"Snow Queen", Gerda and Kai: characteristics and history of images

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The tale of H. H. Andersen is dedicated to the very famous in the 18th century Jenny Lind, an opera actress. She had a phenomenal range. Berlin, Paris, London and Vienna applauded her. Her voice was admired, and her performances were sold out.

Andersen was captivated to the core by her beautiful voice. Lind and the writer met in Copenhagen. Literally at first sight, he fell in love with the singer. Whether the feeling was mutual is unknown. But she really appreciated his writing talent.

Andersen could not speak beautifully about his love, so he decided to write about it and confess his feelings. After sending a letter confessing to Lind, he did not wait for a response. And so the famous fairy tale was born, telling about the touching love that Gerda and Kai experienced for each other.

Prototypes of heroes in a fairy tale

Two years later Lind and Andersen met. The actress invited Andersen to become her brother. He agreed (because it's better than being nobody) thinking that Gerda and Kai were also like brother and sister.

Perhaps inIn search of a real feeling, Andersen spent a lot of time traveling, trying to escape from the realm of the Snow Queen, which for him was Copenhagen. Everything in life is not like in a fairy tale. The image of Kai and Gerda, invented by Andersen and personifying him and Lind, was just as pure. In life, Kai was never able to fall in love with Gerda and escape from the kingdom of the Snow Queen.

A brief analysis of the tale

G. H. Andersen is the first Danish writer whose works entered the world literature. The most famous are the fairy tales "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen". They are familiar to almost all of us. The fairy tale "The Snow Queen" tells about good and evil, love and oblivion. It also tells about loy alty and betrayal.

The image of the Snow Queen in the fairy tale was taken for a reason. Andersen's father told him before he died that the Ice Maiden had come for him. In his fairy tale, the writer personified the Snow Queen precisely with the Ice Maiden, who took his dying father with her.

Fairy tale at first glance is simple and does not contain a deep meaning. Going deeper into the process of analysis, you understand that the plot raises some of the most important aspects of life - love, devotion, determination, kindness, the fight against evil, religious motives.

The story of Kai and Gerda

This is a touching story of friendship and love between two fabulous characters from Andersen's fairy tale. Gerda and Kai had known each other since childhood and spent a lot of time together. In the fairy tale, it is Gerda who has to prove the strength of friendship, who went on a long journey.and the difficult journey following the boy, who became a prisoner of the Snow Queen herself. Having charmed Kai with a piece of ice, she turned him into a callous, spoiled and arrogant boy. At the same time, Kai was not aware of his changes. Having managed to go through many difficulties, Gerda managed to find Kai and melt his icy heart. Kindness and faith in the salvation of a friend gave the girl strength and confidence. The fairy tale teaches to be devoted to your feelings, not to leave a loved one in trouble, to be kind and, despite the difficulties, strive to achieve your goal.

Characteristics of Kai and Gerda

Andersen's fairy tale describes to us a kind, attentive and sympathetic Kai. But after a challenge to the Snow Queen herself, he turns into a rude and angry boy, capable of offending anyone, even Gerda and his grandmother, whose fairy tales he loved to listen to. One of Kai's tricks ended up being captured by the Snow Queen.

In the evil queen's palace, he became a boy with a heart of ice. Kai kept trying to put the word "eternity" out of ice cubes, but he couldn't. Then she promised him to give skates and the whole world. Kai's desire to comprehend eternity indicates his lack of understanding that this cannot be done without true feelings, without love, with only a cold mind and an icy heart.

Deprived of all human feelings, Kai in fear wanted to say a prayer, but could not. All he could think of was the multiplication table. Frozen figures of the correctgeometric shape is the only thing that delighted him. Once beloved roses, Kai tramples, and examines snowflakes with interest through a magnifying glass.

The image of Gerda is a contrast to the character of the Snow Queen. To find Kai and rescue him from the ice castle, the girl goes on a long and difficult journey. In the name of her love, a brave little girl ventures into the unknown. The obstacles encountered on this path did not make Gerda angry and did not force him to turn back towards the house, to leave his friend as a prisoner of the Snow Queen. Friendly, kind and sweet, she remained throughout the tale. Courage, perseverance and patience help her not to lose heart, but humbly overcome all failures. Thanks to this character, she managed to find Kai. And love for him was able to melt his icy heart and cope with the spell of the evil queen.

Description of Gerda and Kai can be in life a prototype of real people and similar stories. Just take a closer look around.

Characteristic of the Snow Queen

The Snow Queen, the Blizzard Witch, the Ice Maiden is a classic character in Scandinavian folklore. Lifeless and cold space, snow and eternal ice - this is the Kingdom of the Snow Queen. A tall, beautiful ruler on a throne located on a lake called the "Mirror of the Mind", she is the embodiment of a cold mind and beauty, devoid of feelings.

Growing up of fairy tale characters

Having been in the realm of the Snow Queen, the heroes become adults. Mor althe motive of growing up takes on meaning. Children grow older when they face severe life trials, overcoming which Gerda managed to save her loved one, resisting the difficult searches and intrigues that the Snow Queen arranged for them. Kai and Gerda, despite growing up, retain their childish spiritual purity. They seem to have been reborn with the goal of a new adult existence.

Christian motives in a fairy tale

Andersen's fairy tale is imbued with Christian motives. In Russian publications, this is rarely seen. In the episode, when Gerda tries to enter the Snow Queen's castle, the guards won't let her in. She was able to get into it thanks to the fact that she began to read the prayer “Our Father”. After that, the guards, turning into angels, paved the way for the girl.

While Gerda and Kai are returning to their home, the grandmother is reading the Gospel. After the meeting, the children all together begin to dance around the rose bush and sing a Christmas carol, which ended the instructive tale.

And this mysterious journey from the world of good to the country of evil began with a fragment of a broken mirror that fell into Kai's eye. The mirror broke due to the fact that the trolls (that is, demons) reflected in it everything in the world in a distorted form. Andersen explains this by the fact that the demons in the lying mirror wanted to reflect the Creator. God, not allowing this, caused the mirror to escape from the hands of demons and break.

The image of Hell is reflected in the word "eternity", which the Snow Queen instructed Kai to compose. Icy, not created by the Creator, eternity is an image of hell.

In the episode where the deer asks the sorceress to help Gerda and give her the strength of twelve heroes (twelve apostles), she replies that she cannot make the girl stronger than she is. Her strength is a small loving heart. And God helps her anyway.

Opposition of cold and heat

From the prologue of the fairy tale, Andersen begins to write that some people get ice fragments in the heart, which freezes, becomes cold and insensible. And at the end of the tale, he describes how Gerda's hot tears fall on Kai's chest and a piece of ice melts in his heart.

Coldness in a fairy tale is the personification of evil, everything bad on earth, and heat is love.

Therefore, in the eyes of the Snow Queen, Andersen sees the absence of warmth, the presence of cold and insensibility.