Websites used:
2.)http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html
I asked a couple of people ( whose names I won’t say) if they knew ‘The Little Mermaid,’ and of course they knew it, but when I asked if they knew the original little mermaid that was written by Hans Christain Andersen, some of them drew a blank. I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t know the original little mermaid since Disney made a kid friendly version of the story, but whoever, I was surprised that some of them didn’t know who Hans Christain Andersen was!
So this blog is about Hans Christain Andersen and how events that happened in his life affected the story of the little mermaid.
So in order for us to understand Hans Christain Andersen, we would need to read “The Little Mermaid” first. I left a link to the full story at the top of the blog and highly suggest that you read the story first before continuing with the reading the blog about the author and why the
story is so dark, so please go read the story then come back…..
Are you back? Did you read the story? Good, now we can continue with the blog. Let’s start with saying that the story of “The Little Mermaid” was Hans’ way of telling us about his love life, which is kinda sad with the way the story ends.
Hans was said to be an anxiety-ridden mess but also a brilliant storyteller. If you look at the second link at the top of the blog, it’s said that Hans actually once broke down crying in the front yard after being given a bad review for one of his books. A small but interesting fact about Hans is that he never really would get a good night’s sleep for fear of being buried alive when he went to sleep.
Now if any of you didn’t get the memo when reading “The Little Mermaid” and how I said it was meant to reprazent how unlucky his love life is and many of his other stories deal with the same thing. Now Hans was believed to be both biromantic and asexual based on what scholars have found in his journals, and that he had fallen madly in love several times with both men and women, but sadly those feelings were never reciprocated.
Now the little love story that caused Hans to write “The Little Mermaid” has to do with Hans falling in love with a man named Edvard Collin. Scholars would insist that male friendships were just “more affectionate” back during that time but Hans letters to Edvard cearly say otherwise. ( I would show an example of the letters that Hans wrote to Edvard, but I believe that they would not be appropriate for school.) Sadly, Edvard did not feel the same as Hans, leaving the poor left the author “to suffer” which were the words of Edvard.
Hans finally started writing “The Little Mermaid” after hearing the news about Edvard getting married. With a broken heart, Hans writes the story, having the little mermaid princess go through many terrible things (Which I believe represents how Hans feels) such as with each step that she takes it feels as though she is stepping on knives, or that her tongue literally gets cut off! Not only that, but if she is unable to make the prince fall in love with her, that she will die and turn into sea foam.
In the end, the prince ends up marrying another girl, leaving the princess( much like Hans himself) heartbroken. During the night
of the wedding, which took place on a ship, everyone goes to sleep, but the princess is visited by her sisters. They hand her a knife, saying that they made a deal with the sea witch as well, they continue saying that in order for the princess to become a mermaid again she would have to kill the prince, but the princess cannot do it, so as the fells into the ocean, her body turns into sea foam, but she gets a soul, allowing her to live on.
And that brings us to the end of the blog, please make sure to check out other stories, and that all information found and used in this blog belongs to their rightful owners.
That’s All Folks!