Short Stories: Hansel and Gretel

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Read the complete story: Hansel and Gretel

A long time ago in a faraway small village, there lived a poor woodcutter with his two children: a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel. He barely placed food on the table, and the household was literally living from hand to mouth. Then one day, the famine in the land became unbearable and his wife proposed a way out.

“We must get rid of those children,”

she said to her husband,

“for there’s not enough food to go around.”

The woodcutter hesitated but agreed, fearing for his own life. When it had got dark that night, the woodcutter and his wife took Hansel and Gretel into the deep part of the forest, a long way from home.

Hansel overheard them, for it had been his parents plotting and planning in secret how they were to do it, and he, on his part, wondered to himself how they could never get back into the house, dropping breadcrumbs from his arms into the ground as he went along.

The moonlight fell on the breadcrumbs, and in it, Hansel and Gretel followed the way of the bright pieces. To their great dismay, most of them had been eaten by the birds. And they were lost.

After traveling around the wood for hours, the siblings discovered a weird house from which gingerbreads and candy were made. The stomachs of the siblings were rumbling, and their voices became quiet. They stopped and tried to look into it. They couldn’t resist taking a nibble.

To their astonishment, a voice from inside the house called out,

“Nibble, nibble, little mouse! Who is nibbling at my house?”

From the door, an old witch with a crooked nose and an evil smile came stepping out. She invited the kids in, pretending to be all nice to them. However, her intentions took a whole different meaning.

She wanted to cook and eat the children.

Hansel and Gretel, though, knew pretty soon that the witch was plotting something evil, but they were clever. The witch locked Hansel in an iron cage to fatten him up before she devoured him and made Gretel do all the housework.

She would look every day; try to see if Hansel was plump enough. But Hansel was clever. He stuck out a bone instead of a finger, and the witch, who was going blind, could not tell whom it was. Week passed after week, and the witch grew more and more impatient. She finally came to the conclusion that it was time to eat Hansel for dinner and therefore told Gretel to light the oven. But as though she hadn’t understood, Gretel asked:

“How do I do it?”

And the witch showed it by half climbing into the oven. Thereupon, at one stroke, Gretel pushed the witch into the oven. Slamming the oven door shut.

Gretel ran to the cage quickly, and she unlocked the cage. They escaped together. In the home of the witch, they found a sack with precious stones and treasure. That was enough for them to be rich.

With the treasure in hand, Hansel and Gretel found their way back home. Their stepmother was gone, and their father welcomed them with open arms, tears of joy in his eyes. They told him the tale of their adventure and how they had outsmarted the wicked witch.

From that day, Hansel and Gretel, together with their father, lived a full life. Not once were they hungry, but, what’s more, they reigned wisdom and power; they knew what a family is. They always cherished it, just like the great many other lessons they learned in the magic forest.

Moral: The story of Hansel and Gretel turned into a story of bravery, cleverness, and how family connections never seem to wither. It teaches how, through combined efforts, mountains that look like molehills may be climbed.

The end.

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