'The Girl Who Trod On The Loaf'

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“The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf” Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf” is a captivating and descriptive story of a girl, Inge, who is stuck in hell but eventually makes it to heaven. Anderson’s fairy tales are unique in the sense that he makes them up himself, without the help of oral retelling. Inge is the definition of a child protagonist. She is very naughty from the time she was a young girl into her teenage years. When she was young she would torment flies and beetles by picking of their wings or sticking them with needles. When Inge is submerged into the mud puddle, a hell like state, these flies come back to haunt her by enveloping her face. Being naughty is looked down upon in all social classes in this tale. …show more content…

She threw her starving mothers loaf of bread into the mud to step across, so her shoes were spotless. This final act of cruelness sent her straight down under. Even when Inge was covered in mud and had a snake wrapped in her hair she “was still vain and proud”. It took a very special lady to turn Inges naughtiness around. There was a girl who wondered if Inge were sorry for her sins she would go to heaven? This was the only time someone felt sorry for her, and it made Inge “feel quite strange and she would gladly have wept herself, and it added to her torment to find she could not do so. As the years went on Inge was becoming less like a stone stature and started to evoke feelings to her wrong doings. The young girl who wept for Inge was now dying and her tears set Inge free. Anderson described Inge’s feelings by saying “It seemed impossible that the gates of mercy could ever be opened to her, but while she acknowledged this in deep penitence, a beam of radiant light shot suddenly into the depths of her” (Anderson). The key word in this phrase is the fact that she was finally sorry for all the things she had done and that ultimately set her

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