The Complete Fairy Tales in Into the Forest

Dec 02, 2008 Christine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: h-c-andersen, myth-and-lore-scandinavian, copenhagen, literature-danish

Today, Hans Christian Andersen would be given drugs and therapy, and then more drugs. He would be put into a study about repressed homosexuals and boys with a mamma fixation. All this because of his stories. Andersen’s stories are also not very happy when you truly think about them. For every happy story, like “The Ugly Duckling”, there are at least two sad stories.

Yet Andersen, at least in American circles, is considered a children’s author. Whether this is due to those editions or retellings ...more

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Aug 31, 2013 Melanti rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, classics, fairy-tales-folklore-and-mythology, illustrated, anthology, children, intotheforest-2013, 2013

I really enjoyed HCA's more famous stories - "The Little Mermaid", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Emperor's New Clothes", and others...

My edition arranged the stories in chronological order -- as good an order as any I suppose -- but it made it very apparent how much HCA's style changed over the years. His earlier stories actually have a story to them, while his later ones have a lot more whimsy and a lot less plot. He focuses more on inanimate objects than on people.

Unfortunately, the furth I really enjoyed HCA's more famous stories - "The Little Mermaid", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Emperor's New Clothes", and others...

My edition arranged the stories in chronological order -- as good an order as any I suppose -- but it made it very apparent how much HCA's style changed over the years. His earlier stories actually have a story to them, while his later ones have a lot more whimsy and a lot less plot. He focuses more on inanimate objects than on people.

Unfortunately, the further along he got in his life, the more explicitly Christian in themes he became. It was always there -- he almost never has "magic" or "fairy godmothers" in his stories. Instead, he has angels coming down from Heaven and performing miracles because the characters are virtuous. But as he progresses in his career he progresses from Christian themes (which I'm perfectly happy with) to flat out proselytizing (which I can't stand).

It's sort of like he feels that any story is incomplete unless it explicitly mentions (if not outright worships) God.

For instance, "The Pen and Inkstand" started out as a quaint argument between a pen and a pot of ink over who could take more credit for writing down poems. Then, in the last few paragraphs, it became preachy -- just as the ink pot and pen are tools of the poet in his work, we're tools of God in his. Yuck.

Or, so many of the characters die... and the general feeling I get from reading the stories as a whole is that HCA believes that this is a happy ending because they go to heaven and live in paradise for eternity.

No, sorry. They're dead. That's not a happy ending at all! I much prefer the other fairy tales "happily ever after" on THIS earth to Andersen's "and they suffered until they died, but heaven exists and isn't that grand?"

The all too common themes of "suffer until you get to heaven, then it'll be okay" makes me think of that quote by Karl Marx: "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

5 stars for the more famous stories from the beginning of his career and 2 stars for the other 800 pages that came after that! ...more

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Feb 07, 2010 Angela Randall marked it as to-read

Shelves: essential-reading-for-teens, we-own, young-adult-educational-material, kids, myth-folklore-fable-religion, kids-picture-book, essential-reading, essential-reading-for-kids, short-stories, kids-educational-material

Project Gutenberg has a free ebook and audiobook of a Hans Christian Andersen book with 18 fairy tales in it.

These are the stories in the Project Gutenberg files:
-- The emperor's new clothes
-- The swineherd
-- The real princess
-- The shoes of fortune
-- The fir tree
-- The snow queen
-- The leap-frog
-- The elderbush
-- The bell
-- The old house
-- The happy family
-- The story of a mother
-- The false collar
-- The shadow
-- The little match girl
-- The dream of little Tuk
-- The naughty bo ...more

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