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Symbolism In The Wild Swans

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One original fairy tale that teaches us the importance of family is “The Wild Swans” by Hans Christian Andersen. In this peculiar fairy tale, instead of a prince being a hero and rescuing the princess, it's a princess who makes sacrifices to save her 11 brothers. Throughout this fairy tale Anderson teaches us the value of family and he does this by involving religion. Moreover, Anderson speaks about the elements of weakness, abandonment, and loneliness as a form to connect to children. He also uses symbolism to portray a message. This fairy tale is significant because it differs from traditional fairy tales. Traditional fairy tales usually have a prince rescuing a princess just because the princess is beautiful. …show more content…

In the fairy tale the wicked queen used witchcraft in multiple occasions. The first time the wicked queen used magic was at the beginning of the tale when she turned the 11 boys into swans. In the fairy tale it says “Go out into the world and get your own living” said the queen. “Fly like great birds, who have no voice”. But she could not make them ugly as she wished, for they were turned into eleven beautiful wild swans” (Andersen, 1). One can infer that in this quote the wicked queen used witchcraft to turn the princes into swans because the purpose of her using witchcraft was for evil. The wicked queen did not have any good intentions. Another incident where the wicked queen used witchcraft was when she used three frogs to make Eliza stupid, ugly and have evil inclinations. In the fairy tale it states “At all the events they became flowers, because they had rested on Eliza's head, and on her heart. She was too good and too innocent for witchcraft to have any power over her” (Andersen, 2). This quote implies that the wicked queen used witchcraft as a form of expressing her hatred towards Eliza, however, Eliza is too innocent and pure for the witchcraft to do any effects on her. This goes to show that the wicked queen is the villain from this fairy tale because she tried everything in her power to separate the children from each other and the

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