Information AboutThe Snow Queen |
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"The Snow Queen" (Danish: ''Snedronningen'') is a Fairy Tale written by Hans Christian Andersen and first published in 1845 . The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as taken on by a little boy and girl, Kay and Gerda. NARRATIVE DIVISION "The Snow Queen" is a tale told in seven "stories" (Danish: ''Historier''): # About the Mirror and its Pieces # A Little Boy and a Little Girl # The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Knew Magic # The Prince and Princess # The Little Robber Girl # The Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman # What Happened at the Snow Queen's Palace and What Happened Afterward CHARACTERS
PLOT An evil "troll," "actually the Devil himself," makes a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. All the good and beautiful aspects of people and things are shrunk down to nothing in the mirror's reflection while all the bad and ugly aspects are magnified so that they look even worse than they really are. The devil teaches a "devil school" and the devil and his pupils delight in taking the mirror throughout the world to distort everyone and everything. They enjoy how the mirror makes the loveliest landscapes look like "boiled spinach." They then want to carry the mirror into heaven with the idea of making fools of the Angels and God , but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror grins and shakes with delight, so much that it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth where it shatters into billions of pieces — some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown around and get into people's hearts and eyes, making their hearts frozen like a block of ice, and their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, only showing them the bad and ugly in things and people. Years later, a little boy, Kay, and a little girl, Gerda, live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. One could get from Kay's to Gerda's home just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Kay and Gerda have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted in love to each other as playmates. Kay's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the snowflakes, that look like bees — that is why they are called "snow bees." As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window, Kay, one winter, sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kay draws back in fear from the window. The grandmother also presents a religious will speak to us.'' Because roses adorned the window box garden of Gerda and Kay, Gerda would always be reminded of her love for Kay by the sight of roses. It was on a pleasant summer's day following the winter that splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kay's heart and eyes while he and Gerda are looking at a picture book in their window-box garden. Kay's personality changes: he becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since all of them now appear bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass. Kay also changes interests and gets a good head for math and physics. The following winter he goes out with his sled to the market square and hitches it—as was the custom of those playing in the snowy square—to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen herself appearing as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she shows herself to Kay and takes him into her sleigh. She kisses him only twice: once to numb him from the cold, and the second time to cause him to forget about Gerda and his family. She does not kiss him a third time as that would kill him. Kay is then taken to the Snow Queen's palace on Spitsbergen , near the North Pole where he is contented to live due to the splinters of the troll-mirror in his heart and eyes. The people of the city get the idea that Kay has been drowned in the river nearby, but Gerda, who is heartbroken at Kay's disappearance, goes out to look for him. She questions everyone and everything about Kay's whereabouts. By not taking the gift of Gerda's new red shoes at first, the river seems to let her know that Kay is not drowned: Gerda offered them to the river in exchange for Kay, but why would it take them if it did not drown him? At the home of the old sorceress a rosebush raised from below the ground by Gerda's warm tears tells her that Kay is not among the dead, all of whom it could see while it was under the earth. (The sorceress, who wanted to keep Gerda with her by forgetting her quest for Kay caused all the roses in her garden to sink under the earth because she knew that if Gerda were to see a rose, she would be reminded of Kay.) Gerda flees from the old woman's beautiful garden of eternal summer and meets a crow, who tells her that Kay was in the princess's palace. She subsequently goes to the palace and meets the princess and her prince, who was very similar to Kay. Gerda tells them her story and they help by providing warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she is befriended by a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they had seen Kay when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland . The captive reindeer, Bae, tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home. The robber girl, then, frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kay is in her sweet and innocent child's heart: , ''Stories from Hans Christian Andersen'' (1911)]] :"I can't give her any greater power than she already has. Don't you see how great it is? Don't you see how people and animals want to serve her, how she has come so far in the world in her bare feet? She must not learn of her power from us. It resides in her heart, it lies in the fact that she is a sweet and innocent child. If she can't reach the Snow Queen on her own and remove the glass from little Kay, there's nothing we can do to help her."Tiina Nunnally and Jackie Wullschlager, ''Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales'', (New York: Viking Penguine, 2004), 199 When Gerda gets to the Snow Queen's palace, she is first halted by the snowflakes which guard it. The only thing that overcomes them is Gerda's praying the Lord's Prayer , which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kay alone on the frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason" on which her throne sits. Gerda finds Kay engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him to use pieces of ice as components of a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he would be able to form the word "eternity" (Danish: ''Evigheden'') the Snow Queen would release him from her power and give him a pair of skates. Gerda finds him, runs up to him, and weeps warm tears on him, which melt his heart, burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. Kay bursts into tears, dislodging the splinter from his eye. Gerda kisses Kay a few times, and he becomes cheerful and healthy again, with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks: he is saved by the power of Gerda's love. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kay has been playing with are caught up into it. When the splinters tire of the dance they fall down to spell the very word Kay was trying to spell, "eternity." Even if the Snow Queen were to return, she would be obliged to free Kay. Kay and Gerda then leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl after they have crossed the line of vegetation, and from there they walk back to their home, "the big city." They find that all is the same at home, but ''they'' have changed! They are now grown up, and they are delighted to see that it is summertime. They exemplify the Bible passage that the Grandmother reads at the end, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). The Christmas hymn is then reprised as the conclusion. SYMBOLS The usual interpretation of this story is a balance between Reason and intellectual thinking on one side, and feelings and Romanticism on the other. The Snow Queen herself is often interpreted as a symbol of cold intellectualism, and this is stressed in the behaviour of Kay when he is taken. He understands that something is wrong and tries to protect himself by using the Lord's Prayer , but quickly ends up reciting mathematic formulas instead. Gerda on the other hand, keeps her faith and wins through. The troll mirror is connected to intellectual criticism, a topic Andersen used in different ways in many other stories. The bottom line is that an intellectual and a critic may get so possessed with flaws in art and nature that he fails to appreciate what is good. Here, the romantic view of Truth and Beauty shines through, as in many of Andersen's more philosophical works. The Danish Christmas carol that is connected to the story was written by the Danish psalmist Hans Adolph Brorson , the most well-known Pietist clergyman in Denmark. The links to Pietist Christianity are easy to spot in this story. In the psalm, Jesus is symbolized by the rose, a very common trait in Pietism. The rose is the most prominent flower in the ''Snow Queen''. This is in contrast to the troll, whom Andersen identifies at the beginning of the tale as the Devil , the effect of whose shattered mirror is to turn people's hearts to ice. The Snow Queen herself personifies the coldness of intellectualism and criticism: she calls the frozen lake on which her throne sits, the "mirror of reason." MEDIA ADAPTATIONS "The Snow Queen" has been adapted numerous times on film and other mediums. It was made into an animated film in the Soviet Union , entitled '' Snezhnaya Koroleva '' ( 1957 ). It was dubbed into English and released in 1959 by Universal Studios with the voices of Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk as Gerda and Kay; this version was introduced by an Art Linkletter Christmas quarter hour special. A 1998 English version was also released. It was also made into a live action film in the Soviet Union in 1966 , directed by Gennadi Kazansky and in 1986 , entitled ''Tayna snezhnoy korolevy'' (''The Secret of the Snow Queen'') and directed by Nikolai Aleksandrovich . It was Adapted by the live-action family series '' Faerie Tale Theatre '' in 1985 , starring Melissa Gilbert as Gerda and Lee Remick as the Snow Queen. It was again made into a live action film in Finland in 1986 , entitled ''Lumikuningatar'', directed by Päivi Hartzell . In the United States , it was made into an animated film again in 1995 , directed by Martin Gates featuring narration by Sigourney Weaver . It was made into a Live-action Film in 2002 by Hallmark , starring Bridget Fonda , Jeremy Guilbaut , Chelsea Hobbs , Robert Wisden , and Wanda Cannon ; and directed by David Wu In 2000 it was made again into a live action film in Denmark with its Danish title, directed by Jacob Jørgensen and Kristof Kuncewicz . The , did a version of the story, featuring Eartha Kitt as the voice of the Snow Queen. In 2003 it was developed into an operatic concert held at the Barbican Arts Centre , featuring songs by Paul K. Joyce. These songs were later adapted by the BBC into a Live Action 1 Hour Film originally shown on Christmas Morning in 2005 . It was developed as a play at Magnus Theatre , featuring Ice Ghosts on Rollerskate s, and acrobatic ravens. In 2006 it was also adapted into a musical by Victory Gardens Theater . It is also presently an Anime series, produced by NHK and animated by TMS Entertainment ( 2005 ). In Korea it was adapted and modified into a modern drama in 2006 staring Hyun Bin and Sung Yu Ri, also titled ''Snow Queen''. ''THE SNOW QUEEN'' IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE Kay and the Snow Queen appear in Bill Willingham 's comic book series '' Fables '', from DC Comics Vertigo Imprint. There Kay is a grown man who still has the mirror fragment in his eye and sees the sins of all around him. He constantly gouges out his eyes, but they regrow each time. The Snow Queen is one of the most powerful servants of the Adversary, and an enemy of Fabletown . The Snow Queen's name in ''Fables'' is ''Lumi'', which is Finnish for ''snow''. It inspired Joan D. Vinge 's Science-fantasy novel '' The Snow Queen '', which added interstellar travel, sea-dwelling sentient mammals, and a galaxy-wide conspiracy to the basic love story. The Mirror of Reason, The Snow Queen's palace, is the name of a popular American based guild in the MMORPG , Guild Wars . The Guild, which is officially recognised as a notable guild, bases its lore on the Snow Queen tale and actively promotes the story. It is a classic example of how the Snow Queen tale has influenced popular online culture. Mercedes Lackey 's tale '' The Wizard Of London '', is based upon the plot of ''The Snow Queen'', albeit set in contemporary London with the trappings of Elemental Magic. Francesca Lia Block, acclaimed author from Los Angeles, wrote a version of this fairy tale in her collection of adaptations of fairy tales, The Rose and the Beast. Her story is called "Ice," and while she retains some of the main plot features of the original fairy tale, such as the proximity of their houses and the window-box gardens, and the basic plotline, she does not mention the grandmother or much of the back story. In her adaptation, The Snow Queen is a metaphor for a heroin addiction. The characters are teenagers in a modern world. Kelly Link based the short story ''Travels with the Snow Queen'' on Andersen's fairytale, portraying Kay and Gerda as adults and giving the story a romantic twist. ''Stranger Things Happen'', the collection the story is in, can be downloaded for free . "Snow Queen," a Korean fictional drama centers around the Anderson classic starring Hyun Bin and Sung Yu Ri as Han Tae Woong and Kim Bo-Ra, a mismatched yet heartwarming couple. Han Tae Woong, once a math genius winning the IMO (International Math Olympiad), dropped out of his Science Academy as a result of his friend's suicide. Out of complete chance, he meets his friend's sister and melts her heart with love, reminiscient of Anderson's "Snow Queen." NOTES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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