The Happy Prince Analysis

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Oscar Wilde is an Anglo-Irish writer and poet, one of the major figures of the Victorian Era and the English fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16 in 1854. His father, William, was a skilled eye doctor and a nose and throat specialist. He also had a famous reputation in such fields as ethnology, archaeology, and literature. Oscar's mother, Jane, who was the daughter of a lawyer, excelled in many languages, including contemporary French, German, and old Celtic. She published many poems and translations under the name of "Speranza." After initial schooling at home, Oscar went on to study at Portora Royal School in Fermanagh. Upon leaving the school, he enrolled in the Trinity College in Dublin in 1871 and…show more content…
His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity. ``…in the day I played in the garden…So I lived and so I died.``- here, a nearly feminine image is described. This nobleness and beauty attracts the little bird and made it love the Happy Prince. It is a picture similar to that of Wilde`s life- the Happy Prince possesses the characteristics of a bisexual as Wilde did. We could say that the same is true for the swallow too: at the beginning it appears as a male loving female and then after meeting the prince-as a male loving another male. Interesting fact is that the swallow is a bird from the Greek mythology. It has belonged to Aphrodite. Another simile, a bit unusual as it concerns a man: ``His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are read as a pomegranate, and he has a large and dreamy eyes.``- again a sexual image. The pomegranate tree comes from the blood of Diyonysus. It also, according to the Christian interpretation represents the virgin bringing fertility. Over and over again, we see the image of Wilde- in the face of the prince, in that of the poor writer, the swallow… From here we can also conclude that the story is a kind of a biography or at least partly it…show more content…
In this particular story difficult to understand idioms are no present, no stylistic figures too complicated to be perceived either. Mainly used are shorter sentences and explicit language. The main reason for it is that The happy Prince is a created, targeted at the children; however Oscar Wilde has used another instruments to make clearer his message to the society: capital letters in some nouns, words implicating much deeper meaning than the first that would come to mind; there are quite a lot of references to the Greek mythology, symbols. As a whole and through out the whole story there are two parallel- one for the children and one for the
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