Little Red Riding Hood is one of the most familiar and popular bedtime fairytales in theworld. It is a wonder that such a simple fairytale has been handed down for more than threehundred years and appears in more than one hundred versions. Based on the theory ofarchetypal criticism, this paper compares and analyses the four influential and wide-spreadversions of Little Red Riding Hood. In addition to exploring the psychological andenvironmental factors which drove primitive man to create this type of story, this paper alsodiscusses the core content and conflicts as well as the process and cause of the storysdisplacement. The common cultural and psychological connotations existing in both theEastern and Western archetypes are revealed and the moral and scope conveyed by thedifferent authors from different times and cultural backgrounds are examined.　　 The thesis is divided into three chapters. The introduction briefly presents the tale of LittleRed Riding Hood in its Chinese, French, German, and English versions, and demonstrates theapplicability of archetypal criticism to the story. The first chapter compares and summarizesthe types of the Chinese folklore Grandmother Wolf(Tiger), and concludes that it originatedfrom the tale of man-devouring ghosts. After tracing the story back to the primitive myth ofsunset, the archetype of the tale and the process of its displacement in Western countries isexplored. The second chapter discusses the similar traits of the opposing characters in the fourstories and the similar symbolic meanings of the various images, and summarizes the similarplot points and structures in the different versions. With the application of archetypal criticism,the contributing causes of the production and displacement of the tale are analyzed. The thirdchapter, by contrasting and analyzing the archetypal characters, ending, and metaphoricalmeaning of the tale in four versions respectively, demonstrates the causes of displacement inrelation to the times and the instruction functions the authors conveyed, and discussed theopposition and compromise of the heterosexual relationship in different times. The conclusionsummarizes the whole thesis: the Chinese Grandmother Tiger developed mainly following theideas of karma in Chinese traditional Culture, aiming at setting a wise and brave model forchildren. The Western Little Red Riding Hood developed mainly according to the taste of theaudience and the heterosexual relationship dyn.am~c~ of the times. Perraults Little Red RidingHood was a tale for adults, disseminated through the upper-class salons, which warned younggirls to beware of seducers. The Brothers Grimm revised it as a fairytale conforming to theview of Victorian families and a middle-class audience, to teach the children to be obedient.Angela Carters adaptation challenged the traditional meaning of fairytales and claimed equalfights for women from the feminist angle after illustrating the new heterosexual relationship.However the Little Red Riding Hood story develops, its core has never changed. As aninstance of Jungs "racial recollection", Little Red Riding Hood, no matter how differently it isadapted according to the social and cultural pattern, will still be handed down from onegeneration to the next and remain popular with people all over the world forever.Key words: Archetypal Criticism, Displacement, Little Red Riding Hood, Fairytale, Moral.