A Tale Dark and Grimm

Gretel is the other protagonist of the novel and based on Grethel from the Grimm Brothers’ tale. In contrast to Hansel, Gretel resembles her mother with “hair that looked like it was spun from pure gold thread and eyes that shone like the sea” (24). The difference in Hansel and Gretel’s appearance represents their differences as people. While Hansel is impulsive, Gretel is clever and cunning. Both Hansel and Gretel trick antagonists, but while Hansel seems to do so opportunistically, Gretel plans out her deceptions to ensure they don’t fail.

When Gretel learns the truth about the handsome man, she spends an entire day deciding how to expose his true nature to the villagers, finally using the villagers’ fear against them. She knows she may not be believed if she tells the truth, both because she’s a child and because the man is well liked. Instead, she presents events as if they were a dream, making the handsome man feel threatened so that he reveals his warlock nature. In the fight against the dragon, Gretel is willing to sacrifice herself in hopes that the moon will eat the dragon, showing her dedication to protecting others, much like she did in the village.

The ravens appear as a unit, and their main purpose is to deliver information and act as comic relief. In Chapter 1, the ravens discuss the dangers awaiting the new king, prompting Johannes to act and jumpstarting the main plot of the novel. Later, the ravens tell Gretel all that’s happened, a common trope of traditional fairy tales: Rather than Gretel puzzling out mysteries and information on her own, a third party tells her everything she needs to know, allowing the story to move forward.

In the fight against the dragon, the ravens provide comedy in a tense situation. They also slow Gretel’s fall so she survives, showing that they have a dual nature, serious and humorous. In the original Grimm tales, ravens appeared both in “Faithful Johannes” and “The Seven Ravens”; it may be that Gidwitz changed the seven ravens to swallows in A Tale Dark and Grimm to avoid confusion between the two groups.

Johannes is another character straight from the Grimm tales. In A Tale Dark and Grimm, he appears as a hunched old man and claims he has served the kings of Grimm for generations upon generations, raising the question of how long he’s been alive and how he’s been able to live so long. Johannes’s actions in Chapter 1 are the catalyst for the rest of the story. His faithfulness to the king starts the problems that Hansel and Gretel face, and once he is returned to life, Johannes spends much of the book trying to make up for what he unintentionally caused. In Chapter 6, Johannes plays a similar role to the ravens, delivering information so that Hansel has the knowledge he needs going into the story’s final third. Johannes dies after explaining everything to Hansel, suggesting that he may rest now that he has finally outlived his usefulness to the kingdom of Grimm.