The Glorious but Short-Lived Proletariat Revolution of Hansel and Gretel

Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor foreman with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. Despite having a supervisory position in the local paint factory, the foreman had little to bite and to break, and when his factory began to lose income from competition with another paint factory, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife: 'What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?' His wife, made heartless and a little insane from years of 14-hour days at the local textile mill, said, 'I'll tell you what, husband, early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them a piece of bread that is laced with paint chips, and they will fall into a stupor from the lead in the paint, and then we will leave them alone. They will be too stupid from the lead to find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.' The foreman felt sorry for his children, but he understood that there was no way to feed them; and anyway, Gretel’s recent clamoring for a violin had annoyed him, since workers had no time for music.

Early in the morning came the woman, and took the children out of their beds. Their piece of bread was given to them, and though they wondered why it was speckled with blue and red flakes, they took it anyway. On the way into the forest Hansel crumbled his in his pocket, and often stood still and threw a morsel on the ground. Little by little, he threw all the crumbs on the path.

The woman led the children deep into the forest, where they had never in their lives been before. Then a great fire was made, and the mother said: 'Just sit there, you children, and when you are tired you may sleep a little; we are going into town to buy paint and textiles from our company stores, and in the evening when we are done, we will come and fetch you away.' When it was noon, Gretel shared her piece of bread with Hansel, who had scattered his by the way. Then they fell asleep from the paint in the bread. They did not awake until it was dark night, and Hansel comforted his little sister and said: 'Just wait, Gretel, until the moon rises, and then we shall see the crumbs of bread which I have strewn about, they will show us our way home again.' When the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of other abandoned proletariat children which skulk about in the woods and fields had picked them all up. Hansel said to Gretel: 'We shall soon find the way,' but they did not find it. They walked the whole night and all the next day too from morning till evening, but they did not get out of the forest.

It was now three mornings since they had left their father's house. They began to walk again, but they always came deeper into the forest, and if help did not come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness. When it was mid-day, they came upon a little house built of bread and covered with cakes, with windows were of clear sugar. 'This must be how the bourgeoisie live!’ said Hansel. Hansel bit off a little of the roof to try how it tasted, and Gretel leant against the window and nibbled at the panes.

Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. The old woman said: 'Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you.' She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house. Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them, and thought they were in heaven.

The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked pastry-factory owner who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she captured it and put it to work in her factory, mass-producing individually packaged pastries for supermarkets and college bookstores. Then she seized Hansel with her shriveled hand, carried him into the frosting-mixing room, and locked him in behind a grated door. Scream as he might, it would not help him, for the other children working in the room would not allow him to sit idle and would force him to work with them. Then she went to Gretel, shook her till she awoke, and cried: 'Get up, lazy thing, and help these other children in the bakery. Today, we’re making HoHos! Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain, for the 13 cents a day the witch was offering forced her to do what witch commanded.

And now the best food was cooked for production and distribution, and poor Hansel and Gretel and the other children in the pastry factory had to eat leftover Crisco and drink yellow #5. Hansel, however, had taught himself to read and write by studying the nutrition information on packages of DingDongs, and he had begun to write leaflets on stolen Twinkie wrappers that he passed to the other children, urging them to unite. Day by day, the children plotted the day when they would overthrow their capitalist oppressors and usher in a communist utopia.

Early one morning, Gretel had to fire up the factory’s industrial-size oven. 'We will bake Zingers first,' said the old woman, 'I have already heated the oven, and kneaded the dough.' She pushed poor Gretel out to the oven, from which flames of fire were already darting. 'Creep in,' said the witch, 'and see if it is properly heated, so that we can put the bread in.' And once Gretel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let her bake in it, and then she would eat her as a lesson to her subversive ringleader of a brother. But Gretel saw what she had in mind, and said: 'I do not know how I am to do it; how do I get in?' 'Silly goose,' said the old woman. 'The door is big enough; just look, I can get in myself!' and she crept up and thrust her head into the oven. Then Gretel gave her a push that drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran away and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death.

Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened the door to the frosting room, and cried: 'Hansel, we are saved! The old witch is dead!' Then Hansel sprang like a bird from its cage when the door is opened. How they did rejoice and embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other! And as they had no longer any need to fear her, they went into the witch's house, and in every corner there stood chests full of pearls and jewels. They distributed the wealth equally amongst the other children, and ran home through the forest to tell their father about their revolution.

At length they saw from afar their father's house. Then they began to run, rushed into the parlour, and threw themselves round their father's neck. The foreman had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; his wife, however, had recently gotten stuck in her loom at the textile mill and was dead. Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them. They told their father about the revolution at their factory and urged him to begin one at his, but he wasn’t sure the workers at his factory, who had been reading Horatio Alger, would listen to him. So they all went out and spent their newfound money on a Model T.