an opportunity to make up for this, they take it, and if Hansel and Gretel had not been immediately brought back to life, they likely would have regretted their choice. They spend the rest of the book trying to atone for what they’ve done. Beheading is an extreme action, but it represents any action parents take that would cause their children’s trust in them to falter. Once they see that their parents are trying to do better, Hansel and Gretel rethink their stance; they understand that their parents didn’t act to intentionally cause them harm. Hansel and Gretel’s parents take responsibility for their actions and for losing their children, and this allows the family to come back together in the end.
In contrast, the baker woman and handsome young man are adults who intentionally cause harm. The baker woman decided long before the story’s beginning that she liked the taste of children; she built a house of sweets to attract children so she could fatten them up and then eat them. She doesn’t care where the children came from or what circumstances brought them to her home. Rather, she only cares about her own desires and takes no responsibility for the harm she inflicts on the children’s families.
The handsome young man also intentionally hurts people. No reason is given for why he kills girls and traps their souls; he likely doesn’t know why he does it. It may be that dark magic has corrupted him, or he may have been born with the impulse to hurt others and sees no reason not to do so. He takes no responsibility for his actions and gives no thought to the harm he brings, either to the girls or their families. Taken together, the baker woman and handsome young man show what can become of us when we give in to our basest desires and stop thinking of others as people.
The two kinds of adults in A Tale Dark and Grimm show how taking responsibility for our decisions and actions influences who we become. By disregarding how we affect others, we become selfish, only repenting when our choices catch up to us, as the baker woman and handsome man do when they are suffering in hell. By accepting the power our actions have to impact others, we take responsibility for our role in the world and how we can change lives.
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