The Giant
antagonist · giant
Fills the whole room, has to duck to get through it, and says the most famous four words in English children's literature.
What they are like
- Kind
- 2/10
- Brave
- 7/10
- Clever
- 3/10
- Honest
- 7/10
- Curious
- 4/10
- Patient
- 3/10
How we meet them
As a shaking house before he is a person. We hear him arrive from inside an oven.
Personality
Loud, appetite-driven and not especially bright. He is frightening because of size and volume rather than cunning, and he is wrong about the smell three times running.
What they want
Breakfast, his hen, his money and his harp, in that order.
How they change
Robbed three times in his own kitchen, chases a boy down a beanstalk, and lands in a ploughed field.
How they speak
At enormous volume and mostly in one rhyme. He repeats it every visit and is corrected every time.
How the story treats them
His wife is entirely unimpressed by him, which does more to defuse him than anything Jack does.
One surprising thing
FEE-FI-FO-FUM is older than the tale. A version of it appears in Shakespeare's King Lear, written around 1606, which means the rhyme was already well known then.
If they were real today
He would be the person who announces everything at full volume and notices nothing.
Things they say
- “FEE-FI-FO-FUM, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN.”
- “Lay.”
- “Play.”
Key moments
FEE-FI-FO-FUM
He fills the doorway, sits down, and announces that he smells an Englishman, and is told it is the sheep.
“FEE-FI-FO-FUM, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN.”
Lay
He puts a small brown hen on the table and says one word, and it lays an egg of solid gold, four times.
“Lay.”
Sitting up in a ploughed field
Winded, furious and entirely unhurt, in a country where everything is too small for him, and a woman a third of his sitting height walks out to talk to him.
Who they know
The Giant's Wifefamily
He announces there is an Englishman in the house. She tells him it is the sheep. Three times.
Characters like The Giant
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