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Hans Christian Andersen Quotes

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Andersen’s Snow Queen
“Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower” (Andersen). This quote by Hans Christian Andersen is a clear reflection of one of his longest and most famous stories, “The Snow Queen”. “The Snow Queen”, first published on December 21, 1844 tells of two young children, Gerda and Kay. The two were not actually siblings, but they considered themselves to be. After Kay gets a shard of a magic mirror in his eye that makes everything look ugly and bad, he starts treating Gerda horribly. Eventually the boy was stolen by the Snow Queen who turned his heart to ice and made him forget Gerda. So in an effort to save Kay, Gerda went on a journey through Northern Europe to find him and free him from the Queen’s icy grasp. Frozen, a recent retelling of this story, also has some of these elements Andersen wrote about. Where Hans Christian Andersen grew up, his life experiences, and his religion affected how he wrote the story “The Snow Queen” and how the modern telling is told today.
Hans Christian Andersen’s childhood home, Norse Mythology, and his love interests contributed to his writing of “The Snow Queen”. As a young boy growing up in Denmark, Andersen was exposed to many different stories from his culture. “His Father, …show more content…

Andersen hoped to enlighten children and adults and teach them the power of having a child like heart and seeing the positivity of the world. Through his writing he made his Christian beliefs show by including religious aspects and characters that relied on their faith to make it through their struggles. Frozen a modern telling of “The Snow Queen” breaks away from the main storyline of the original, but still holds true to its themes and key components. There were many factors in why and how Hans Christian Andersen wrote his fairytale, “The Snow

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