Republic of Uzbekistan Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education

Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales Analysis
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Written by Rudolf Pretzler
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales still have a huge influence on Western children to this day. They inspired numerous plays, popular stories and movie adaptations. Especially noteworthy, as cultural artefacts, are the hugely successful Disney movies based on some of the stories. The following analysis will focus on three of Hans Christian Andersen's stories that have all been adapted as movies by the Disney Corporation, which makes their legacy known to the modern generation. The Little Mermaid (The Little Mermaid), The Emperor's New Suit (The Emperor's New Groove) and The Snow Queen (Frozen) have all been heavily modified to fit the modern zeitgeist.
This analysis will focus on the original stories as fairy tales. Fairy tales are, by definition, stories that share some kind of moral or code of behavior with their audience, often children. The same is true for these stories. Additionally, Hans Christian Andersen was a devout Christian and his believes play an important role in his stories. Interestingly enough, most of the heavily religious undertones have been deleted for the movie adaptations.
The little mermaid tells the story of a young mermaid that falls in love with humankind and the concept of an immortal soul. She pursues a prince after giving up her fishtail and her voice to make him marry her. This marriage is the only way to obtain a soul, according to all characters of wisdom within the story. While mermaids live longer than humans, their death is the final end. The main motivation of the young mermaid in pursuing the prince is the search for a soul, as to enjoy eternal live in paradise and not end up as sea foam with no further live. The story, therefore, uses the otherness of mermaids as a reason that they do not possess souls.
Most mermaids seem fine with this concept, not however the unnamed youngest princess of the mer-kingdom. She loves the human life and wishes to be part of it. She graves this so much that she is fine with feeling the pain of a thousand swords every time her human feet take a step. Throughout the story the listener is reminded of this fact several times. Being human is portrayed as the ultimate goal, and marriage as the only salvation. In marriage a soul is shared and soulless creatures can obtain one this way, without harming the partner. Original listeners of this story must have felt pity with the poor creature, suffering immense pain just to be replaced by a human princess in the end. However, the mermaid, when given the option does not save her own life, as to not kill the man she loved. She rather dies and becomes sea foam with no hope of eternal life than kill him.
This act of compassion does not go unrewarded. Her mind is transformed to a creature of the wind that can obtain a soul through hard work. The clear message that is transferred to the target audience, children, is that being human is a huge gift that should be treasured. Hans Christian Andersen smuggles a little reminder for children to behave at the end of the story. It is revealed that the mermaid who was transformed into a wind creature needs less time to get into heaven each time she finds a well behaved child. The listeners of the story are coerced to behave to help the poor creature, whose fate was less than joyful.