The Wolf: Big and Bad?

In western society one of the first villainous monsters that we encounter is the Big Bad Wolf. He is the anthropomorphic representation of a sly wolf. It is through treachery that he aims to eat pigs and children. The city dweller is so far separated from the real world of the wolf, that few have problems telling their children the European folk tales in which he is depicted. The character himself is more man than wolf, as he talks to the main characters. The Big Bad Wolf is a villain by proxy. He represents the wickedness of the savage man. He is the man who has not chosen to use his higher faculties of reason. He is the beast that lurks within the hearts of all men. He is wild, and only cares of how to fulfill his lustful desires. He cares not for the innocents who must be sacrificed to satisfy his hunger.
In order for Big Bad Wolf stories to reach children the hero/ heroine needs to be defenseless, as a child. Little Red Riding Hood is a child who is off to take care of her grandmother, as she is defenseless herself. The wolf eats Grandma,before he can attack the sweet ripe young girl. For Little Red the danger begins as she enters the woods, and is confronted by the wolf. This enforces for the audience that the woods are a dangerous place, not like the city that we live in. The innocent does not stand a chance against the vicious wolf until the woodsman intervenes.
All victims of the Wolf are defenseless. The three little pigs are obviously intended to be children. The way that they taunt the wolf is similar to the way that children tease. In this case however the pigs are saved by the ingenuity of the last pig who build his house of bricks. The moral is the same though: the woods are a place to fear, they are wild and violent. The pigs are able to escape the Big Bad Wolf, because they abandoned their rustic digs, for the fortification that a city offers. You don't see many brick buildings in rural areas. Bricks are indigenous to the city.
We may instead think of the wolf as a poor villain. Instead of teaching our children to have a respectful fear of strangers in an urban environment, we teach them to be afraid of being gobbled up by a wolf in the woods. This is because the wolf represents the primal, the wild, all that good Christian children should fear. No child wants to grow up to be a savage wolf. Children who fear the Big Bad Wolf grow into adults who fear wolves, and by extension the wild. They grow into adults who want wolves out of the picture. They don't want to live in the woods, but in a domesticated, romantic vision of the woods. In this vision there is no room for the wolf, because he is so wild. So the wolf was brought to the brink of extinction. With his reintroduction he may have a comeback, but his reputation precedes him, and so he is faced with the NIMBY mentality keeping him from the woods. More and more people move further into the woods, changing them so that they are a suitable mild version of the woods, so that they will have nothing to fear.

Urbanite's Irrational Fears

Ever since humans began living in societies, they have feared the woods. Anything chthonic was dark and unreasoning. It was where the beasts lived. It was a place where you were not safe. The more urban a population, the more it feared what lurked outside the walls of the city. Rural populations were subject to less irrational fears of the woods. For the farmer the fear was that his livestock would be killed and eaten by wolves. The farmer couldn't let his children go outside at night for fear that some beast would kill them. The fears of the urbanite were more irrational. The city dweller created fantastical beasts that were much more horrific than anything that existed. While traveling through the wilderness he feared his imaginary monsters more than the highwaymen who were to rob and kill him.
Perhaps the real fear of the wilderness, was due to the darkness, the fear of the unknown. In the woods you can experience real darkness. Cities have always been lit up with lamps that remove the real darkness. Anyone who has spent a night in the woods on a new moon night knows what real darkness is. When only the stars are visible, and you fear you might not find camp after your 0300 bathroom break. For the urbanite, anything could exist in the darkness. Legends spring up when people, who can't see well in the dark, see shadows moving and tell their companions of the beasts that they have witnessed. Their friends tell others, who tell others, and the image of the beast is soon distorted into something that no longer resembles the animal that it was based on.
For the history of civilization man has feared the things that lurk in the shadows of the wilderness. From the serpent in the Garden of Eden to Jason Voorhees, citizens have mistrusted and feared what they imagine to live in the woods. Since there are so many dangerous animals in the woods, it reasons that anyone who would choose to live in the woods must themselves be dangerous. With all of the dangerous men in the woods, any woman who chose to live in the woods must be truly dangerous. The society comes to think of women that live on the outskirts of towns as witches who are able to control the beasts of the woods. Women who are to be feared and destroyed, just as the animals who live in the woods are. How many wolves were killed, because of the Germanic folk tales that demonized the Big Bad Wolf? How many women that lived outside of town were hunted and killed because of some overgrown fear of the dark? In this blog I will attempt to explore the many facets of the urbanite's fear of the woods, of the fantastical monsters that have sprung up from this fear, and of the things that city dwellers have done because of this fear. Hopefully it's gonna be a good ride.