The Little Mermaid Research Paper

People remember from their childhood when parents read them a fairy tale such as “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast” before they went to sleep. Fairy tales have a huge importance to society and children because several of them were made into movies and fairy tales can be derived from folklore, ancient poetry, or medieval European literature. Also, many fairy tales have several morals in them while others relate back to valuable life lessons for people. With morals and many children and adults reading them for a long time, fairy tales have withstood the test of time and never faded from existence. In “The Little Mermaid” Andersen uses morals and life lessons in the fairytale for it to withstand the test of time. When reading “The Little Mermaid” people can find the history of the fairytale, archetypal …show more content…
In “The Little Mermaid” is based upon on a medieval ballad, eagerly exploited by romantic poet but Andersen “ reversed the roles and, toning down the ballad’s motif of the Christian versus the pagan, created a beautiful and tragic story of impossible love”( Zipes 14). This tragic and beautiful fairy tale that has been made into a feature film is derived from Danish culture. “ The Little Mermaid” is important to the Danish people because the story can be read by adults also, and ‘The Little Mermaid” lends itself to varying interpretations according to the sophistication of the reader. This tale is, “based on the Christian folk belief that supernatural beings are not endowed with a soul but will vanish into nothingness when they die”(Zipes 300). According to this quote Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of “The Little Mermaid” says that beings such as mermaids have a soul, but will be nothing after they die. The Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen wrote “The Little Mermaid” in 1837 that is derived from Danish