KidLit Forum

The King of the Golden River
by John Ruskin
The story is about three brothers. They owned a place named the Treasure Valley where we hear about the Golden River. Due to the two older brothers who were mean, the Treasure Valley was destroyed. They mocked their younger brother, Gluck, who was a kind person. One day, an old man came to their door, and the younger brother wanted to help him, but when the older brothers came home they mocked the poor man. He then leaved and the King of the Golden River appears for Gluck, the younger brother. The King tells Gluck that the Treasure Valley could be prospering again if someone would drop three drops of holy water in the Golden River. If the person who does this isn’t worthy, he will become a black stone. The older brothers found out about this and they take the challenge. Neither of them succeeded because they didn’t procure the holy water in a good way and also they didn’t pass the challenges before they arrived to the river. They had to show mercy to three different thirsty characters: an old man, a child and a puppy. Of course, due to their bad nature they denied the poor thirsty characters the water and decided to drink it rather than wasting it on others and when they arrived to the river and dropped the remaining holy water, they became into stones. Instead, the good Gluck, who decided to go to the river, acted differently and gave some of his water to the old man, child and puppy that at the end turned into the King of the Golden River and awarded Gluck for his kindness by restoring the Treasure Valley as fertile again and making him a wealthy man (the rehabilitation of minorities, here the younger brother).

This story is similar with Cinderella because just like the step sisters of Cinderella mistreat her, the same happens with Gluck who is mocked and mistreated by his two younger brothers. Also, another resemblance we find between this story and a Romanian fairy tale: Fata babei și fata moșneagului. In both stories we have a contrast between kind and mean characters. The mean characters for The King of the Golden River deny water to three poor characters and for this they are turned into stone. For Fata babei și fata moșuneagului the girl of the old lady, the mean one, doesn’t help the puppy, the fountain and the oven but the good girl, the girl of the old man helps them and she is rewarded. Instead, the bad girl and her mother are swallowed by a dragon.


We have a moral: goodness, kindness and altruism will always be triumphant over selfishness, cruelty and arrogance. The abuse of Gluck, the stealing and lying of the two older brothers is the reason for their eventual destruction: "And thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love."