The Happy Prince 1

The Happy Prince The happy prince is a short story written by Oscar Wilde for kids in the 80’s. Oscar Wilde’s famous work ‘The importance of being Ernest’ was published after the happy prince. So the happy prince can be considered as the work as a stepping stone for Wilde to write what is considered to be as his best work. In the story of the happy prince, the author intended to highlight a few main themes or ideology such as hypocrisy, poverty and exploitation. Hypocrisy is simply defined as a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs but hypocrisy can also refer to a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, especially one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements. In the Happy Prince short story the issue of hypocrisy is show in two phases. The first phase is before the statue lose all of its’ wealth and the second is after the statue lose all of its’ greatness. The town councilors at the very beginning of the story refers to the statue as being as beautiful as a weathercock. This simile shows how ignorant he is as weathercock are not something that has a high artificial value. The town councilor then refer to the statue as “a little better than a beggar” later on in the story. The Town Councilors’ are depicted as hypocrites and it is highlighted by the writer in the sentence with this line “who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes” and this is as mentioned is hypocrisy which is to show publicly approved attitude. The councilors also try to sound practical when he said “only not quite so useful” and then the writer further strengthens his hypocritical character by adding that “people should think him unpractical, which he really was not”. He is so hypocrite that he adds that he is not quite useful for the fear of the His because in those days people