The Missing Kids?
By: Zion McKnight
In the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel”, by Brother Grimms, a poor woodcutter, his wife, and two children live out in a great forest. The boy’s name was Hansel and the girl’s name were Gretel. Once a great famine came to the land the woodcutter and the wife contemplated how they were going to feed their children. Due to the harsh conditions and famine faced by the woodcutter’s family the wife devised a plan to get rid of the children in the woods. On her first attempt Hansel left a trail of shiny pebbles that grew bright in the moonlight, which him and his sister Gretel used to return home. The wife tried to abandon the children in the woods again, but Hansel planned to use the bread crumbs from a piece of bread he had received that morning to make a trail so that him and his sister could find their ways back home. Though when morning came Hansel and Gretel found that the trail of crumbs were all pecked up by the birds that live among the woods. They wandered the woods hopeless and hungry until they reached a house made of bread and cake. This was the house of a witch who ate children.
The Hansel and Gretel display at the Weatherspoon art museum in Greensboro, North Carolina seemed very inhumane, strange, and possessing dark undertones. One of the displays consisted of two cages. One cage is shown to be holding two children, brother and sister, whilst the other is empty. The empty cage provides much mystery and wonder. Have its captives been already eaten or are have they yet to arrive? One can only imagine what other children fell victim to the evil predatory witch.
How do child predators play into the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel? The evil witch, though not sexually assaulting them, preys on children to come into her luscious, candy-made home. Once they’re fattened up from the roof made of cake, windows made of sugar, and walls made of bread, the witch then eats them up! There are over 500,000 convicted sex offenders in the United States. These offenders are prohibited by law from living within 1,000 feet of anywhere with high frequency levels of children. These areas consist of schools, churches, and bus stops. In the year 2016 the actual count of registered sex offenders proved to be even higher at 805,000. This makes for a vast number of sex offenders living on the street, and without access to counseling and support programs, and prone to committing sex crimes again.
