11. Give character sketches of the book you have read and discussed in class.

11. Give character sketches of the book you have read and discussed in class.

The Young King

Main characters:

The young King:

- He was brought up by the forester and his wife but he learns when he is 16 that he is in reality the son of the princess and a painter. When the old King was dying he ordered: « The crown must not pass away from my family. Bring my daughter’s child from the forest. He will be king after me ».

- He loves beautiful things « When the boy was brought to the palace, he showed a strange love for beautiful things » and it reminds me of Oscar Wilde who was taken for a very neat person, wearing beautiful and unusual clothes.

- The end of the story shows us that he is not indifferent to poverty and misfortune of others and so we can say that he comes across as a sensitive person « Take these things away. I will not wear them. This cloth was made by the white hands of pain. There is blood in the jewels and death in the heart of the pearl ».

Characters of his dreams: cloth-makers, slaves bringing pearls on the boat, men working in the river to find jewels. They symbolize every oppressed and poor persons of the society. This working class is necessary to assure comfort of the highest classes but nevertheless they have nothing and are treated like slaves: «He hit they until the blood came. “Work faster! ” he ordered.

Government officers: they represent those in power. They are insensitive “ We cannot worry about the people who work for us”

The Priest: He is the intermediate person between God and the King: he explains him that “The weight of this world’s suffering is too heavy for one man”. By this sentence he suggests him to let God manages the world and that seems to happen effectively when he becomes dressed as a King suddenly and by “the light of god”.

The Birthday of the Infanta:

The Infanta:

She’s 12.

She looks like her mother who died soon after her birth. She feds up with the disinterest of his father in herself: « “Why has he gone away, ”shesaid, ”when I want him to stay with me on my birthday? »

She seems to be a spoiled child used to receive as much gifts as she wants: «”My funny little dwarf is not listening to me, ” she cried. You must dance, ”he said. “The Infanta of Spain wants to see you dance”»

She comes across as an irascible and insensitive person. By the way, she doesn’t look to be moved at all in front of the dwarf’s dead body: “The Infanta was angry. “In future, ”shecried, ”I will only play with people who have no hearts”. And she ran out into the garden. ”

The King: he’s widowed but is still in love with his queen, died twelve years ago. He is so sad that he doesn’t seem to take care of his daughter a lot and so we can suppose that the Infanta has been bred by her uncle.

The dwarf: he’s very ugly but isn’t conscientious of this. He is naï ve because when he falls in love with the Infanta he imagines himself already living with her in the palace: “The Infanta has given me a white rose and she loves me. ” He dies when he realizes how ugly he is. We can say that he looks like….

Firstly, I want to say that thesestories were very interesting for me because it allowed me to discover Oscar Wilde who was a totally unknown author for me before.

That I like in these too stories and especially in “the young king”, is that we understand that society isn’t a simple separation between the poor and the rich. To my mind the passage in which a poor man explains to the young King that “the life of the poor comes from the fine things that rich people use” brings us to deal with social’s topics. But even if it could be interesting to tackle themes like slavery or abuse of power I thing that the youngest can’t be really able to understand it without adult’s explanations.

Then I was rather surprising by the end of these stories. By the way, concerning the first tale I was quiet surprised by the end because I didn’t know if it was a good or a sad end. As a matter of fact we can’t be sure that the society will be fairer after the divine’s crowning of the Young King. Even if I like the poetry of this last transformation I was less delighted by the reference to god “Someone has crowned you who is greater than me”.

The Birthday of the Infanta proposes too an unusual end (compare to others tales intended for children) and I was personally rather shocked by the insensibility of this young girl. We can notice here that contrary to the Infanta the Young King is sensitive but this difference is maybe because they didn’t grow up in the same social environment.

We may finally formulate a moral for these two tales which could be: “things which have a great monetary value aren’t necessarily the nicest”.

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