The Big Bad Wolf

Big Bad Wolf
Disney's version of the Big Bad Wolf.
First appearance	Three Little Pigs (May 27, 1933)
Created by	Larry White Walt Disney
Billy Bletcher (1933–1941) Jim Cummings (2001–2003) Sam Edwards (early 1960s) Tony Pope (1988)
Information
Aliases	Zeke Midas Wolf (real name)

The Big Bad Wolf is a fictional wolf appearing in several cautionary tales that includes some of Aesop's Fables and Grimms' Fairy Tales. Versions of this character have appeared in numerous works, and has become a generic archetype of a menacing predatory antagonist, sometimes referred to as the Big Bad.

Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, the Russian tale Peter and the Wolf, reflect the theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly, but the general theme of restoration is very old.

The dialog between the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood has its analogies to the Norse Þrymskviða from the Elder Edda; the giant Þrymr had stolen Mjölner, Thor's hammer, and demanded Freyja as his bride for its return. Instead, the gods dressed Thor as a bride and sent him. When the giants note Thor's unladylike eyes, eating, and drinking, Loki explains them as Freyja not having slept, or eaten, or drunk, out of longing for the wedding.

Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw Little Red Riding Hood in terms of solar myths and other naturally occurring cycles, stating that the wolf represents the night swallowing the sun, and the variations in which Little Red Riding Hood is cut out of the wolf's belly represent the dawn. In this interpretation, there is a connection between the wolf of this tale and Skoll or Fenrir, the wolf in Norse mythology that will swallow the sun at Ragnarök.