Transformation ("The Ugly Duckling" essay)

Transformation

____Everybody possesses a quality about themselves that just isn’t right. Your hair might be the wrong color, your feet could be too big, or maybe you stutter whenever you try to speak. As they say, nobody’s perfect. So why do people beat themselves up about these qualities? The answer is simple; so, they can fit in with society. Having trouble fitting in is exactly the situation that the cygnet is stuck in in the story “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen.
____In this story, the cygnet is born a misfit in a nest of ducks. All the ducklings are prettier than him, and he is treated as an outcast by everyone just because of his physical appearance. Here is where the theme, Man versus Society, comes into play. It is here where society begins to nip at his self esteem.
____Even though it has an ironic theme to it, “The Ugly Duckling” is in the mode of romance. The swan is a romantic symbol which symbolizes transformation, and that is what takes place in this fairy tale. The protagonist, the cygnet, was tortured in his childhood, but he wouldn’t let that get the best of him. He turned out to evolve into a beautiful, respected swan, and swam off with his family in peace. That shows that just because something is wrong with you in your youth, it can change in the future.
____Other stories share this moral as well. In the story Cinderella, a girl is treated like a slave. Everyone hated her, and she never felt beautiful, just like the cygnet. Then she transformed into the most beautiful thing of all! This story compares to The Ugly Duckling a lot because similar things happen to the main character and they’re both romantic fairy tales. However, not only stories can be compared to this story.
____Real-life examples often portray the idea of transformation from the child’s tale. In Prentice Hall’s “Literature,” it is stated that Hans Christian Andersen wrote autobiographies periodically throughout his life. Andersen believed these autobiographies were necessary to display how far he had come. They talked about growing up as a peasant and expressed the struggle achieving success in his later life. This man likes his characters to be individuals, like him. In fact, “The Ugly Duckling” was very symbolic to his life! When he was young, there was so little respect in the world for him because he was considered unattractive. On top of that, he struggled with dyslexia, a reading handicap, while trying to become a writer, but he broke through the strife. He became one of the most famous authors in history. Even though his death occurred thirteen and a half decades ago, his fame and his literature still live in all of us.
____You can easily connect Andersen’s life to his fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling.” For example, the cygnet is unnamed in the fable. This may be because the ugly duckling is really Hans Christian Anderson. That is one of the most important pieces of symbolism in the story. Andersen’s symbolism is the glue that holds the pages together. Who knows? Maybe “The Ugly Duckling” is really another autobiography behind the mask of a fairy tale.
____Almost everybody has heard the age-old saying which says that everybody should be themselves if they want to acceptance in this world. It was that little moral which earned Hans Christian Andersen his long, successful life. All he wanted was to fit in, but when he chose to express himself instead of hiding behind a fake personality, he got more than he bargained for and rose above the rest. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” shows that beauty comes naturally if you accept the person you really are even if nobody else will.