The poem “Little Red Riding Hood” by Carol Ann Duffy is a twist on the original story “Little Red Riding Hood”. Carol Ann Duffy takes the position that at the end of the poem the wolf does not eat the girl as in the original story but instead outwits the wolf and kills it. The author changes the story and changes the stereotypical roles of man and woman and shows sexual education that empowers the girl over the wolf. He provokes these thoughts through the use of masculine terms in the use of a female role to show this eternal change between the role of an average male and the female one. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The main idea seen in the poem is how the author switches the roles of the original story of the traditional “Little Red Riding Hood” and changes the roles of the two main characters in his spin-off of the story. Thus the average role of these two characters changes and the oppressor in the original story becomes the oppressor in its spin-off. You can see the transition from this in “I took an ax to the wolf, while he slept, a blow, from the scrotum to the throat, and I saw. The sparkling, virgin white of my grandmother's bones” you can clearly see the different roles being changed, but this change shows how Carol Ann Duffy is empowering a woman in this poem and breaking that average male-girl relationship, thus giving the role of the predominantly male wolf who kills everyone and instead outsmarts everyone with the girl. The role change shows how Little Red Riding Hood is the dumb little redhead as they know her, but instead a more mischievous and intelligent girl who becomes enlightened within herself and outsmarts the wolf and kills him instead. One thing Carol Ann Duffy uses to divide and change the stereotypical roles of a boy and a girl by giving sex education to the girl. This can be seen in the poem when Duffy says “I crawled in his wake. My socks ripped to shreds, shreds of red from my blazer. Entangled in a twig and a branch, indications of murder.» The use of the onomatopoeic description of “struggling fur” finds a way to show the violent impressions of the wolf. However, despite the nuances set up, it shows how this is more of a consensual experience and the speaker is not being raped in a sense. We know this because the speaker denies any way the rape occurred, as seen in "for/What little girl doesn't love a wolf dearly?" Duffy is able to manipulate the traditional perception of the Red Riding Hood character by using the speaker to actively chase the wolf. This, in a sense, rejects the traditional type of role of prey and predator in the fairy tale. In this relationship the speaker turns out to be the aggressor with his control over everything. The line “It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf” is a very important line that informs you as the reader that she saw the wolf before the wolf saw her but still chose to be seen instead of running away, he shows up on purpose. Yet Duffy does this deliberately where she says she wanted to be "seen" and show her innocence to manipulate the wolf in turn. We can assume that Duffy gives her power through the manipulation and realization of her true self to allow her to enrich herself and become more of a man than the wolf himself. The last overlying thing that Duffy does in the poem is that he gives it masculine qualities. and ideas and takes those qualities away from the wolf. You can see proof of this in this “The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods. Far from home, in a dark and thorny place." You see Duffy instead of looking for the normal damsel in tone.