The Happy Prince Analysis

Decent Essays
"Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?" "The Happy Prince" is the best known of all Wilde’s fairy tales. It is a sentimental tale which emphasizes the importance of self-sacrifice. Oscar Wilde (1854 -1900) is an Irish writer and poet who is best known for writing “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Wilde lived during the Victorian Age as the Victorians made huge advances in several fields, sought solutions for social issues, and created an inspiring body of literature. Oscar Wilde was the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period. The Victorian Age witnessed the rise of the Aesthetic movement which Wilde was highly interested in and it believes …show more content…
Society, during that time, judged people based on their appearance, reputation, and fortune. We are first introduced to the happy prince as someone "beautiful," yet “not quite so useful,”; This shows how he is only appreciated because he is covered with gold. Wilde emphasizes the materialism of that era through utilizing irony. The irony in the story is obvious from the title itself "The Happy Prince" while in fact, he lives in misery. We witness the change that the prince goes through as he explains to the swallow "when I was alive and had human heart … I didn’t know what tears were". This is ironic because humans are supposed to have emotions. However, he becomes more humane once he has turned into a statue and has opened his eyes to the temporal world around him. Moreover, After the prince sacrifices all his gold and rubies, humans see him as ugly. They cannot see past the ornaments and jewelry, in fact, they quickly dismiss him as "no longer beautiful,". Finally, Wilde’s vision is completed when the prince declares that "the living always think that gold can make them …show more content…
The title of the story is "The Happy Prince", though he is not happy at all, but miserable and pity for the poor and common people. The Happy Prince tries to sacrifice himself to help the poor which is considered an act of charity. In addition to that Wilde symbolic characters describe poverty and sufferance in The Victorian Age such as The Woman, Match girl, The writer and the poor boys. Thus, The Victorian Age is an uncharitable era in which the upper class looks down the lower class and never helps to lift them up. Moreover, the statue of The Happy Prince symbolizes Christ who has crucified and sacrifices himself for humanity. Likewise, the happy prince who sacrifices his beauty for humanity and the swallow who sacrifices his life for humanity and helping the poor. To sum up, "The Happy Prince" is a masterpiece in which Wilde employs symbolism to introduce

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