The Happy Prince
Ratings30
Average rating4
Story: 10 / 10
Characters: 10
Setting: 10
Prose: 10
Absolutely the best fairy tale I've come across. An essential, 30-minute read.
Themes: Politics, poverty, wealth, charity
“You tell me of marvellous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no mystery so great as misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.”
“I am going to the house of Death. Death is the brother of sleep, is he not?” And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
So they pulled down the statue of Happy Prince. “As he is no longer beautiful, he is no longer useful.”
I might have stated this many times before, but Wilde is surely a genius. The short story begins when a Swallow lands on a prosperous statue of the Happy Prince, who's studded with jewels and pearls and looms over the his city. He asks the Swallow to fly over his city and tell him what's happening.
The story then moves forward with the Swallow discovering the misery and poverty of the poor people living in the city. And the Happy Prince saddened by all this, little by litle, sacrifices away everything to make his city happy.
It explored various ideas like happiness, beauty and misery. The beauty of this book lies in the fact that the tale is so simple and yet so profound! Classic Wilde!
A must read indeed!
Taken from a short story publication, republished as a Penguin 60, containing four short stories from Oscar Wilde.
Written for children, with a few subtleties that only adults will take on board, these are readable and lightly entertaining, albeit very moralistic.
Spoilers abound beyond this point.
The first and title story is a tale about a prince who is made into a golden statue when he dies. His life had been happy, but was based on his ignorance of the less fortunate people. A swallow takes rest on the statue while migrating, and is befriended by the statue to take jewels from the statue who is stripping its jewels and gold to give them to the less fortunate. The story ends when the statue is taken down by the town council as it looks shabby. Second is The Young King. Once an outcast bastard, the young king was made heir by the previous King on his deathbed out of desperation to continue his line. We join the story when the king has a series of disturbing dreams about the items prepared for his upcoming coronation - his robe, his sceptre, his crown. In each case he sees the suffering of those who make or obtain materials for these items. He is saddened and refuses to wear them, causing an uproar with the noble who consider he shames the kingdom. God intervenes and makes him appear glorious and the people therefore love him.Third is The Devoted Friend. This is another moralistic tale, this time of the well off miller who considers himself a devoted friend of the less well off fellow who grows flowers to sell at market. During the year when flowers are available the miller visits the man, and is gifted with flowers, but offer nothing in return, just his friendship. He doesn't visit in winter as he considers his friend would be embarrassed not being able to offer him flowers. When he returns in spring he asks for flowers taking almost all available, preventing the man from selling them at market. When the men mentions he needs to raise the money to buy back the possessions he had to sell over winter, one of which is his wheelbarrow, the miller offers him his broken down wheelbarrow, having replaced it with a new one. The miller then, on strength of his promise to gift his wheelbarrow to the man, requests his assistance with a number of tasks, therefore preventing him from tending his garden. Eventually the man dies in an accident, because the miller wouldn't lend him a lamp to carry out one of the tasks. The miller manages to turn himself into the victim. All of this story is told within a story - of a conversation between a water-rat, a duck and a bird.Lastly, and only a few pages long, The Model Millionaire is a short story about a man who we learn wants to wed a girl whose father won't allow him unless he has ten thousand pounds to support her. This is of course out of the question for a poor man. One day he visits an artist friend who is painting a portrait of beggar. Feeling sorry for the man he slips him some money while the artist isn't looking. When he next meets his artist friend he tells him the beggar was interested in the man, and asked about him. He told the beggar all about the man, who was quite disturbed to find this out. The artist then shares that the beggar is a very wealthy man who paid to be dressed and painted as a beggar. The following morning a servant of the wealthy man appears at his house and presents him with a wedding gift of ten thousand pounds.
So I suppose all of these types of tales are moralistic, and being aimed at children I guess they need to be simplistic and overly obvious. For me it didn't have any subtlety, and was just far too obvious.
This wasn't what I expected from this book, but I have another Oscar Wilde in the Penguin 60s Classic series, so have higher hopes for that.
3/5 stars.