KidLit Forum

I found this story a sad one but at the same time a happy one. Why happy? Because I think the Prince found his peace after all by self-sacrifice. Only after being a statue and punished in a way to see all the misery in the city he realized that the world in which he lived was not the real one, that behind that “lofty wall” there was a whole world waiting for a hero. Although the statue is an object with lead heart “it” still is beautiful both on the inside and on the outside. He gave up everything he had most beautiful to help the ones in need; he became a hero because he was given this gift of telling a story. Also he is able to cry which marks the beginning of his life; he thought he lived his life full of pleasure and happiness and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died but in fact he started living when feeling the pain of others. I felt a kind of musicality in the Prince’s way of addressing to the little Swallow Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow.

To my surprise he is a really wise person, he seems to have nothing in common with the person he first describes – the Prince he was -Dear little Swallow, said the Prince, you tell me marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. The end of the fairy tale is a sad one because no one seemed to know the real beauty of the Prince, his self-sacrifice. The moment The Mayor and the Town Councillors see the statue they only look at the exterior and they see nothing but something that is little better than a beggar. Still, the Prince’s lead heart and the dead bird represented the two most precious things in the city as God took them to him. In the end we can see that our hearts may be of lead and still be full of compassion and that we get a reward for having beautiful hearts.

The Happy Prince is one of my favourite stories; I like it because it is like it sends two different messages at the same time: one for children and one for the adults. What I want to say is that I had a different perception of it when I was a child. Also, it is very interesting how the reader feels sorry and at the same time is happy for the Prince. The message sent to the children should be that of inner beauty being more important than the way we look on the outside. And also children should learn from the story that helping those in need makes us feel good about ourselves. I think that happiness sometimes means making others happy.
As Adelina said, in the end, when the mayor sees the statue, he is not aware of the actual story, and then comes the religious perspective, which tells us that our good deed are not always appreciated by humans, but there is always comes God - who sees and knows everything.

I think that what the prince did when he was alive cannot be judged, at least not by me. I identify myself with the prince, somehow. Because, let’s be honest, how many of you haven’t seen a mother suffering or a child, or just someone behaving very mean, and you haven’t done anything to change it. So, I think that at least in one moment of our life we’ve been in the Prince’s shoes and maybe later we regretted it but we could not change our unconcern.
And I don’t know why but I find this story to be fitted more for adults, than for children. Yes, a child can learn a lot from such a story, but I think only an adult would understand and value it as it should.

I have also read this story, and it seem that i have the same feeling of sadness for the prince and for the little bird. I guess these two characters have a common destiny, to die in the name of love for people and self-sacrifice. The gap between the "two worlds" in which the prince lived (a rich one at the castle-where apparently the prince was happy, and a poor one in the center of the town-where the prince was truely sad) in the final is fullfield with a great sentiment of satisfaction, he encountered the saving forces (love and sacrifice) throw helping people.