French literature summaries - 2021

Short summary - Little Red Riding Hood
Charles Perrault

Micro-narration: A girl goes to visit her grandmother and meets a wolf. He finds out where the grandmother lives, enters her house and eats both the grandmother and the granddaughter. The woodcutters hear this, open the wolf's stomach and save both.

In one village there lived a wonderful little girl: "so pretty that there was no better than her in the world." The grandmother gave her a red cap, and since then the girl wore it without taking it off. Everyone is so accustomed to seeing her in this headdress that they began to call the girl nothing more than Little Red Riding Hood.

Once the mother asked Little Red Riding Hood to take to her grandmother, who lived in a neighboring village, "a pie and a pot of butter." The road to the village went through the forest, and soon Little Red Riding Hood met the Gray Wolf. He was very hungry and would gladly eat the girl, but “somewhere close, the woodcutters knocked with their axes,” and he did not dare to attack her.

The wolf asked Little Red Riding Hood where she was going. The trusting girl did not know how dangerous it was to talk to strangers. She told everything to the Wolf, and he ran to his grandmother "what was the spirit along the shortest path." Little Red Riding Hood suspected nothing wrong. She walked along the longest road, "along the way, she stopped every now and then, picked flowers and collected them in bouquets."

The wolf "hasn't eaten anything for three days." Seeing the helpless old woman, he immediately swallowed her. Then he went to grandmother's bed and waited for Little Red Riding Hood. The girl did not immediately guess that in front of her was the Wolf, and not the grandmother. She only marveled at the large hands, eyes and teeth.

- Grandma, why do you have such big teeth?

- And this is to quickly eat you, my child!

The wolf rushed at Little Red Riding Hood and swallowed her.

Fortunately, woodcutters were passing by. They rushed to the wolf, ripped open his belly, and "Little Red Riding Hood came out of there, and behind her grandmother — both safe and sound."