Villains In The Story Of Jack And The Beanstalk

A teacher walks into her classroom and finds her students on their phones. Knowing that the students are unaware that she walked in, the teacher yells the question, “have you ever heard of the story about the young boy who climbed a beanstalk?” Most of the students would probably answer yes because of the fact that this story has been told for many years, especially through adaptations. In class, we discussed three versions of the story with the two adaptations adding another layer to the original tale. So what’s the new layer? Well, readers are lead to assume that the sole villain of “Jack and the Beanstalk” is the Giant; however, one may discover a secret foe after examining the works of Into the Woods and “Jacked.” In the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the antagonist is not solely the Giant but greed because it is greed that leads the characters to commit horrid acts and causes a false happy ending for Jack and his mother.

In fact, greed is the starting point of the domino effect in the story. In “The History of Jack and the Beanstalk,” Jack meets an old woman at the top of beanstalk. She tells him about how the Giant is “as wicked as Jack’s father was good” and that “he was in his heart envious, covetous, and cruel” (Opie 217). This greed of Giant lead him to take advantage of and murder Jack’s father. As well, the Giant like to entertain himself with his treasures after his meals. In “Jacked,” Michael Cunningham further explores this action of the Giant. In this version, the Giant turns to his treasures after his meal because it “a ritual, a comforting reminder that he’s just as rich today as he was yesterday, and the day before” (Cunningham 28). This displays how some people’s greed lead them to overvalue money nowadays to point where they get paranoid about losing it. But the Giant is not the only one affected by