The Girl Who Trod On The Deaf By Hans Christian Andersen Essay

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Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf” depicts a young girl whose selfish actions led her to her death, and years of torment. Andersen produces a gruesome tale of how immoral deeds can led to an afterlife of torture and suffering. However, Andersen’s fairy tale creates a deeper message for his child audience; if the sins of the dead are not prayed for, then those loved ones will rot and suffer for eternity. Andersen’s ghastly fairy tale paints a very vivid image of how mortality works. Starting off with a sinful young girl, Inger, that children can relate and sympathize with, as all young children have moments of immoral behavior. Inger depicts the worse qualities in people, selfishness, vanity, and superiority. Her description entitles “pulling off [flies] wings”, feeling ashamed of her mother who goes “about in rags” while she was “finely dressed”, and even treading on a loaf a bread in a puddle to get “across without wetting her toes” (Tatar 237). Inger’s rude and ungrateful attitude portrays the sinful nature of …show more content…

Andersen goes through great lengths to describe Inger’s agony and suffering while she stands as an erect statue, slowly decaying. He describes her dress “smeared…with one great blotch of slime” with toads peeping out of the folds of her dress, and how snake entwined with her hair “dangled from her neck” all while she stood unable to move her body (Tatar 237). This description of Inger would likely be terrifying to a young child, but Andersen does not stop her torment there. Inger’s physical torture is only half of the suffering Inger undergoes. Not only is she eternally hungry and tormented with falling loafs of bread, she deals with mental anguish as she hears everything ever said about her. Inger is conscious of every time someone speaks her name, hearing the stories told about the girl who trod on the loaf, and her mother’s

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