The Ugly Duckling

He doesn't look like a duck, but he's not ugly.

Greetings, reader. This week we finish up our Hans Christian Andersen streak with The Ugly Duckling. You are probably familiar with this story, but there's more to it than you might think, so go ahead and follow the link to read the story. Then continue with me below to analyze it.

I had no idea the protagonist suffered so much! He gets kicked out of his first home because he's ugly, and he's mocked for that for most of the rest of the story. The first place he runs to turns out not to be safe. At the second he's mocked for being who he is and not someone else. Then he nearly dies and lives in a winter of cold and depression. I list all of these things out because it likely mirrors the journey of any kid who leaves their home too early. Especially if they had to leave because they were different.

From the very beginning, we get the idea that this "ugly duckling" might not be the true child of his mother. He doesn't hatch at the same time as the rest and he looks different, although he's not a turkey. Then he's set apart by his looks and later by the things that make him happy. Even when he's taken in by the peasant's family, he thinks they're going to hurt him and gets in quite a mess because of that misunderstanding. He stands out as different the whole story and he's made to feel that his differences make him wrong. I'm sure we can all relate to that on some level. Andersen probably more than most, which is why he wrote the story this way.

Our protagonist feels a connection with swans from the first time he sees them, but his first interaction with them is asking for them to kill him. We need to spend a moment on that. This poor bird was so abused that he thought the only thing such magnificent birds would want to do with him was to put him out of his misery. I don't have words for this.

Fortunately, it turns out that our protagonist had been changing during his winter of depression and now he could recognize himself in these beautiful birds. Even beyond that, when some people saw him with the swans, they said he was the most beautiful of all of them. Once we had grown into himself and gotten with others who accepted him and were like him, he was finally happy. Now I'm not saying this is a metaphor for our lives, but that's exactly what I'm saying. Even if we seem different from everyone we know, there are always others like us somewhere. There's a reason we as a culture have hung onto this story for so long, even if we have taken the teeth out of it. To be fair, that's happened to pretty much all fairy tales.

So, the moral of this story is that even if you're different from everyone around you, you can still be beautiful and accepted. Alternatively, that duck needed to learn more about the world and realize she had hatched a baby swan. That would have made things so much easier.

Have a different moral? A fairy tale you'd like me to cover? Next month is Pride month, and I would love any suggestions for fairy tales or folk tales about LGBTQ folks. Those are pretty thin on the ground. If any of this fits, comment below!