Nhkahsdsahkjdsakjxkasbxkajsbkjbxkajsbxakjb jbaskbkj j snka sjka s kaa a s asa sa s sa s a sas sa as as as as sa sds d sd sdThe following morning, the family treks into the woods. Hansel takes a slice of bread and leaves a trail of bread crumbs to follow home. However, after they are once again abandoned, the children find that birds have eaten the crumbs and they are lost in the woods. After days of wandering, they follow a beautiful white bird to a clearing in the woods and discover a large cottage built of gingerbread and cakes, with window panes of clear sugar. Hungry and tired, the children begin to eat the rooftop of the candy house, when the door opens and a "very old woman" emerges and lures them inside, with the promise of soft beds and delicious food. They comply, unaware that their hostess is a wicked witch who waylays children to cook and eat them.

The next morning, the witch locks Hansel in an iron cage in the garden and forces Gretel into becoming a slave. The witch feeds Hansel regularly to fatten him up, but Hansel cleverly offers a bone he found in the cage (presumably a bone from the witch's previous captive) and the witch feels it, thinking it is his finger. Due to her blindness, she is fooled into thinking Hansel is still too thin to eat. After weeks of this, the witch grows impatient and decides to eat Hansel, "be he fat or lean."

She prepares the oven for Hansel, but decides she is hungry enough to eat Gretel, too. She coaxes Gretel to the open the oven and prods her to lean over in front of it to see if the fire is hot enough. Gretel, sensing the witch's intent, pretends she does not understand what she means. Infuriated, the witch demonstrates, and Gretel instantly shoves the witch into the oven and slams and bolts the door shut, leaving "The ungodly witch to be burned to ashes", with the witch screaming in pain until she dies. Gretel frees Hansel from the cage, and the pair discover a vase full of treasure and precious stones. Putting the jewels into their clothing, the children set off for home. A swan ferries them across an expanse of water, and at home they find only their father; his wife died from unknown causes. Their father had spent all his days lamenting the loss of his children, and is delighted to see them safe and sound. With the witch's wealth, they all live happily ever after.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm heard "Hansel and Gretel" from Dortchen Wild[1] and published it in Kinder - und Hausmärchen in 1812.[2] In the Grimm tale, the woodcutter and his wife are the children's biological parents and share the blame for abandoning them. In later editions, some slight revisions were made: the wife is the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes his wife's scheme to abandon the children, and religious references are made.[3]

The fairy tale may have originated in the medieval period of the Great Famine (1315–1321),[citation needed] which caused people to do some desperate deeds like abandoning young children to fend for themselves, or even resorting to cannibalism.

Folklorists Iona and Peter Opie indicate in The Classic Fairy Tales (1974) that "Hansel and Gretel" belongs to a group of European tales especially popular in the Baltic regions, about children outwitting ogres into whose hands they have involuntarily fallen. The tale bears resemblances to the first half of Charles Perrault's "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" (1697) and Madame d'Aulnoy's "Finette Cendron" (1721). In both tales, the Opies note, abandoned children find their way home by following a trail. In "Clever Cinders", the Opies observe that the heroine incinerates a giant by shoving him into an oven in a manner similar to Gretel's dispatch of the witch, and they point out that a ruse involving a twig in a Swedish tale resembles Hansel's trick of the dry bone. Linguist and folklorist Edward Vajda has proposed that these stories represent the remnant of a coming-of-age rite-of-passage tale extant in Proto-Indo-European society.[4][5] A house made of confectionery is found in a 14th-century manuscript about the Land of Cockayne.[1]

The fact that the mother or stepmother dies when the children have killed the witch has suggested to many commentators that the mother or stepmother and the witch are metaphorically the same woman.[6] A Russian folk tale exists in which the evil stepmother (also the wife of a poor woodcutter) asks her hated stepdaughter to go into the forest to borrow a light from her sister, who turns out to be Baba Yaga, who is also a cannibalistic witch. Besides highlighting the endangerment of children (as well as their own cleverness), the tales have in common a preoccupation with food and with hurting children: the mother or stepmother wants to avoid hunger, while the witch lures children to eat her house of candy so that she can then eat them.[7] Another tale of this type is the French fairy tale The Lost Children.[8] The Brothers Grimm also identified the French Finette Cendron and Hop o' My Thumb as parallel stories.[9]
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AdaptationsHansel and Gretel appear in the 1954 Looney Tunes short Bewitched Bunny with Hansel voiced by Mel Blanc and Gretel voiced by Bea Benederet.
Hansel and Gretel were featured in episodes of Sesame Street with Hansel performed by Peter Linz in Episode 4093, Heather Asch in Episode 4010, and by Matt Vogel in Episode 4025 while Gretel was performed by Noel MacNeal in Episode 4093 and by Leslie Carrara-Rudolph in Episode 4125.
In the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer entitled "Gingerbread," the bodies of two young children are found dead in a park. In the context of the episode, the bodies turn out to be those of Hansel and Gretel, a trickster demon who has, throughout history, posed as dead children sacrificed by witches, inciting fear among the townspeople. Their appearance in Sunnydale prompts the frightened mothers of the town to try burning Buffy, Willow and Amy at the stake. The demon is exposed and is killed by Buffy.
In the TV series Once Upon A Time, Hansel and Gretel are gathering kindling as their father cuts wood, but the father disappears. The wicked queen captures the children and, in return for their being returned to their father, orders them to visit the blind witch (who lives in a gingerbread house) and retrieve a satchel. The witch is thrown in the oven, and the children return with the satchel, containing a poisoned apple. The children are offered a home but would rather be with their father, so the queen throws them out. The queen has their father but refuses to release him. In the real world, the children Nicholas and Ava are homeless after their mother's death, while their biological father is a mechanic in Storybrooke and reluctant to be a parent.
The young adult novel "Pretty Bad Things", by C.J. Skuse, was strongly inspired by the "Hansel and Gretel" fairy tale and there are many nods to it throughout the book. Main characters, twins Paisley and Beau, are abandoned by their parents as children and become lost in woodland. They have a witch-like grandmother whose house is burned down by the girl twin, Paisley. There is also a media "trail of breadcrumbs" (in the shape of the crimes the teen protagonists commit as teenagers), and both twins are obsessed with candy.
In the 2011 animated film Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, Hansel and Gretel, voiced by Bill Hader and Amy Poehler respectively, are portrayed as two fat German children who have been kidnapped by an evil witch, thought to be the main antagonist. It is later revealed that Hansel and Gretel are actually the real villains of the film, as they pretended to be kidnapped in order to coerce the heroes into making the goodies that will make them powerful.
The Series 2 final episode of BBC's TV series Sherlock, titled "The Reichenbach Fall", features a fairy tale theme with Moriarty as the classic villain. When the son and daughter of an influential American politician get kidnapped from a pricey boarding school, it is up to Sherlock and Dr. Watson to find them. Sherlock soon makes the connection between Jim Moriarty's allusion to Grimm's Fairy Tales and his current case, allowing him to realize that he has just come across the story of Hansel and Gretel. The children are found eating candy laced with mercury in an abandoned sweets factory in Addlestone.
Terror Toons 2: The Sick and Silly Show - The witch planned to poison them with a rat and a bottle containing Nitroglycerine, but instead of killing them, it turns them into big headed, crazy cartoon characters: Hansel becomes a giant Demonic anthropomorphic rat, and Gretel becomes a criminally insane girl with ugly teeth and a big head. They rip the witch in half and almost immediately they are pulled from their world, to reality and began watching it.
Mickey and Minnie started as Hansel and Gretel in The House of Mouse.
In 2013, Paramount Pictures released the movie Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. It finds the brother and sister team all grown up and after witches that prey on young children.
Hansel & Gretel (2013), a direct-to-DVD mockbuster produced by The Asylum and directed by Anthony Ferrante, starred by Dee Wallace, Brent Lydic and Stephanie Greco.
Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013), a updated version distributed by Lionsgate and directed by David DeCoteau, starred by Eric Roberts, Vanessa Angel, Booboo Stewart and Fivel Stewart.