The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen is about a very poor girl who is trying to sell matches one cold winter day. She has no shoes and her feet are blue from the cold. She has not sold any matches and no one has given her any money, not even a penny. She does not want to go home for fear of being beaten, so she finds a corner and sits down with her feet tucked under her. She decides to light one match to warm her hands a little. When she does, she starts seeing beautiful things in the fire light, food and warm fires. Then she lights another match and sees her dead grandmother. When the match went out her grandmother went away. The girl lights a whole bunch of matches and cries for her grandmother to take her along. The girl sees herself go to heaven with her grandmother and dies.
One motif in this story is fairy godmothers. The girl’s grandmother is like her fairy godmother because she takes the girl away from a world of pain and fear. It is also unusual that while most fairy god mothers only give gifts, like with Cinderella, yet the little girl’s grandmother gave her the gift of a life free of pain and full of love.
One unusual feature of this story is the beautiful things the girl sees in the fire light. It is as if she is going to the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of seeing her life flash before her eyes, the girl sees what she wishes her life was like, warm and full of food.
I think the topics of this story are poverty and the triumph of the poor. The little girl lived in extreme poverty but she triumphed over that when her grandmother took her to heaven.
I think the theme is sometimes it is better to die. The little girl was is so much pain and fear that she wanted to die. She wanted to go with her grandmother. I think this story is saying that if you really need him god will know and come to help, even if that means taking you from this life.
One motif in this story is fairy godmothers. The girl’s grandmother is like her fairy godmother because she takes the girl away from a world of pain and fear. It is also unusual that while most fairy god mothers only give gifts, like with Cinderella, yet the little girl’s grandmother gave her the gift of a life free of pain and full of love.
One unusual feature of this story is the beautiful things the girl sees in the fire light. It is as if she is going to the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of seeing her life flash before her eyes, the girl sees what she wishes her life was like, warm and full of food.
I think the topics of this story are poverty and the triumph of the poor. The little girl lived in extreme poverty but she triumphed over that when her grandmother took her to heaven.
I think the theme is sometimes it is better to die. The little girl was is so much pain and fear that she wanted to die. She wanted to go with her grandmother. I think this story is saying that if you really need him god will know and come to help, even if that means taking you from this life.
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