Wheeler 1

Taylor Wheeler
Mrs. Jurczyk
Lit 1011
March 13 2016
Hansel and Gretel
Hostile Gingerbread Homes
Though John Owers poem The Gingerbread House can be interpreted in many different
ways, a strand of family dysfunction runs throughout the stanzas of his poem.
The Gingerbread House provides the reader with a basic storyline and plot. A young
girls parents make her a gingerbread house, Despite sweet cement It leaned as if it yielded to a
hurricane wind (line 3-5). The gingerbread house symbolizes the troubles the father and mother
create in the home they are trying to raise their daughter in. The simple exposition leads to the
rising action of the plot, where the parents express, Our baby took one look at it, said it was a
Witchs house, and burst into tears she was a prophet in her own way (Line 6-9). The daughter
in the back of her mind knew the parents were seeking a divorce, The witch flew out the
window...She cast a wicked spell that made us hate each other (Line 11-14). Ower uses the
witch character as a metaphor of the mother, who leaves her home and departs from her family
on bad terms. As Ower reaches the resolution of his poems plot, the parents confess that In the
finest fashion of the old fairy-tales We gobble up our child (Line 16-18). What this actually
expresses is that the relationship with their daughter is now ruined due to the corrupt divorce in
her family.
Owers poem creates a storyline that is a metaphor to strong family dysfunction and how
it can ruin a home and relationships.