564. The Moral of the Story with JBP： Hansel & Gretel
Summary
A poor woodcutter and his wife are left to fend for their four children when they run out of food. The problem is, the wood cutter is a weak man, who is more concerned about feeding his children than he is about providing for his own family.
Transcript
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Hidden Brain, the number one rated science podcast, is going on tour.
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Host Shankar Vedantam is bringing seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain
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to Toronto's Queen Elizabeth Theatre on August 6.
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Hidden Brain has helped millions of listeners accomplish their goals,
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improve their relationships, and develop a deeper understanding of their emotions.
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Don't miss this incredible evening of science and storytelling.
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So, in the past, I have told or read stories for children and offered an analysis.
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And I recently released a new episode of that sort discussing the Grimm's Brothers, Snow White.
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Can we have a whole psychoanalytic series on fairy tales?
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It also reminds me of the Peterson lectures I listened to on The Lion King, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio.
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Well, the episode proved quite popular and people's responses were very positive.
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Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children.
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And once, when great scarcity fell on the land, he could no longer procure daily bread.
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Now, when he thought this over by night in his bed and tossed about in his anxiety,
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he groaned and said to his wife, more about her in a moment,
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How are we to feed our poor children when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?
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Now, you see, there's something troublesome right there already.
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He says, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves.
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Well, a father with his priorities right would be more concerned about his children's hunger than his own.
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And so, the teller of the tale, the writer, the author of the tale sets up the situation for us with that foolishness.
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Because this woodcutter is selfish and, as we'll see, also weak.
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How are we to feed our poor children when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?
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I'll tell you what, husband answered the woman, early tomorrow morning,
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we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest.
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There we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one piece of bread more,
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and then we'll go to our work and leave them alone.
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They will not find their way home again, and we shall be rid of them.
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How can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest?
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The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces.
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Oh, thou fool, said she, then we must all four die of hunger.
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Thou mayest as well plane the planks for our coffins.
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Well, there's quite a tale of domestic catastrophe in that opening paragraph,
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because his wife, who turns out to be the children's stepmother, as we see in the next paragraph,
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He proclaims that he feels sorry for his children,
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but he doesn't throw his wife out of the house,
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which would be approximately the appropriate move under such circumstances,
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when her proclivity is to not only ensure that she's fed first,
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and then harass her weak husband to death until he agrees.
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Now, another thing we might give some thought to with this opening is
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And we could feel sorry for the poor woodcutter and his poor new wife,
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or we could note very carefully that their poverty might have something to do
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with their misplaced priorities and their selfishness.
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Elijah is the first prophet who identifies the voice of conscience with the divine,
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which is a major psychological transformation, right?
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Now, Elijah is the enemy of the nature worshipers
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foreign, malign foreign influence on the Israelite nation.
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and she persecutes Elijah for his forthrightness
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and his willingness to stand for the one true God
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which is something to think about in these most modern of times.
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In any case, Elijah is running away from Jezebel
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Jezebel and her forces after having defeated the worshipers of nature.
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and who, if I remember correctly, he meets by a well,
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and she offers to share her remaining food with him.
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She just has enough flour for one meal for her and her son,
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and enough flour and oil for one meal for her and her son.
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subsist on virtually nothing for a very long period of time.
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Apart from the, let's say, childish, magical element of it,
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stand at the center of a productive and abundant community is
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Whereas if you're only concerned about yourself,
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an attitude of generous hospitality and sharing
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Then they fell asleep and evening came and went,
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And Hansel comforted his little sister and said,
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which I have strewn about, and they will show us
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When the moon came, they set out, but they found
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Hansel said to Gretel, we shall soon find the way.
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They walked the whole night and all the next day too
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from morning till evening, but they did not get out
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of the forest and were very hungry, for they had nothing
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to eat but two or three berries which grew on the ground.
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And as they were so weary that their legs would carry
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them no longer, they lay down beneath a tree and fell asleep.
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So they've come to the end of their own devices and they've
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And so that places them even deeper in the woods, as we find
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It was now three mornings since they had left their father's
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But they always got deeper into the forest, and if help did not
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come soon, they must die of hunger and weariness.
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When it was midday, they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting
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on a bough, which sang so delightfully that they stood still
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And when it had finished its song, it spread its wings and flew
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And they followed it until they reached a little house on the
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And so the evil witch, who we'll encounter soon, sends out a
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attractive and welcoming avatar, familiar, you might say, to
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And so this is the second time, third time in the story where we
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see the facade of beauty and attractiveness, the white bird and
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its attractive song, serving as the camouflage that hides something
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So this whole story is a warning about vice presenting itself as
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virtue, and the bird is a representation of that.
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The children are attracted by something that's beautiful and
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apparently welcoming, and it entices them in their desperation into the
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Now that motif of the positive being used as camouflage for the negative is
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immediately re-presented in the form of the house itself.
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They followed the bird until they reached a little house on the roof of which it
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And when they came quite up to the little house, they saw that it was built out of
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bread and covered with cakes, and that the windows were of clear sugar.
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We will set to work on that, said Hansel, and have a good meal.
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I'll eat a bit of the roof, and thou, Gretel, can eat some of the window.
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Hansel reached up above and broke off a little of the roof to try how it tasted,
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and Gretel leant against the window and nibbled at the panes.
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So you have children who are lost in the wilderness in consequence of their
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parents' maliciousness and weakness and malevolence, and they are as deep into
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the woods as they possibly can get, which means that they're in real trouble.
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And a beautiful bird appears and leads them not only to a house, but a house that's
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made out of, that's literally made out of candy.
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And it's a warning to everyone, children included, that it's often necessary to look behind the
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facade, especially in a circumstance where things do seem to be too good to be true.
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And went out eating without disturbing themselves.
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Hansel, who thought the roof tasted very nice, tore down a great piece of it, and Gretel pushed
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out the whole of one round windowpane, sat down, and enjoyed herself with it.
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Suddenly the door opened, and a very, very old woman, who supported herself on crutches,
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Hansel and Gretel were so terribly frightened that they let fall what they had in their hands.
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The old woman, however, nodded her head and said,
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Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here?
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She took them both by the hand and led them into her little house.
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Then good food was set before them, milk and pancakes and sugar, apples and nuts.
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Afterwards, two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen, and Hansel and Gretel
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lay down in them and thought they were in heaven.
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There's a deep motif here of, as I alluded to earlier, of the pathologies of camouflaged
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So, children are very dependent, and they're dependent primarily on maternal benevolence.
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And what that means is that that maternal benevolence can be gained by pathological actors
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who can accrue to themselves all of the reputational virtue of the positive mother.
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The maternal force that cares for everything, including the planet and everything on it,
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but in reality is doing nothing but serving its own malicious and carnivorous or even cannibalistic
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And so, the worst evil takes the greatest good and perverts it to the worst possible end.
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The old woman had only pretended to be so kind.
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She was in reality a wicked witch who lay in wait for children and had only built the little
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When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked it, and ate it, and that was a feast day for her.
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Witches have red eyes and cannot see far, but they have a keen scent, like the beasts,
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When Hansel and Gretel came into her neighborhood, she laughed maliciously and said mockingly,
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Now, there's another motif here apart from the pathology of glorious, maternal, compassionate,
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virtue signaling, masking, carnivorous, or cannibalistic urges.
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And that is the danger of maternal hypersolicitude, right?
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So, human beings have the longest developmental period of any creature, and it can last almost
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And what that means is that a force that powerful can easily go wrong.
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She should take care of her children, but not offer them too much, too much being a convenient
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house in the midst of danger, but not only a house.
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The mother who offers her children too much, who does everything for them, who goes above
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and beyond the call of duty to announce to the world her virtuous compassion as the highest
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possible moral virtue, is also the hovering helicopter mother who ends up devouring her own
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So, if it looks and sounds too good to be true, there's some real possibility that it is.
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I remember my mother told me once, my mother, she died very recently, last year.
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She's a very agreeable person and a compassionate person, but she had a spine and she didn't
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I'd been having some friction with my father, which was some him and some me, perhaps even
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And then once I left and went to college, our relationship re-normalized and maintained
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itself quite positively from that time forward.
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My mom said to me, after I had returned from college, when we were talking about having
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left and the fact that things had settled up, she said, you know, and the conflict that accompanied
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my leaving, she said, you know, if it was too good at home, you'd never leave.
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And I thought that was, that was my mother in a nutshell, because she was a very pleasant
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person and a very caring person and hospitable, but she had enough sense to know that a little
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bit of pushing her children out of the nest was actually a very positive thing.
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And this evil witch is all too good and announcing that continually.
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As we celebrate Independence Day this July, we're reminded of the freedoms our founders
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fought to protect, especially the fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
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There are still Americans today whose most basic right, the right to life itself, is at
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They're doing incredible work through their network of clinics, offering free ultrasounds
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These ultrasounds don't just provide medical care, they're actually saving lives.
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When a mom sees her baby on that screen, here's the heartbeat for the first time, everything
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They provide love, support, and resources during what can be an incredibly difficult time.
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Look, if we really believe what the Constitution says, that all people are created equal with
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unalienable rights, then this has to include the smallest, most vulnerable among us.
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These babies deserve the same rights that our founders declared.
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Early in the morning before the children were awake, she was already up, and when she saw
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both of them sleeping and looking so pretty, with their plump red cheeks, she muttered to
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Then she seized Hansel with her shriveled hand, carried him into a little stable, and
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Then she went to Gretel, shook her till she awoke and cried, get up, lazy thing, fetch
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some water, and cook something good for thy brother.
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He's in the stable outside and is to be made fat.
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And so that's an interesting twist in the story too, because mothers obviously feed their
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children, and that's part of maternal behavior, but to overfeed a child is, again, to make
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To make a show of that maternal solicitude at the cost of the child's health and well-being.
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And so that's the meaning of the motif, that she's fattening up her ersatz son, her temporary
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He is in the stable outside and is to be made fat.
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Gretel began to weep bitterly, but it was all in vain.
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She was forced to do what the wicked witch ordered her.
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And now the best food was cooked for poor Hansel.
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Every morning the woman crept to the little stable and cried, Hansel, stretch out thy finger
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Hansel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and the old woman who had dim eyes
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could not see it and thought it was Hansel's finger and was astonished that there was no
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Well, that's another indication of Hansel's self-sufficiency.
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He's attentive enough and intelligent enough to notice what the old woman is up to quite
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clearly, not to deceive himself about her intent.
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And in consequence of that careful attentiveness and refusal to deceive himself, he plays a trick
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on her and indicates to her that he is by no means optimally positioned to serve as a meal.
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When four weeks had gone by and Hansel still continued thin, she was seized with impatience
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Ah, how the poor little sister did lament when she had to fetch the water and how her tears
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Again, an indication that she really loved her brother.
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A contrary attitude might be that she was quite relieved that it was Hansel who was serving
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If the wild beasts in the forests had but devoured us, we should at any rate have died together.
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That's hammering home that motif of union in the face of adversity.
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Just keep thy noise to thyself, said the old woman.
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Early in the morning, Gretel had to go out and hang up the cauldron with the water and light
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I have already heated the oven and kneaded the dough.
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She pushed poor Gretel out to the oven, from which flames of fire were already darting.
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See if it is properly heated, so that we can shut the brand in.
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And when once Gretel was inside, she intended to shut the oven and let her bake in there.
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But Gretel, also being an awake child, properly taken care of, let's say, by her brother,
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unwilling to deceive herself about the motivation of the woman, who's just too good to be true.
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But Gretel saw what she had in her mind and said, I do not know how I am to do it.
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And she crept up and thrust her head into the oven.
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Then Gretel, who's an enterprising young woman, gave her a push that drove her far into it
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But Gretel ran away, and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death.
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So Hansel and Gretel are awake enough to defend themselves against the evil machinations of the camouflaged witch,
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And, you know, one of the things Carl Jung said about pathological families was that
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children are also often offered an easy way out by an over-solicitous parent, for example,
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but that they don't necessarily have to take the bait.
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So you could imagine a lonely mother with a child who has, oh, maybe a cold.
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And the mother is hoping that the child could stay home from school so that she has company.
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And she suggests to the child, verbally and non-verbally,
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that his or her state of physical health is sufficiently compromised
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so that staying home from school might be justifiable.
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And the child knows full well that he's not particularly sick,
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but takes the bait and then enters into a pathological covenant with the mother
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such that he exaggerates his proclivity for illness
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And she benefits from the fact that she can make her maternal solicitude manifest publicly,
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benefit from that display of virtue, and also not have to be alone.
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And so Hansel and Gretel are not playing games of that sort.
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They're maybe because they're bonded together and taking care of each other,
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they're capable of fending for themselves and taking action when necessary
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and not falling prey to the machinations of the over-demonstrative mother figure
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Children have a moral responsibility too, you know.
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I mean, and that's a tricky thing to manage, but it takes two to tango.
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And that doesn't mean I'm blaming the child in situations where the family becomes pathological.
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No, I had people in my clinical practice who were offered pathological invitations,
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let's say, by their parents, and they resisted instead of falling prey to them
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and managed to free themselves from the situation.
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And so, you know, everybody has their destiny, and that includes children.
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And we make our beds, even when we're very young, and then are required to lie in them.
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Gretel ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable and cried,
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So immediately her first response is to go rescue her brother.
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Then Hansel sprang out like a bird from its cage when the door is open for it.
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How they did rejoice and embrace each other and dance about and kiss each other.
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And as they no longer had any need to fear her, they went into the witch's house.
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We all get a little too comfortable with letting our routine slide.
00:47:50.200
We sleep in, we take vacation, unplug from everything, and hey, that's great.
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You know, and that is indication of some real bravery on their part as well and some curiosity
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because you could easily imagine that their first impulse would be to get the hell away
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And what they find is in every corner there stood chests full of pearls and jewels.
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These are far better than pebbles, said Hansel, and thrust into his pockets whatever could
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And Gretel said, I too will take something home with me and filled her pinafore full.
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But now we will go away, said Hansel, that we may get out of the witch's forest.
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So why did the children find a great treasure in the witch's house?
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Well, they found a great treasure in the defeated witch's house, right?
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And the greatest treasure that children can find is the means of assuring their own mature
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You remember now, Hansel found pebbles that would help him, used pebbles that would help
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And he makes an allusion here to the fact that these pearls are better than the pebbles that
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And that's an indication that, like it's an echoing or a parallelism, indicating that
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the treasure that they have now found is the treasure that always helps everyone adventure
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And it's a maturity and independence that the children found in being forthright in maintaining
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their union in love and in defeating the over-solicitous maternal embrace.
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When they had walked for two hours, they came to a great piece of water.
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I see no foot plank and no bridge and no boat crosses either, answered Gretel.
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Then she cried, little duck, little duck, dost thou see?
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Well, it's a magical transition back to the familiarity of household and father.
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And the water serves as that bridge and the duck as the magical means of transport from
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the ultimately unknown where the evil force of maternal devouring lies in wait.
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It's a transition point back to the normal world.
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And then there's an echo here again of the thoughtfulness of the children because
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the duck came to them and Hansel seated himself on its back and told his sister to sit by him.
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No, replied Gretel, that will be too heavy for the little duck.
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So even under those circumstances, the children are looking out for each other.
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But they're also paying attention to the circumstances, even in the midst of their good
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fortune, so that they don't take undue advantage of what's being offered to them.
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They allow the bird to transport them one at a time.
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So they're actually very wise little children and things work out reasonably well for them.
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And when they were once safely across and had walked for a short time, the forest seemed
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And at length, they saw from afar their father's house.
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Then they began to run, rushed into the parlor and threw themselves into their father's arms.
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The man had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest.
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Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room and Hansel
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threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them.
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Then all anxiety was at an end and they lived together in perfect happiness.
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Whoever catches it may make himself a big fur cap out of it.
00:53:21.760
They go into the depths of the forest in consequence of a profound betrayal.
00:53:28.200
They encounter the, one of the darkest extant spirits, that devouring force of maternal over-solicitude.
00:53:50.220
They capture the treasure of great price in consequence of their maturity, bravery, and attentiveness.