Zoriah Carter

Ms. Strobridge
Tragedy
12/13/16

Hansel and Gretel in Class Essay

Louise Gluck is writing as Gretel in the poem Gretel in Darkness, and in the first stanza she

reveals that the poem was written after they were supposed to receive their happily ever after. When

Gluck writes, This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead she is saying

that the witch and her stepmother are now dead, and they really should not have anything to worry

about. The second stanza assures that they are far from womens arms, women pluralized because

she is referring to both the witch and her step mother. Gluck sets up these two stanzas to make it feel

like to hint at the fact that there is nothing to worry about, and that they should be happy because

Hansel and Gretel can sleep, [and they] are never hungry.

In the third stanza, the seemingly rejoiceful tone of the poem changes. Gretel reminisces on this

dark period of her life, and the pain and insecurity that it brought. Gretel asks herself why she cannot

forget, though there is a literal promise of safety, though she later turns this question around and

ponders why no one remembers. Gretel makes it clear that she and Hansel are dealing with what

happened to them in the witchs gingerbread house in different ways; while she thinks about it often, it

seems that he does not remember that his stepmother forced them to go into that forest, and that he

could have died because of the witchs cruelty.

Gretel makes her claim to power when she declares, I killed for you, referring to pushing the

witch into the oven, so that she and her brother could escape death and captivity. She proclaims that
she escaped a life without her brother and father, and although her brother endured a similar, although

arguably a less daunting hell than her, he is not enduring the lasting effects from this traumatic event.

When Gretel looks to her brother for empathy and support, it is as though they lived two entirely

different realities.

The last stanza she makes her hopelessness, loneliness even clearer. Gretel seems completely

deserted when she says Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there. Am I alone? when she

says this both her strength and her immense weakness can be felt. On one hand, she is the only reason

Hansel made it out the forest alive, and she is not living with what the witch threatened: an existence

plagued by the thought that she had a hand in the death of her brother; though on the other hand,

because she has endured so much, she is still left with the thought that death was not a concept for

them at that moment, it was a very real possibility.

Gretels story has all the ingredients for a tragedy. Gretels hubris being the moment after she

killed the witch and knew she saved her brother, and although she does not die in the story, like many

characters in tragedies do, she deals with a different kind of punishment. Gretels pride for killing the

witch, and just having a good life after the death of her stepmother, comes with consequences.

Although Gretel should forget what happened and be happy that they are even alive (like Hansel), she

instead suffers from feeling the immense loneliness that comes from living through something

traumatic, and knowing that the one person who can relate to your experiences, acts as if nothing even

happened.