You yourself know that every fairy tale teaches something. What can the tale "Thumbelina" by Hans Christian Andersen teach?
Imagine a lot! A child, getting acquainted with a little, pretty little girl, learns to live in this huge and sometimes terrible world. We set off on a journey through a magical land created by the imagination of a brilliant storyteller, and learn from it the lessons of life.
One woman, a witch and Thumbelina
One woman dreamed of having a child and went to the witch. Why didn’t she give birth to a child herself, did not adopt an orphan? After all, those who dream of children usually do so. However, there is such a category of people who cannot cope with their problems themselves. They resort to the services of sorcerers, magicians, witches, psychics. The point here is that such a person has desires, but no abilities, creative imagination, life energy. This poor woman cannot even come up with a normal name for the girl, she is not able to provide the baby with safety by blithely leaving a nut shell with a sleeping girl at the open window. It is only natural that she lost her happiness.
The witch is the image of a person, on the contrary, with the ability to work. It is in her power to create something fantastic, spiritualized and animated from something ordinary, for example from a barley seed. But nevertheless, the sorceress is a simple person, not an omnipotent God, so the miraculous creature turned out to be small, pretty little.
Thumbelina, born of the power of creative imagination, has beauty and talent. She is able to give joy and happiness to all living beings. But it is so small that it cannot exist independently in the material world. Her charm extends only to the spiritual component of reality. This is her salvation and at the same time a test - she is always needed by someone and at the same time dependent on someone. Thumbelina is a symbolic character, she is something beautiful, but unattainable in real life, because no one was able to possess her in this world. Only in a distant land did this happen to the king of the elves, a creature as fantastic as Thumbelina herself.
Toad, her son and Thumbelina
The toad, having stolen Thumbelina, was somewhat more prudent than the former mistress, she placed the treasure on a piece of paper, far from the shore, to prevent the flight of a potential daughter-in-law. And yet, having stereotyped thinking, she could not assume that there were other forces that could interfere with her plans: for example, swimming fish. Even the thought that someone is ready to help the unfortunate creature does not occur to the toad. In addition, she does not think about the fact that her son as a husband can make anyone unhappy. And the worst thing is that the toad is busy trying to arrange a family nest in a marshy swamp, in which Thumbelina cannot survive. But the understanding of all this is inaccessible to the old toad. What can you learn here? At least the fact that any act is complicated by many circumstances, some can be foreseen and prevented, while others, due to human limitations, are impossible. There are people who do not have an adequate idea of the world, of themselves and of those around them. Everything that they undertake, sooner or later ends in failure.
The son of a toad is a creature absolutely spineless. If he found a bride, he would marry, if he had not found, he would not marry. This is the image of a person who has no personality at all. It is unlikely that he was very upset after the loss of the bride. He doesn’t need a wife at all. Are there few such families that appeared due to the active efforts of outsiders? Are they happy? Or maybe, somewhere in the swampy mud of a cozy family nest, arranged by a "caring" mother-in-law, an "inch" dies, which no one helped.
Our heroine was on a sheet of water lily in the middle of the river and was terribly afraid. How can a person behave in such a situation? She could throw a scandal to the toad and her son, could rush about in a hysterical sheet and call out for help loudly, dispersing shy fish with her cries, could rush into the river in a fit of despair and drown. Usually people behave this way when they are in a hopeless situation. But Thumbelina behaves differently: completely reconciled with her fate, she bitterly and quietly mournes her ruined life. The fishes, having seen this, took pity on her and gnawed the stalk holding the Thumbelina flower. And the leaf carried a beautiful captive away from the ugly toads. They say that pity humiliates a person, as we see, does not humiliate, but saves. The meek ones are usually lucky - they are eagerly helped.
They also help beautiful people. So it was with a white moth, fascinated by the beauty of Thumbelina. He allowed her to tie himself with a belt to a leaflet, for which he paid with his life. What can we talk about here? Probably that one cannot be attached to something so much that it would be impossible to free oneself.
Beetle and Thumbelina
The culprit of the death of the moth was the May bug. But he did not even think out of the corner of his mind that because of his fault someone had died, and grief was not enough for him.
May bug was not devoid of aesthetic taste, and he really liked the little beauty. But then other May bugs came and expressed their opinion: “She has only two legs!”, “She doesn’t even have tentacles!” And the bug refused Thumbelina. Why did this happen?
Firstly, the May beetle is an egoist who considers himself worthy of all the best, he takes everything he likes from life, and is dependent on the opinions of others. This is a representative of a fashionable party, for whom the worst thing is to be different from “your own”, not to be like everyone else. The value of anything for such people is measured not by their own ideas, but by how others evaluate it. The tale "Thumbelina" gives us an understanding of the terrible evil, which consists in the rejection of love for the sake of public opinion.
Secondly, the beetle is not the option that suits the husbands of Thumbelina. He has stereotyped thinking, and this prevents him from being independent even in being happy. Even a hundred thousand May bugs could not give him even a fraction of the spiritual joy that one Thumbelina could give. To the internal state of happiness and love, he prefers his external position among worthless and near relatives.
A Thumbelina thrown by a bug formed a sense of inferiority. How often it happens in life, when a beautiful, dear, very good person considers himself flawed only because insignificant beings reject him, for some one guided reason, confident in their superiority. And Thumbelina does not allow the thought that they are biased in relation to her. This character admires his inability to think badly about others. She blames only herself.
Mouse, Mole and Thumbelina
Rejected by the beetle, Thumbelina lived alone all summer and autumn. But then the winter came, and the poor girl was forced to seek shelter.
The field mouse took her to live . This kind creature loves Thumbelina, takes care of her and wishes her only happiness. Therefore, she is busy to marry Thumbelina to marry a mole. To herself, this marriage seems to be the height of a prosperous life, since the mole is rich and has a luxurious fur coat. For the mouse, these arguments are enough to consider the mole as an enviable groom. In this case, she assumes the right to decide the fate of others, guided exclusively by good intentions, and does so completely disinterestedly. Using a mouse as an example, it is shown how some people can make other people unhappy, wishing only good for them, showing sincere care for a loved one. Truly "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
The mole is the personification of a rich man. His character is given in a few words: "important, sedate and non-talkative." He considers himself to be the height of every girl’s dream, while he does not like the sun, flowers and birds - all that Thumbelina loves - a character opposed to the mole in its very essence. This marriage is initially doomed.
Thumbelina in this situation is true to herself: she implicitly obeys her adoptive mother, considering her her benefactress. Only at the last moment decides to escape, because he can not imagine his life without sunlight.
Swallow, Elf King and Thumbelina
Getting rid of the miserable existence in the mole dungeon became possible thanks to the swallow, which Thumbelina warmed and saved from starvation. A character in the form of a swallow is a connecting link between the heroine of a fairy tale and another world, opposed to ordinary and boring reality. The mole and mouse, who devote their lives to the accumulation of material wealth, unanimously accuse the bird of a useless existence. For them, the singing of birds is an absolutely empty exercise. And for Thumbelina - a huge joy. She cares for the bird in gratitude for the once delivered minutes of pleasure. A swallow saved Thumbelina, realizing that escape is salvation, and life with a mole is death.
The world into which the swallow and her little passenger are transported is a celebration of warmth, light and beauty. There Thumbelina meets her fate - the King of the Elves. Finally, she feels at home with her family. Born from a flower, she becomes the queen of flowers. She achieved her happiness, having earned it by overcoming all obstacles, while not causing harm to anyone.
The Elf King is the first bridegroom of Thumbelina, who asks her for consent to marriage. It occurred to him alone to ask her opinion.
And when the elves surrounded Thumbelina and saw the absence of wings, they simply gave her without any extra talk. So all problems in an ideal society, which the elves embody, should be solved, it is customary for them to respect each other, to be careful about the personality of another creature. This example is the main lesson in life that can be learned from the tale "Thumbelina."
Thumbelina, the character is nameless until this moment, you can’t take this definition by height as a name, gets its real name - Maya. Thus, a new symbol is born - the embodiment of spring, warmth and light.