Deep Thoughts

Have you read The Three Little Pigs lately? There are many, many versions of this story. The one written by Paul Galdone is one of the classics–and the ending is particularly savage. In it, the wolf handily devours the first two pigs but not the third because the third pig is too clever. Then, in a reversal of grotesquerie, the third pig eats the wolf for supper after boiling him alive in a steaming hot cauldron of water. Yummy!

I read this book to my kindergarten class yesterday. One of the first things that someone pointed out was that when the third pig eats the wolf, he is essentially eating his brothers too (or at least some digested version of them). Most kids will assume that the brothers are either still alive but kicking and screaming inside the wolf’s belly, or dead but still whole. That’s how digestion works, isn’t it?

My five and six year old students were trying to rationalize how the third pig could have eaten his own brothers. Didn’t he know that his poor brothers were inside the wolf? If he knew it and he ate the wolf anyway, what would that mean for the pig? How could he possibly live happily ever after when his brothers were dead? And if the pig didn’t know that the wolf ate his brothers and he was just going merrily along with his life (he can be seen raking the garden the next day), isn’t that even more tragic?

Another student argued that the pig should not have killed the wolf because a wolf is a wild animal, and wild animals should be protected. Should a wild animal who just ate your brothers be protected? Who is allowed to eat who? Do two wrongs, or in this case three wrongs, make a right?