Roald Dahl's Sharpshooter Red Riding Hood and Ecocriticism in Revolting Rhymes

An ecocritical lens can be applied in analysing Roald Dahl's last two stories of Revolting Rhymes – ‘Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf’ and ‘The Three Little Pigs’. In Dahl's version, Little Red Riding Hood is neither naïve nor innocent not to recognise the Wolf in Grandma's clothes. Interestingly, the Wolf, excited that the girl will ‘taste like caviare’, is irritated when Red Riding Hood diverts from her lines in the original fairy tale and says to the Wolf, ‘But Grandma, what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.’ Moreover, in the sequel to the story, Little Red Riding Hood ‘helps’ the third ‘Piggy’, who is anxious that the Wolf will blow up his house of bricks with dynamite. However, the reversal or twist is unexpected when Little Red Riding Hood mercilessly shoots another wolf and slaughters even the cheering piglet, turning them into wolfskin coats and a pigskin travelling case. Dahl's ‘revolting’ poems point out the danger of children growing up into anthropocentric beings and criticise the blatant consumerism of acquiring unnecessary fur coats and animal-hide bags. It can also be read as a nudge for readers to think about undervalued animal rights and overhunting, bringing on species extinction in the era of the Anthropocene.