Extra Credit Reading Week 14: Hans Christian Anderson Part A

The Little Match-Seller, by Hans Christian Anderson. 

(Image Information: Little Match Girl, Blogspot)

This is a tragic tale of a poor child who dies on a cold winter night because she is too scared to go home to her parents because she had not sold any matches. It's a heartbreaking story, which is kind of a talent of Hans Christian Anderson. In this post I will be focusing on the details that make this story so sad, other than the mere premise. 

Details:

The first description that the reader is given of the girl is "a poor little girl, with a bare head and naked feet." We learn that the little girl originally had a pair of slippers, though they were not her own and much too big for her, but she lost them when running across the street to avoid being hit by carriages. This all paints a pitiful scene that makes the reader's heart ache. The poor child! The author goes on to describe her feet as being naked and red and blue from the cold. These details really rub it into the reader that the girl is desperately, probably dangerously cold. We learn then that the girl has been trying to sell matches all day, but no one has bought any and she has not made even a single penny. "Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along; poor little child, she looked the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not." In this sentence, the reader is told that the child is cold and hungry. The author uses words like "crept" and repeatedly, "poor" and "little" to play to the readers' emotions. The fact that she paid no attention to snow in her hair makes us think she is either too cold to feel, or has more pressing concerns on her mind. We've known from the start that this girl is not well off, but now we begin to think she might be in a worse situation than we thought. The author then describes the lights from houses as the girl sees them, which only makes the reader feel worse. The girl finds a corner to sit in and is described thus "She had drawn her little feet under her, but she could not keep off the cold." Next, we learn why she is not going home. She is scared to go home because she has not sold the matches and she thinks her father will beat her. She also thinks it is not much warmer at home. This really adds to the tragedy of the story; the fact that she would rather sit in a corner and freeze to death than go home is so sad. 
Then, the girl begins to light matches for warmth, and also begins to hallucinate. Maybe the reader does not know what is going on at first, when crazy things begin to happen, but by the end it is clear. We are experiencing the death of a child through her own eyes. 
A hint to the readers of what is going on: "Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. “Someone 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."
In the end, the child asks her dead grandmother to "take me with you." She dies with a smile on her face.