The Ugly Duckling

513 Words3 Pages
The Ugly Duckling The universal themes of the children’s fable entitled “The Ugly Duckling” are that you should never give up and to try as hard as you possibly can if you are to succeed in life. The author of the text has utilized many techniques to represent these universal ideas. These include the use of a children’s story fable genre, the use of anthropomorphism, contrast and symbolism as a means of highlighting the major themes. The universal themes are designed to engage young impressionable children. The children’s story fable genre is a high appropriate style for the composer to utilise as it uses “Once upon a time…and…The End” structure indicating the strong didactic nature of its content. In this way it will teach lessons to vulnerable children and impart a set of values to those children in the process. This story is made appealing to children through the use of anthropomorphism with the animals of the pond symbolizing different personality traits of people. The ugly duckling symbolises a vulnerable human alone in the world struggling to fit in the world, this is seen through “His brothers didn’t want to play with him… He felt sad and lonely”. The quote “while Mother Duck did her best to console him” verifies that the mother duck was a symbol of a hard working mother trying the best she can do to care for all her children. Not only are these two characters made appealing, but they also contrast with each other with the ugly duckling being different to the mother and the other ducklings. The author uses contrast as a significant means of exploring the universal theme. Finding out that he was not loved at the pond, the ugly duckling ran away from the pond in order to find the truth. The first person the ugly duckling came across was a person who had the means to kill him. This is contrasted when he runs away and finds a farmer who takes care of the
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