The Flying Trunk
Hans Christian Andersen grew up in a different time and a different place, and yet his stories still bring joy to the children across the world.
In his time, the world was changing fast. It was opening up into the new global economy, there were new ideas, new inventions, new social order and new morals.
People were looking at the world and wondering what was worth keeping and what was worth embracing.
People were afraid of the future and the changes they would see in their own homes and nations given that the world was opening up with the industrial revolution, imperialism and the mass migration of old Europe to the New World created destabilisation and the breakdown of family and religion, and thus morals. Sound familiar?
His world could be superimposed on the modern world and the only thing that would be different is the speed that everything happens, but the rate of change, the blending of the old and new and the fear of the future were all the same.
Andersen responded to this change by returning to the fairy tale and reinventing them for his 'modern' audience. Originally, he started with established fairy tales but then his own imagination got the better of him and he create pieces of whimsy that floated above the chain of his centralised moral and The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen,The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes are wonderful examples of this type of story.
However, it was the floating story of The Flying Trunk that captured my imagination as a child. The story of a wealthy merchant's son who squandered all his inheritance until all he had left was a trunk that was, remarkably, a flying trunk.
The young man then takes off on a delightful adventure in Arabia somewhere and wins the heart of a princess who has been locked up in a tower so that she doesn't fall in love with the man that was prophesised to break her heart.
All the themes start intertwining and start to resemble The Prodigal Son among other things. But unlike the prodigal son the merchant's son does not learn from his mistakes and so the same weaknesses that led him to squander all his father's money also led him to lose the princess's trust.
Once you start digging into the story it is possible to see many of the themes of Andersen's modern world competing attention in the story. There is the beginning of globalisation as the merchant's son travels to an exotic and faraway country, it is possible to see multiculturalism as the audience reads and understand's the dress and culture of the faraway land, there is the breakdown of family as the young man has nobody to care for him and the hint of international trade and mechanisation or imperialism where a merchant can grow rich on the suffering of others.
All of this is there, but hidden under the joy of the story.
Hans Christian Andersen preferred moral endings to happy endings. The world wasn't a happy place.There was pain and disillusionment, fear and rapid change.
Our world isn't big on happy endings either. There is pain, suffering, civil unrest, exploitation and rapid change. It's just our world isn't all that big on moral endings.
No matter what period of time you live in, children still deserve a bit of hope that there is something better out there.
In his time, the world was changing fast. It was opening up into the new global economy, there were new ideas, new inventions, new social order and new morals.
People were looking at the world and wondering what was worth keeping and what was worth embracing.
People were afraid of the future and the changes they would see in their own homes and nations given that the world was opening up with the industrial revolution, imperialism and the mass migration of old Europe to the New World created destabilisation and the breakdown of family and religion, and thus morals. Sound familiar?
His world could be superimposed on the modern world and the only thing that would be different is the speed that everything happens, but the rate of change, the blending of the old and new and the fear of the future were all the same.
Andersen responded to this change by returning to the fairy tale and reinventing them for his 'modern' audience. Originally, he started with established fairy tales but then his own imagination got the better of him and he create pieces of whimsy that floated above the chain of his centralised moral and The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen,The Ugly Duckling and The Emperor's New Clothes are wonderful examples of this type of story.
However, it was the floating story of The Flying Trunk that captured my imagination as a child. The story of a wealthy merchant's son who squandered all his inheritance until all he had left was a trunk that was, remarkably, a flying trunk.
The young man then takes off on a delightful adventure in Arabia somewhere and wins the heart of a princess who has been locked up in a tower so that she doesn't fall in love with the man that was prophesised to break her heart.
All the themes start intertwining and start to resemble The Prodigal Son among other things. But unlike the prodigal son the merchant's son does not learn from his mistakes and so the same weaknesses that led him to squander all his father's money also led him to lose the princess's trust.
Once you start digging into the story it is possible to see many of the themes of Andersen's modern world competing attention in the story. There is the beginning of globalisation as the merchant's son travels to an exotic and faraway country, it is possible to see multiculturalism as the audience reads and understand's the dress and culture of the faraway land, there is the breakdown of family as the young man has nobody to care for him and the hint of international trade and mechanisation or imperialism where a merchant can grow rich on the suffering of others.
All of this is there, but hidden under the joy of the story.
Hans Christian Andersen preferred moral endings to happy endings. The world wasn't a happy place.There was pain and disillusionment, fear and rapid change.
Our world isn't big on happy endings either. There is pain, suffering, civil unrest, exploitation and rapid change. It's just our world isn't all that big on moral endings.
No matter what period of time you live in, children still deserve a bit of hope that there is something better out there.