Comparing “A Child Dreams of a Star” with “The Little Match Girl”
“A Child Dreams of a Star”, written by the famed Charles Dickens in the 1800’s, is a story of a growing boy who loses loved ones throughout his life but remains happy until his time comes. “The Little Match Girl” is a story produced by yet another famed writer, Hans Christian Anderson. It was written in the 1800’s also. The story consists of a poor girl who is dragged down deep in poverty and is not cast any help. She has visions of wonderful things and then dies and goes to a better place.
In “A Child Dreams of a Star” it is the early 1800’s. The story spreads throughout the main character’s whole life. The protagonist of the story is a positive person, despite suffering tremendous losses of loved ones throughout his entire life. He also does not fear death, but looks forward to it as a way to connect with his deceased loved ones. He dreams that every time a loved one of his dies, they go to the star that he and his sister would look at until her death, when she went to the star. He cries out to them every time, but they smile instead of taking him in, until the day of his death, when he joins them at the star. The theme of the story is that death isn’t horrible, but can be comforting and peaceful. The story may also have been written to help people overcome the fear of death.
The story “The Little Match Girl” takes place in the 1800’s. It is New Year’s Eve and bitterly cold. The main character is a lonely, poor, miserable, and young girl. She sells matches on the street to make money for her family, but has not made any on this given day. She sits to rest and warm her fingers with one of the matches she had not sold. She thinks so much warmth surrounds her that it is like being right next to an iron oven! But then the match goes out. She has a vision of a goose with a fork and knife coming towards her, ready for her to eat. But then the match goes out and it is gone. She lights another match and has a vision of sitting under a great big Christmas tree, and the lights on it are reaching higher and higher into the sky, like stars. Then she sees one fall and thinks of her dead grandmother who had told her that every time a star falls someone is dying. But once again the match goes out. Then she lights another match, only to see her grandmother, the only one who ever loved her. She quickly lit a bundle of matches so she could see her grandmother longer. Then the grandmother took the poor girl up in her arms and they flew towards the sky, and they were both with God. The child had died, frozen to death, but in a most wonderful way. The themes of this story are that death can be comforting, and to help those who are less fortunate then us, for often they go unnoticed.
There are quite a few similarities and differences in these stories, sometimes a similarity being a difference at the same time. For instance, in both stories there is a star, and in both stories the star is a large part of the story and represents death. In “The Little Match Girl” the star falls as she passes, as this quote shows: “Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Some one is dying,” thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.” As the star fell the child was dying, unknown to her. In “ A Child Dreams of a Star” the star seems to have risen: “And one night as he lay upon his bed, his children standing round, he cried, as he had so long ago: ‘I see the star!’ They whispered one another, ‘He is dying.’ And he said, ‘I am. My age is falling from me like a garment, and I move towards the star as a child. And O, my Father, now I thank thee that it has so often opened, to receive those dear ones who await me!’” He also seems to be aware of his death, unlike “The Little Match Girl” who seems to just be dreaming things… That is another difference. For a similarity, in both stories death is represented as a positive event, warm and comforting. In the previous quote it shows this in “A Child Dreams of a Star” and in this quote from “The Little Match Girl” it also shows it: “She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.” As these quotes prove, the death of both of these characters seems to have been positive (except for the poor girl in “The Little Match Girl” being frozen and poor, but her actual “death” does not appear as a negative event).
Both of these stories have a very similar theme. The tone of “The Little Match Girl” is quite depressing in the beginning and middle, but in the end it seems a little more uplifting. “A Child Dreams of a Star” is happier to me throughout, for it does not tell of the main character’s despair as “The Little Match Girl” did (poverty, not making any money that day, being frozen to death, etc.). Both of these stories represent death as a positive event in one’s life. Overall both of these stories are very moving.
by Anna
1 comment:
The Little Match Girl and A Child’s Dream of a Star are two similar stories. They both show death as something peaceful and comforting, not something bad, and they both have a young child in it, watching a star that represents death.
The Little Match Girl is about a poor girl who sells matches to get money for her family. She had not sold any matches that night and was afraid her father would beat her. She didn’t want to go home so she stayed in the streets and lit matches one at a time to keep warm. Each time she lit a match she saw something, a stuffed roast goose, a beautiful Christmas tree, a fancy feast. She kept lighting the matches until she saw a star fall in the sky and she thought someone had died. She lit the next match and saw her grandmother, who had died a while back. She wanted to go with her, wherever that was. She said she knew she would disappear after the match burns out so she lit them all at once. They flew up to God at once and they felt no pain. Then the next morning all the rich people walked by and saw the girl, frozen to death in the corner and said that she had tried to warm herself with the matches, not knowing all the things she had seen.
In A Child’s Dream of a Star has a young boy and his sister, close companions, had a star they watched every night and tried to see who could find it first. Then the girl became weak and she could no longer go out to the window to see the star, so the boy would go and say I see the star ad she would smile. Then the girl died, leaving him to look at the star alone. The boy dreamed of the star, thinking when he died he would go to the star and she would be there waiting for him. Slowly his loved ones began to die, and he dreamt that she was welcoming them to the star, and he would ask her may I come? And they would say not yet. Every night he longed to be with them at the star, and the day finally came, when he was very old, that he died and went to the star to join his loved ones.
The stories are similar because they both involve children dealing with a death, whether their own or a family members. They both saw a light (the matches and the star) as comforting. Also, they both looked forward to seeing someone they loved when they died. However the stories have some differences too. In The Little Match Girl she is afraid to go home, thinking she will be beaten, this tells us she did not live in a very loving home, when the boy in A Child’s Dream of a Star had a caring sister and loved his mother, showing he had a loving home. In the first story the girl is poor, hungry and cold, in the second the boy’s family has a comfortable home and seems to live a happy life. The authors, Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Dickens were different from each other. Some ways would be that they lived in different areas, Charles in England and Hans Christian in Denmark, and Charles went to private schools but Hans Christian had no education until he was 15, when he started grammar school, later than everyone else in his class. They were also similar. Both had absent fathers growing up and lived in middle class homes until the lose of their fathers, then they went to work at a young age, Charles at 12 and Hans Christian at 11.
Post a Comment