Hansel

Dramatic Monologue:
Hansel


Character Description: Hansel is a ten year old boy. He has blonde hair and bright blue eyes just like his mother. He is thin, very thin. His skin is sun burnt and dry. His palms are callused and his knuckles are cracked. He would stand four foot eleven inches if he could stand up straight. He wears the same shirt worn through at the elbows and the same torn brown coveralls with legs that rise above his ankles. He has cut the toes open on his shoes long ago, he owns no socks.

Context: Hansel is speaking to the plot of ground where his mother is buried as he prepares himself for a trip he is about to take into the woods with his father, little sister and new step-mother.

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Hansel: Mother. (kneels, leaning forward, his mouth to the dirt as if to get close enough for his mother to hear his whispers.) Something terrible is about to happen.

(Pause) (Hansel straightens up, sitting back on his heals.) Father is taking us into the woods. He means to leave us there.

I heard him talking in hushed voice last night to that evil new wife, Dagmar.

It is her idea. They have been bickering each night becasue the warm winter has ruined fathers market for wood and there is no money and little food left.

Her plan is to bring us deep into the black forest and leave us. She told father that a richman would find us and we could grow up happy, with food, new clothes and schooling. All the things she said father can not give us. She told him if he truely loved us he would let us go.

(Pause)

(In a strong and serious voice) Mother, I won't let Dagmar get rid of us.

(Looks at a circle of white stones that surround his mothers rose bush.) I promised you, Mother, I would take after father and Gretel. I have not done so. (Reaching over, he takes several fist fulls of the stones and stuffs them in his pockets.) But I will be strong now. I will remember everything you told me about the woods. Which berries are good, never steal from the birds and never follow a burning wisp at night, no matter how comforting the light may be in the blackness.

(Standing) I will find a way to bring Grethel back home to you and father.

(Turning Hansel walks toward the small cottage which is now under the cast of the long shadows of the old forest.)