The Happy Prince is written by Oscar Wilde during nineteenth century. It is a fairy tale story which catches many readers’ attention by the words author played with and the emotion he put in. It describes about sympathy of a prince to his citizens. The main idea of the story is to nurture people to be open-minded and helpful. In this essay, I am going to cover with some main parts include summary of the story, literary analysis, thematic analysis and the last part is my own point of view about the story.
The Happy Prince represents a statue that was covered by gold and jewels, stood in the middle of the city. One night, flying a little swallow over the city saw the statue, so it decided to put up there and landed down between the feet of the Happy Prince. While it was sleeping, the prince’s tear dropped and woke him up. The prince asked the bird to help him with poor people by giving away all he had such as his sapphire eyes, the ruby of his sword-hilt, and the gold which covered his body. Finally, after took off all the gold, he looked dull and grey, so councilors decided to pull the statue down and threw it on the dust cheap where the dead swallow was also lying there. The statue of the happy prince symbolizes happiness and status. Reminded back to the story, the prince was a very happy man who never cared about anything, never faced to hardship and lived in the palace of San-Souci where there was no sorrow. Constantly, in the daytime he played with his companions and enjoyed dancing in the Great ball in the evening. Everything about him is always wonderful. In addition, the statue was overlaid by many kinds of fine jewelries, set up on the tall column, fastened to a pedestal, in the centre of the city since it shown that the prince was a high class person who was respected and praised by everyone. So that even he died, he still stayed on the highest place where everyone would see him evermore. The way happy prince contributed to his people was the right one. I am really appreciated with his compassion and sacrifice, for the thing that he did the other people would never even thought to do. In fact, after he died, when he looked at his city from his place, he felt regretful that he did not pay attention to his needy citizens who lived difficultly while he lived joyously. Therefore, he, accompanied by Swallow, devoted his entire priceless things, not only the gold from his body, but also the eyes made of sapphire, to his people. He did not care whether he could blind after giving away his eyeballs, just if it can help those, yet he was delighted with the consequences. As the result, the Happy Prince and Swallow were brought to the heaven for their merits. By reading the story, it has showed us that helping people from our heart is the happiest thing in our lives. Related to the real society, Dr. Beat Richner who works for Kunthak Bopha hospital is one of good examples as he has applied himself to help all Cambodian children without hesitation. Therefore, I would love to suggest this to other people, so that they can learn more about the good characteristic of the main character and try to do better thing as him.
Written by: KCH
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