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 language is simple, as the story is intended to be read to children. The story
relies on symbols, which make it easier to interpret. 
1 The theme of the story is arrogance, isolation, love and compassion.
2 The author raises a problem of all-consuming love to all live. It is a psychological story
which deals with the genre parable.
3 idea – is humility, kindness

4 message - The morals of the story are that sharing creates happiness, and that when you
show kindness to even the smallest and weakest of people, you are preserving something
that is sacred.

The events of the story are presented in chronological order typical f fairy tales. 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
simile, flowers like stars" to show all beauty and magic of the garden.

Symbolism
The Giant symbolizes the arrogance of human beings who feel that they control fate. The
snow and winter represents emotions of anger and hatred that Giant felt toward other. The
spring represents happiness and forgiveness. TH small child symbolizes divine
intervention and help for those who show compassion and love. The small children
represent innocence and purity of human thought and emotion when it not corrupted by
greed and envy. 

Conflict
Annoyed by the children running around his garden, the Giant builds a wall around his
garden and makes it inaccessible. The kids cannot play anymore and the Giant just waits
for the spring to come to his garden. However, even though the winter ends, there is no
spring in the garden. The world outside the garden sees blossoms and warmth of spring
but the garden remains a frozen graveyard.

Climax
The giant sees the children laughing and playing in his garden and sees the spring had
accompanied the children into his garden. He also locates a small boy struggling to climb up
a tree and helps him.

He realizes that the spring celebrates the smiles and laughs of young innocent children and
decides to break the walls down