The Company Of Wolves By Angela Carter

The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter at first glance appears to be a darker spin off of the childhood tale of Little Red Riding Hood before delving into the deeper details of the story. The story begins with a long introduction describing the dull, fearful town and its wolves. Carter takes great care in describing the wolves and instilling fear in her readers with intricate descriptions of the wolves and their characteristics. One of the beginning lines, and one of my peers favorite lines from the story discussed in class, describes the wolves’ scary features by “the eyes of the wolves shine like candle flames, yellowish, reddish, but that is because the pupils of their eyes fatten on darkness and catch the light from your lantern to flash
Carter makes it clear by directly stating “You are always in danger in the forest, where no people are” and warns “step between the gateposts of the forest with the greatest trepidation and infinite precautions, for if you stray from the path for one instant, the wolves will eat you” (Carter). This warning feels like a foreshadowing for the bad things that are to come if you enter the forest, like the main character decides to do. As for protecting yourself against the wolves, knives are carried in a common fashion. One statement that truly caught my attention while reading this story was when the children are said to be wielding knives. The line “their knives are half as big as they are, the blades sharpened daily” truly allows the reader to put into perspective just how important knives are to the community. The image of a small child carrying a knife almost as big as they are is another extremely graphic and disturbing example of Carter’s
Although she is never formally named during the story, our class decided to dub her as Red based on the color of her shawl knitted by her grandmother that appeared to look like blood on the snow. Red has decided to make a trip through the woods to deliver some delicious treats to her grandmother despite her mother worries. Children from the town are said to grow up early and work hard, but when describing Red, Carter states “but this one, so pretty and the youngest of her family, a little late-comer, had been indulged by her mother and the grandmother who’d knitted her the red shawl” (Carter). Red’s sexuality is a common theme used throughout the story that begins in the section that describes her as different from the