Whenever I think about ‘The Little Match Girl,’ it breaks my heart. I didn’t like the story when I read it as a kid & it’s too painful to think about it even as an adult. Even though this is something that happens in real life & God knows to many people on a daily basis…still the idea of it is too much to bear.
I know it’s a story about dreams & hope, & there is just too much reality to assimilate.
This little girl doesn’t go back home, cause no one had bought anything nor anyone has given her a single penny even though it was Christmas Eve. She was afraid that her father would get mad at her & beat her.
“Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew one out- "scratch!" how it sputtered as it burnt. It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light.”
Can you just believe it? Lighting up a match stick could be a wonderful experience for someone. It can make you dream. It can be a ray of hope.
It’s saddening to know that only her grandmother is the person who genuinely loved her. It could be the story of so many though.
“Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it it a bright streak of fire. "Some one is dying," thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now in Heaven had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.
She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance.
"Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day. And her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”
Well Hans Christian Andersen taught us at a very young age that some people only suffer. Even when they are young enough not to know & understand the meaning of suffering, they suffer. Almost nothing can be a light of hope but actually there is no hope. In fact, you can’t even call it false hope, so to speak. We live in this kind of world where misery rules in some places. I really don’t have the right words to talk about poverty & how certain lives are ended without enjoying or tasting life even for a minute. This is not fair. And this makes me question as to why this kind of world is created where disparity & discrimination rule, to begin with.
