Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince": Analysis

Introduction

These 40 lines belong to the short story “The Happy Prince,” written by Oscar Wilde and published in 1888. He intended this story to be read to children, but even so, this is a very deep and complex story to interpret due to the author's style, which involves several meanings hidden through the story in stylistic devices. The “mission” of this short story was to show the problems of the Victorian age: poverty, hypocrisy, and exploitation that plagued the cities of that era.

Author

Born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England, known for his brilliant wit and eccentric style. He was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement.

Story

"The Happy Prince," by Oscar Wilde, is an amazing allegory that is typical of 19th-century English fiction. It is a metaphor in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world problems and occurrences. Some themes that are involved in this short story are social injustice, the redemptive power of love, and judging by its appearance, which we will see later. It is important to mention that this text is prose because it is made up of sentences and paragraphs, without any metrical or rhyming structure. Also, it has a Victorian Era type of language, mostly in the third person but also first.

Body

Having said that, along with the text, we can identify several stylistic features and devices that beautify the story in a certain way to bring the reader's attention. If these devices were not present, the reader would lose interest very fast. The most common ones that Wilde uses in this story are... (e.g., in lines...)

Also, there are some words that have their tone or mood that give us an idea of the speaker's attitude and create an emotional effect on the audience, like in line...

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that the author has a fairy tale mode of expression, fantasy. Even though the story was meant for children, Wilde wrote it in a certain way that could also reach adults and show them the message that was underneath the story of “The Happy Prince.” Likewise, using some of the stylistic features like personification and comparison (one of the most used by Wilde), irony, hyperbole, and metaphors to encourage the message beneath. All this, with the goal of imagining the situation in our minds and, as a result, making us feel part of the story. Following this, the author uses tone in such a way that makes the reader feel in a specific mood that encourages a better understanding.

On the whole, the importance of the story that the author tries to transmit to us are principles that every human being should have and apply in his day-to-day life, like being supportive and empathetic with others.