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Summary Of The Company Of Wolves

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The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter is a modern and darker retelling of the classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. The story follows a young girl in a red shawl as she travels through the woods to go to her grandmother’s house. Along the way, she meets a handsome and brooding stranger with a dominant presence and dark ulterior motives. Jeffery Jerome Cohen states that “through the body of the monster fantasies of aggression, domination, and invasion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delimited and permanently liminal space” (25). The Company of Wolves supports Cohen's sixth thesis that "the fear of the monster is really a kind of desire" (25). It uses both form and content to highlight a sense of longing and yearning. By showing that all characters, from the second person narrator to the random extras to the main character, are intrigued by the werewolf, the story shows that people desire what scares them the most.
The first half of this story is told from the second person point of view, which is significant because it places the reader in the story, right in the middle of the action. This gives a scarier element to the reading because suddenly the reader has become the main character and they are being desired and hunted. Despite feeling scared at the prospect of the wolf, people keep reading. The form of the story serves to prove Cohen’s thesis because people continue on. Psychologist Jeffrey Goldstein, of the University of Utrecht, says people continue reading and watching scary things because they want to feel fear. (Griffiths). Humans have a psychological desire to view things even if they are scary. One could even say they crave and desire this fear. Thus, by telling the story in second person, Carter preys on that desire. Humans fear monsters but this ultimately is a kind of desire because they want to finish the story and know the outcome.
The side characters in the story also show fear and an inexplicable desire for the werewolf. Before the story of the young girl begins Carter tells about a woman from “our” village who is a newlywed. On her wedding night, her new husband insisted he go outside alone to relieve himself. After she reluctantly agreed he left and never came back. The

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