Symbolism In The Company Of Wolves By Angela Carter

582 Words2 Pages

“The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter is a feminist and gruesome retelling of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding-Hood”. The story involves a werewolf, who represents a sexual predator. The werewolf is used as a symbol for both danger and desire. It also involves a young girl who does not fall victim to the fear of the wolf that she is surrounded by. She embraces her newfound sexual power and serves as symbol of sexual desire/power and female strength. The first part of the story tells folk tales about the wolf and werewolf. Here, wolves are used as a symbol of fear. It overwhelms the reader with terrifying descriptions of the wolf and shows the reader that the wolf is clearly something that strikes fear into the people in the story. They are described as “forest assassins grey members of a congregation of nightmare” and are known to be worse than “all the teeming perils of the night and the forest, ghosts, hobgoblins, ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches”. These monsters are not real and fear for these nonexistent monsters is ridiculous as they are fictional. The fear fo...

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