disney and the fairy tale Essay

Disney and the Fairy Tale
Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid in 1835.   After years of writing in all genres, it soon became clear that he was winning the most acclaim, form both adults and children, for his fairy tales.   Anderson believed that everything had life and was able to bring life to inanimate objects.   Although he was able to appreciate the wonders around him, he also saw the reality of humanity, such as petty cruelty, vanity, and pretension.   This is where Disney differs in some ways from the original folk tale.
Unlike most fairy tales, Anderson’s stories did not always end in happy endings.   Perhaps this is best illustrated in his story The Little Mermaid.   In Anderson’s tale, there is a sea king that had been widowed for years and had his mother helped raise his daughters.   All the princesses were beautiful and each had a garden.   The youngest one had a statue of a young boy.   They are not prevented from collecting human objects or from going to the surface, unlike Disney’s heroine whose father forbids her from having any contact with the human world.   Anderson’s version allowed all mermaids to go to the surface when they turned fifteen.   The little mermaid was at the surface and watched as a young prince aboard a ship, celebrated his birthday.   As the birthday party was ending, there was a big storm and the prince fell overboard.   The little mermaid saved the prince from drowning by bringing him to shore.   Although the prince never knew who saved him, the little mermaid became very fond of the prince.   She asked her grandmother all sorts of questions about humans and was intrigued how the humans had souls and the mermaids didn’t.   Her grandmother explained to get a soul, a human would have to fall in love with a mermaid and they would share their soul, but this could not happen because humans thought that tales were ugly.   The mermaid so desperately wanted to be a human; she decided to go to the sea witch for help.   The witch agreed to...