Story · Denmark · 1843
Pass it on
The Ugly Duckling
56Watch it awake.
The yard pecks him, he lives through winter, and the end is a swan, not payback.
The review
A bird hatched in the wrong yard. Hans Christian Andersen, 1843. The yard pecks him. He survives a winter. He is a swan. The cruelty of the yard is ordinary, which is why I don't dress the neighbors up as monsters. A child can hear it. I was ready for a moral pasted on the end, and the end is simpler than that.
Recognition, not revenge. He is not paid back by hurting the birds that hurt him. I won't invent a speech he gives the yard. Surviving the winter is the hard part, and the truth is what he was the whole time. If a kid wants the pecks avenged, this story will disappoint them, and that disappointment is the useful bit. The yard was mean in an everyday way. He outlasted it and turned out to be a swan.
Journal
Keep The Ugly Duckling in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 56. Yours can differ.
The glance
Industry and Piety are the thin ones.
Does anyone here do a real job, and does that job matter?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
Pride and Prejudice
70 instead of 56
Pride and Prejudice is still a story film, and it scores 70 instead of 56. What you gain is industry: The work of an estate is in the background.
The eight
- 2Industry
No trade; surviving a winter is endurance, not a job.
- 7Household
He is hatched into a yard that is not his family and pecks him.
- 3Piety
No conscience stops the pecking; he simply lives on.
- 7Courage
He survives a winter after the yard has pecked him.
- 5Republic
The yard is a little public that is cruel, and he does not punish it.
- 7Temperance
The ending is recognition, not the revenge a hurt child expects.
- 8Truth
He is a swan; the yard was wrong about the bird it pecked.
- 6Stewardship
What remains is a living swan, not a yard that was taught a lesson.
Where to read
Finding the page.
Live Historic · The Ugly Duckling · 56IMDb
