#so i dont post literary analysis at 2 am lmao

[thegeekyartist]

I'm tipsy and watching the 2011 Into the Woods and I'm having Thoughts™. Truly the best version.

Changing the narrator from the Bakers dad to a CHILD?? A kid who ran away from home?? Acting out and directing the whole thing with his toys?? I'm insane thinking about it.

A small boy, scared and alone in the woods, telling himself the story of an entire village of people scared and alone in the woods...The witch's lament about keeping children home and protected hits even harder when told through the lens of a child who ran away, who probably heard all the same words from his parents. "Stay a child while you can be a child."

AND THEN! The story starts to fall apart the longer our narrator stays away from home (Act 2). He realizes that running away doesn't solve anything. A main theme of Into the Woods is what you think you know vs. what the world teaches you. This boy is learning things he wasn't ready for, things his parents were probably trying to protect him from. Even early on, we see him standing close to the Bakers Wife when she says "maybe we should go home".

And he tries to escape the consequences! He wants out of the narrative - "I tell the story, I'm not part of it!" - and is forced into it by the witch anyway, immediately leading into (part of) her song, "no matter what you do, children won't listen".

And then we don't see the child again until he wakes in the woods!! And (spoilers) we see that the Baker - the one struggling with his role as a father for the whole play - is actually the NARRATOR'S father, who is just as distressed as his son and has (presumably) spent the entirety of the play looking for him.

We see a lost and scared little boy trying to make sense of the world and the relationship he has with his father, and a father who feels like he cant be the person his child needs, reconciling at the end and telling the story together.

It is a PERFECT change and I love it so much.