Short Story Analysis; The story of a mother by Hans Christian Andersen

The Story of a Mother written by Hans Christian Andersen is a story about a mother and her sick child. The child was about to die, when a mysterious man came into the woman’s house and took the child away, so the mother had to go on a long way full of obstacles in order to find her child. In this story we can see that Andersen is trying to transmit values like perseverance, sacrifice and faith through allusions and symbolisms to express that, the love of a mother to his child can go further than death.

There are six characters along the story, each of them alludes to something. The main character is the mother; she symbolizes all the mothers in the world because all mothers share the same feelings, “And the mother looked down in her lap, and the tears ran down over her cheeks; her head became so heavy--she had not closed her eyes for three days and nights” (Andersen, 1848). The second character is a man, he represents the death and he was the one that took the child away. In order to find her child, the mother had to ask for directions and all the characters wanted something in return. First, she asks a woman, she represents the night and she wants some songs to be sung for her; then, she asks a thornbush who alludes to a lonely person and he wants her to warm him; after that, she finds a lake and until the woman gives him something value, he helps her, so he symbolizes the avarice; finally she finds a grave old woman who represents wisdom. From this paragraph we can highlight that we have to learn to give without expecting anything in return.

The grave old woman told her to enter to Death’s house, it was called the Great Greenhouse; inside, it was full of trees and plants and each of them represented a life, “every tree and every flower had its name; each of them was a human life” (Andersen, 1848); a person died when Death plucked a plant off. The mother told Death not to pluck the child’s plant and threaten him to pluck off other plants, but when Death told the mother that other mothers would suffer, she imagined all the sadness the mothers would feel and she decided not to. Finally Death plucked it off and the mother understood that it was the time because he would be still suffering. Sometimes the only solution we have is to let something go to improve things.

In “The Story of a Mother”, Andersen utilizes basic chraracteristics of a mother like, sacrifice, love, tenderness and carefullness.
With this elements on the story, we can imagine how the love of a mother can go further than death and appreciate what our mothers can do for us in order for us to be fine and happy. We can also learn from this story that sometimes we won’t get what we want at the moment, but all the sacrifices will be worth at some point in our lifes.