The Little Match Girl

Sometimes, all you need to see through the darkness is a match.

This week, by request, we'll look at The Little Match Girl. You can find it here. This one is pretty sad.

We get a fairly stark juxtaposition of the rich and poor in this story. Our protagonist has no shoes, no hat, and no warm place to live in the dead of winter. All she has are these matches, which she can't use if she's going to sell them. Meanwhile, in the warm houses around her, they're having a feast because it's New Year's eve.

As I was going through this story, I was trying to pinpoint the moment she died, terrible as that sounds. At first, I thought it was when she saw the shooting star, but at the end, she had burned a whole bundle of matches, which happened after she saw the star. So the shooting star couldn't have been for her. That makes me wonder who it was for. Since we don't know about her parents and her grandmother is already dead, I suppose we might not find out.

I do love the imagery in this story. Matches give off light which we use to illuminate things to see them better. The Match Girl uses matches to illuminate things that wouldn't be there otherwise. She uses the whole bundle to keep her grandmother there because the girl knows otherwise she'll disappear. That is, until the Match Girl dies and can go join her grandmother in heaven. It's sort of a depressing ending, but at least she'll never be cold again.

Have a folktale you'd like me to talk about? Comment below and I'll write a post about it.