Hans Christian Andersen was Lonely and desperately wanted to find love. This longing and failure to find someone showed through into his work. In his work cupid is portrayed as deceptive and evil. The Little Mermaid is the most often cited example of Andersen’s loneliness. The protagonist goes through much pain and loneliness for the one she loves, only to have him choose someone over her. In the short story The Sunbeam and the Prisoner, Andersen shows how fleeting love and happiness were in his life. Andersen’s piece The shadow shows his feelings of inadequacy. In The Happy Family a family of snails have nothing but are repeatedly described as happy.
Hans Christian Andersen’s story The Saucy Boy is very telling of his beliefs in love. The story is about cupid. Andersen’s depiction of cupid paints him as an evil being. Deceptive is the best word to describe the portrayal of cupid. He first deceives an old man by pretending to be freezing in a rain storm. After he is let into the old man’s home he shoots him in the heart. After telling all the local children about his encounter with cupid, they try to stay away from him. Cupid sneaks up on children and stabs them in the heart. Andersen goes into detail about how he even stabs good religious girls. This is an example of how evil cupid is. This depiction of an evil god of love shows how Andersen felt about his love life. Throughout his entire life he had crushes on many people but was never able to have a serious relationship.
The Little Mermaid is the most often cited story when demonstrating Hans Christian Andersen’s lonely life. The story is a great metaphor for Andersen’s longing for love. The little mermaid spends her childhood caring for a statue of...
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...in his writing. In The Saucy Boy Andersen creates a lying, conniving, evil version of cupid. This shows what he thought about love. All the pain that the little mermaid goes through is telling of the heartbreak Andersen has felt. Love and hope were fleeting in Andersen’s life. This is illustrated by The prisoner and the Sunbeam. Andersen’s short story The Shadow shows how inadequate Hans Christian Andersen Felt. In his story The Happy Family Andersen seems almost envious of a family of snails that have lost a lot.
Works Cited
Andersen, Hans. The Saucy Boy.
Trans. Paull hca.gilead.org.il
Andersen, Hans. The Little Mermaid.
Trans. Paull hca.gilead.org.il
Andersen, Hans. The Sunbeam and the Prisoner.
Trans. Paull hca.gilead.org.il
Andersen, Hans. The Shadow.
Trans. Paull hca.gilead.org.il
Andersen, Hans. The Happy Family.
Trans. Paull hca.gilead.org.il
Another interesting aspect the reader might recognize in these stories is the theme of acceptance and integration to something either known or unknown to them. Most of these stories deal with having to change who they are or what they would become like Nilsa, the boy, and others, they have all had to choose what they wanted for there life and accept the fact that if they did not take serious measures they would not be integrated into society prosperously.
Most women in their childhood had probably dreamt of being a princess and meeting their charming prince. As Walt Disney’s figures have been influential in this sense, the ideal portrayal of princesses still attracts young girls who imitate them, their lifestyle and their physical appearance. In Sleeping Beauty (1959) and in The Little Mermaid (1989) the narration is focused on the search for true love, personified by a prince, for self-accomplishment. It is crucial to differentiate the representation of femininity of the two protagonists in the two movies to better understand if the role of Princesses has changed over those last thirty years. The main figures in both movies
His novel as a fairy story is a satire, tragic book written to relate with the
Under the sea, in an idyllic and beautiful garden, stands a statue of a young man cut out of cold stone – for the Little Mermaid who knows nothing but the sea, the statue stands as an emblem of the mysterious over-world, a stimulus for imagination and sexual desire, an incentive for expansion of experience, and most predominately, an indication that something great and all-encompassing is missing from her existence. Traces of curiosity and a vague indication of the complexities of adult desires mark the child mermaid; in such a stage of development, the statue will suffice. However, as the Little Mermaid reaches puberty, the statue must allegorically come alive in order to parallel the manifestation of her new-found adult desires – the statue must become a prince in his world of adulthood above the sea. Thus, powered by an insistent and ambiguous longing for self-completion, the Little Mermaid embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and, to her ultimate misfortune, prematurely abandons her child-like self as sexual lust and the lust for an adult life takes hold of her.
Although Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” published in 1837, contains many patronizing nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a value system that at least acknowledges the legitimacy of femininity shapes the fairytale. Unfortunately, Walt Disney’s 1989 film version of “The Little Mermaid” eliminates the values that affirm femininity in the original story (Trites 145)
As children grow up, they are exposed to the “perfect” fairy tale, portraying the roles of the perfect man and woman, according to Andrea...
In both Hans Christian Andersons “The Little Mermaid,” and Disney’s version of the story, the main character— a young and beautiful mermaid— waits anxiously for her fifteenth birthday to venture from her father’s underwater castle to the world above the water. As the story carries on the mermaids priorities change; her modest and selfless nature is revealed towards the end in Andersen’s version. However, Disney’s version encompasses a rather shallow ending and plot throughout. The theme found in comparing the two versions reveal that Andersen’s substance trumps Disney’s entertainment factor in fairy tales.
The fairy tales that we have become so familiar with are embedded with love, imagination and enchantment. In truth, these are just common archetypes; originally fairy tales had a much darker backdrop. They were once symbols of sexualisation and brutality as not everything ended happily ever after. Deriving from promiscuous and overlooked on goings from the 19th century (such as molestation), these ideas were later suppressed when they became children’s tales. John Updike described traditional fairy tales as ‘The pornography of their day’, hence they contained elements of wish-fulfilment and gratification such as rape, pleasure and attainment. This is true to a certain extent but they also consisted of violence, mutiny and injustice. An exploration
Most works of literature derive the basis of their meaning from a moment of time of the respective author that directly relates to situations that influence him as a person. Because Hans Christian Andersen encountered first-hand the struggles of an impoverished lifestyle in infancy, he expresses the problems associated with life in his short fairytale The Stead Fast Tin Soldier. In order to elicit a posterity that would not otherwise understand the perseverance and struggles that accompany success, he uses the fairytale as a mechanism for persuasion. When composing a piece of literature for the purpose of elucidating an emotion, making analysis, or, as in the case of The Steadfast Tin Soldier, to persuade, an author uses many tools of his arsenal, known in its generic collective as rhetoric. In order to achieve what he desires in this piece of work, a story that encourages personal individuality, drive, and the pursuit of self-actualization, Andersen uses many measures of rhetoric such as juxtaposition, symbolism, irony, motifs, and emotional manipulation.
A fairy tale is seemingly a moral fiction, intended mainly for children. A lesson in critical analysis, however, strips this guise and reveals the naked truth beneath; fairy tales are actually vicious, logical and sexual stories wearing a mask of deceptively easy language and an apparent moral. Two 19th Century writers, the Grimm brothers, were masters at writing these exaggerated stories, bewitching young readers with their prose while padding their stories with allusion and reference: an example of which is "Rapunzel." Grimm's "Rapunzel" is packed with religious symbolism, which lends a new insight to the meaning of this classic story.
Fairytales and folktales have been told around the campfire, in the living room, the class room, and before bedtime for centuries. First told orally, the “… stories had to have remarkable features in order to remain memorable (Nodelman 246).” These stories were passed down from storyteller to audience until they were eventually written down and collected for consumption by the public. Due to the passing of time and fallibility the stories have changed throughout the years and slightly differ from culture to culture, however, “Stories similar to “Cinderella” can be found in historical records from as far back as the seventh century, and from a variety of places around the world (Nodelman 246).” Although the classic tales differ in various ways from their modern counterparts (such as Disney films, etc.), the characters and their journeys are still very much identifiable.
There are many fairy tales that have been discussed in this class. The most interesting stories to me are Snow White by Brother Grimm and Ever After: A Cinderella Story directed by Andy Tennant based on Cinderella by Charles Perrault. There are many different versions of Snow White and Cinderella from numerous cultures. In every version, both stories are known as children bed time stories. In addition, the purpose of both stories is to give a life lesson to the children about overcoming evil to attain happiness. At first, every fairy tale has to deal with evil that threatens the protagonist, but in the end, good must always win. In the same way, both of the fairy tales have a similar scenario of a character that is beautiful and has an equally sweet disposition, but is thwarted by an antagonist
The first component mentioned by Erikson is the notion of intimacy which is shown through the relations taking place between the main character of Artist and his sexual partners in his adolescence. In the novel the main character, Stephen, begins as a young catholic boy who is then put through school and as his family begins to lose money he must be removed to a less expressive school so his father can continue to pay the tuition fees for his education. Stephen becomes increasingly embarrassed by his family situation and the ...
In the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce creates a deeply personal and emotional portrait to every man. Joyce’s main character, Stephen Dedalus, encounters universal feelings of detachment, guilt, and awakening. Rather than stepping back and remembering the characteristics of infancy and childhood from and adult perspective, Joyce uses the language the infant was enveloped in. Joyce also uses baby Stephen’s viewpoint to reproduce features of infancy.
Have you ever watched the movie “The Little Mermaid”? Well if not you should as it’s a Disney classic that every child enjoyed. Many people don’t know however that it was based on a different story with the same concept. There are a ton of similarities and differences between these two though that I’ll cover in this paper. So now lets get on to some of the similarities.