Introductions
General Introduction
In my childhood I loved to listen to fairy tales and stories, so my mother always told me a fairy tale wrote by Hans Christian Andersen before I went to bed. Many of them are still alive in my memory. I was also dreaming of that I will be a role in his fairy tales, when I was listening to the story. I could say that l was growing up in his fairy tales, and his fairy tales brought boundless happiness to my childhood. This is why until now I still would like to chose his fairy tales to write my essay.Usually the fairy tales are just like stories for children; grown-ups do not take them seriously. But Andersen’s fairy tales are not only for children, but also for adults. Elias Bredsdorff who is Danish author had ever criticized his stories “Andersen’s fairy tales and stories are also outstandingly good reading for grown-ups, indeed, some of the stories are much more suited for the grown-ups than for the small ones” it is really like from what he said above, every time when you read his fairy tales, you can realize some new methods and some new enlightenment in his fairy tales which were not found before. It could be our favorite reading material in our childhood; it could also be our favorite reading material in teen-age; in the old age, I think we still would like to read it, moreover we will appreciate more and understand better the meaning of his fairy tales.Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales express the yearn for ideal world, whilst they also expose the darkness of society in that time, and satirize the ignorant ruler. The story has plenty of imagination, very nice and appropriate words, it is also very poetic. Therefore it is valuable reading for all ages.
The Author Presentation
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875).Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). He was born in Odense in 1805, the son of a poor shoemaker and a simple peasant woman. His father died when he was eleven and at the age of fourteen he set out to seek fame and fortune as an actor in Copenhagen. He failed as an actor but for three years he was helped by various patrons, from scholars to the king himself, and at seventeen he was sent to school as a state protégé. Once he had passed his examinations he chose to write, becoming eventually Denmark’s most illustrious son and popular all over the world. Hans Andersen died in 1875.
Andersen's first book of tales “Tales, Told for Children” was published in 1835. It included such stories as “The Tinderbox,” “Little Claus and Big Claus,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “Little Ida's Flowers.” Two further installments of stories made up the first volume of Eventyr (1837); a second volume was completed in 1842; new collections appeared in 1843, 1847, and 1852. The genre was expanded in “New Fairy Tales and Stories”.
Essay Research Question
The fairy tales are usually very beautiful and touching stories, but in Andersen’s fairy tales death is appearing frequently. It is very interesting for me to find out why he used death in his fairy tales. Because I want to know how does he make children accept and understand death in his fairy tales? This would be very good research question in my essay.So I have chosen four fairy tales written by Andersen which are dealing with death. “The little matches seller”, “The little mermaid”, “The dead child”, and “On the last day”.These four fairy tales are not only about death, but there have some parts of story describing the dead scene. So I will quote some special and important sentences or paragraphs in the story which are dealing with death and also have some connections with the research question, then I will explain and evaluate them according to the research question.
Body/Development
The term “fairy tale”, if taken literally, should refer only to stories about fairies which usually use magic and fantasy to make children interested in that. The term “fairy tale”, however, is normally used to refer to a much wider class of narrative, namely stories about an individual, almost always young who confront strange or magical events. The term “fairy tales” more often involves ordinary people who have experiences of a supernatural kind and are affected by charms, disguises, spells, or other fantastic occurrences. A fairy tale usually finishes with a happy ending or a fantastic one.
Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales also contain the style of normal fairy tales, because they use magic and fantasy or beautiful ending. However Andersen also has his own idea about presenting unhappy endings to children. Andersen does not twist things away from their natural direction in order to bring about a happy ending. He was not afraid to show children cruelty, sorrow, even death. He is gentle and patient in teaching children that life does not always have a happy face. Stories are presented so gently that the children understand and are not hurt, and he never overburdens his readers with sadness.
For example “death”, it is a word that makes children feels scary and fearful. Not many authors will use it in their fairy tales, but Andersen has a lot of stories dealing with dead. How does he present death and let his little reader understand it, we could analysis them in following fairy tales.
The Little Mermaid
The story is about a little mermaid who is madly in love with a prince. They meet in an accidental sailing disaster. But she is a mermaid; she can not be close to the prince. Therefore she acts against her mermaid nature and suffers so much pain; she even loses her beautiful voice in order to get legs from a witch. But if she can’t marry the prince, she will disappear in the sea as the foam. Eventually she can not achieve her dream of marrying him. She has lost her eternal life and she has lost her prince. She dies a day before the prince marries another princess.This is tragic love story between the mermaid and the prince. But how can we understand the death of the mermaid in the end. In which way does Andersen make children accept her death?“The little mermaid” is written on the basis of the polar tension “life-death”. The death symbol is introduced first; the sea is the symbol of death. “Because when the ship sank the crew were drowned, and only as dead men did they come to the palace of the sea king.” This is evidence that sea is symbol of death. The sun is the symbol of life which contrasts to the sea, as “the sun rose out of the sea, its rays felt warm and soft on the deathly cold foam.” Andersen uses death and soul ingeniously in this fairy tale. He thinks that life is short, but the soul is eternal. The life is just like foam, only exist a short while, but he soul is like the sea that could exist eternally. He encourages people not to care about death, and not be afraid to die, because there is a better place waiting for you if your soul is pure.Mermaids do not have souls, so after 300 years they will not exist any more, but mankind can still be alive throughout their souls. Therefore the little mermaid is longing to get a soul.But how can we have a pure soul? In the story when the prince engages another princess, this symbolizes the mermaid’s life is going to end. But she still has a chance to save her 300 years’ life, when her sisters give her the knife to kill the prince, which can give her back her former nature. However she doesn’t murder the prince. Instead of taking his life she chooses to lose her own. In this situation she completely forgets about herself in order to save him. All those deeds are because love makes her treat him as her own property; her love is of the kind that will save him, even if she forfeits her own life by doing so. And it also means that the mermaid wants to get an eternal and pure soul. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose his soul, but whoever loses his life for honest will save it.” This could be the motto of the whole fairy tale, emphasizing on “the pure soul is much more important than your life” again, and make people have a correct way to treat death.As a consequence her soul is saved by Jesus, Andersen’s sentimentality finally conquers his artistic honesty, and this is more acceptable way for children for understand the fairy tales end as the salvation of the mermaid’s soul instead the end with only her sacrifice.
The end is also saying to children: “you should be well-behaved and do only good deeds and your soul will go to heaven eventually.” The prince’s love and the idea of maintaining a pure soul are both meanings of this fairy tale. The death in the end is not cruel, because she dies for love, and she will go to heaven with her eternal soul. This ending doesn’t make children feel scary, maybe only a lit bit sad, because this death is valuable. But some of his stories are not like this; some of them have a trigic ending, for example“The Little Match Seller”. How does Andersen make children accept death in the unhappy ending?
The Little Match Seller
This story has a very sad plot with a very unhappy ending, because that girl is frizzing to death in the New Year’s Eve. The meaning of this story is satirizing the ruthless society in that time, and the author’s sympathy to that little girl’s life. This type of story and this type of death ending are very difficult to be accepted by children, becaue their naive mentality can not bear such a horrible and heavy ending.
In fact Andersen will not let children accept this kind of death ending, eventually he uses God and Heaven to achieve his aim, so most children can accept this end, because they fell that the girl hasn’t died, she is going to live with her grandmother somewhere else where there is no cold and no starvation, and she will have a good life there and enjoy it so much.The first half of story tells us about how cold and ruthless was the society of that period; you can not even feel any warm or happiness on New Year’s Eve. It is also about how miserable that girl is, because she didn’t even sell one single match the entire night. This is a very depressing beginning. But we suddenly see the positive part when the girl lightens the first match in the middle of story. You could see this poor girl; she has a lovely fantasy, a dream in her mind. And then she lightens all the matches one by one, because she wants to keep these dreams forever. When she been those lovely dreams on the frizzing wall, she forgets everything around her—cold, starvation. Finally she is dead in the street, she is dead on New Year’s Eve, and she is dead only because she had that happy twinkling dreams.The author uses the God and Christianity to reduce the reader’s pain from end of story, he tells the people that death is horrible, but it depends, if the death is extricating from the real society, the death from extrication maybe better than being alive, because they will go to an ideal place where there is no cold and no starvation. And they will have their new life there.
This way of combining the fairy tales with Christianity to tell an unhappy ending, it could be accepted by all ages. Because readers will only pay attention on that beautiful ideal world, whilst they will ignore the death which have brought bitterness to them.
The Dead Child
“The Little Mermaid” and “The Little Match Seller” both tell the reader not to be afraid of death, because there is a beautiful place waiting for you. And they both stress on that the soul is more important than life. But “The dead child” has a bit of a different angle when it is dealing with death.
When you read the title, you will think that is a story dealing with death. But it is not all about death. The story tells about a mother and her dead son. She can’t forget her dead son, so she wants to get him back from God, but she can’t. Therefore she considers following her son into death. Eventually she gives up, because she still has a responsibility for her daughter and her husband. She will also make they fell sad if she does so. The story makes children feel sad when they read it, but it is still can be accepted by children. The ending is not unhappy, because the dead boy is living in happiness and his mother also gets comfort when she knows that her son is living well.
The story also stresses that the soul is more important than life and people will go to a beautiful place when they die, similar opinions can be identified in “The Little Mermaid” and “The Little Match Seller”. But this story also wants to fell that death is not only a way to be extrication from anguish. If you chose death or if you want to sacrifice yourself, it must be valuable, you can not die for nothing. Don’t choose death, because that would give you family anguish too.
On the Last Day
This story is touching the Bible and the Christian religion deeper than the others, the story uses God to judge the person on his most sacred the day of his life—death day. It is not difficult to be accepted by children, because there is no violent plot in the story. And the ending is very common; it neither belongs to happy endings nor unhappy endings. But it is difficult to understand the meaning when children reading this story. What does Andersen want to tell us in this story?
On your death day, when you glance backwards at your life. Do you think that you are perfect or do you think that you have behaved well? At such a moment the sinner trembles with fear, he has no one to lean on but the pious man leans on god. It means death is not important in your life; the most important thing is to be a good man, and have good deed to others in your life. If you do so, you don’t need to think about your last day, because that is not really your last day because your soul still alive, you are good deed and well-behave person, you ought to have eternal soul in heaven. Vice versa, your dead day must be your last day if you are bad person.
Conclusion
Fairy tales belong to literature; you can not only think it is story for children, because the story is also for grown-ups, fairy tales are very traditional oral literature. After I have read this four Andersen’s fairy tales, and investigate them according to research question. I think I must try not only to translate the sense but the spirit as well, because this is his art.
Fairy tales are stories about fairies which usually use magic and fantasy to make children interested in that. But it is not real fairy tales, Andersen’s fairy tales take place in the real world, no matter how exotic and strange their backgrounds may be. Witches, Mermaids may appear; but they are not figments of anyone’s imagination; they are as real as the princess or the peasant. This way he makes his reader understanding more about his fairy tales, because those things appear in his stories that are just from their life. This is why He is not only the most famous of all Danes, but the circulation of his stories and fairy tales is second only to the circulation of the Bible.
Death is often giving authors a trouble to present it, because they have to think how it can be accept by children. But Andersen is not afraid to tell children about death. Death, violence, unhappy ending,—none of these things has been a hindrance to the addicted Andersen’s children.
He is gentle and patient in teaching children that life does not always have a happy face; death is the inevitable, the logical end to living. He uses Christian sense to explain to children, people will go to a new world after they die. It is Christian outlook on mankind.And He uses a lot of words to describe how beautiful that new world will be, that does not make children to overburden with death, and it avoids their sadness from unhappy ending.
