If you think back to your childhood you may remember some fairytales involving wolves. These stories include The Three Little Pigs (wolf tries to blow pigs’ houses down), Peter and the Wolf (wolf is captured and taken to the zoo), The Wolf and the Seven Kids (wolf eats a family of goats only to be gutted and filled with stones), and what you might remember hearing from these stories is that the wolf was the villain and sometimes the subject of nightmares.
Most wolf stories in the first half of the 20th century have been portrayed wolves as violent, cruel, and dangerous. Characters are to avoid ravenous wolves, or they end up paying the consequences. This may have something to do with public opinion of wolves in the first half of the 1900’s. In Utah, wolves were captured and killed by the hundreds from 1900 to 1930. Eventually, in 1930 the last wolf was killed.
More recently you may have seen wolves portrayed in stories as being honorable (Dances with Wolves), family oriented (Jungle Book), and most familiar to many as masculine and sexy (Twilight Series). This more recent portrayal of wolves has come with a new effort to bring wolves back into the places they once thrived.
Now that the wolves have made a comeback, which one of these two stereotypes are more accurate? This is one question I will try to answer throughout my blog. Should we see these animals as the hungry, Big Bad Wolf, or as the hunky and honorable Jacob, from Twilight? At least we don’t have to deal with conservation efforts of vampires.
No comments:
Post a Comment