Essays on literary works - 2023

Moral of Andersen's Fairy Tales
Andersen Hans Christian

Morality grows into a figurative system. According to N. A. Dobrolyubov, in Andersen’s fairy tales “there is not even the slightest reasoning. This is where the art and talent of the storyteller is visible: his stories do not need a moralizing tail.

A piggy bank full of coins prides itself on the fact that "it has money up to its neck and can buy up all the toys." But then the pig fell from the closet and shattered to smithereens. “All coins and coins scattered in different directions. And the clay shards from the piggy bank were swept away along with the garbage ”(“ Piggy Bank Pig).

The darning needle is so noble and so thin that it cannot find a worthy place for itself in life. Broken, rusty, useless, she found herself in the gutter and still continued to praise her nobility and virtues ("Darning Needle"). Various human weaknesses and vices, ugly social relations that give rise to selfishness, greed, class prejudice, seem even more ridiculous and ugly when they are transferred from reality to a conditional, fairy-tale world.

Arrogant garden flowers "the less fragrant, the more important." How can they notice a small, modest daisy clinging to the fence! ("Chamomile"). The “important, learned, rich” mole wears a black velvet coat, and “all his bins and cellars are full, we are full.” He lives in his deep hole and hates the sun most of all ("Thumbelina").

What a commotion arose in the poultry yard when the "ugly duckling" crept in there! He was "pecked, pushed and showered with ridicule by absolutely everyone - both ducks and chickens." There is a bird etiquette in the poultry yard. The fattest and most noble duck of the Spanish breed wears a red patch on its foot. "This is the highest distinction that a duck can receive." Driven out by the "artistocrats" of the poultry yard, the ugly duckling finds himself in a "petty-bourgeois environment" - in the society of Mr. Cat and Mrs. Hen, who "always said:" We are the world! - and considered themselves half of the whole world, moreover, its better half. And then the ugly duckling, pecked and hunted, turns into a snow-white swan ... This wonderful tale contains not only a social allegory, but also a poetic confession of Andersen himself: a story about the hardships and humiliations he experienced.