The Selfish Giant Analysis

Analysis “The Selfish Giant”

Oscar Wilde was an Irish author whose works include plays, poetry, short stories, fairy tales, essays and one novel. In his works Wilde glorifies beauty and not only the beauty of nature but the beauty of devoted love. He admires unselfishness, kindness and generosity and despises egoism and greed. He believed the aesthetic feeling of a person was the moving force of human development.

The story under analysis is “The selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde. The author raises a problem of all-consuming love to all live. It is a psychological story which deals with the genre parable.

The events of the story are presented in chronological order. The form of representation is narration broken by dialogues and description. It is a third person narration.

The protagonist of the story is the Giant. The structure is closed-plot. The story opens with introductory part. We can see ascending gradation leading to the climax which shows development of change of behavior of the main character.

The setting of this story is set in Great Britain. In the introduction the author describes the garden of the Giant. It is a large lovely garden which is full of peach trees, delicious fruit, colorful flowers and merrily singing birds. As you enter the garden you feel yourself in Paradise: „The spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit.” The children happily play there during Giant’s prolonged absence. The author uses a similie „flowers like stars” to show all beauty and magic of the garden.

In the story proper the author of the story introduces the main character: Giant.It is the extremely selfish Giant with a very gruff voice. The author pictures the Selfish Giant’s inner feelings with his outer appearance. The Giant builds a big wall around his garden. This wall represents his heart. It is made of stone, too. The Giant with a selfish stone heart, being alone in his garden, can not feel happy at all: he feels lonely and very sad. Changing of the seasons represents the feelings in the Giant’s heart. Cold heart-cold weather. However outside the garden winter changes into spring in his garden he finds only cold winter. The author figures seasons