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The Velveteen Rabbit Compare And Contrast

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In the modern world, people may think of love as a positive force, one that conquers all and is regarded with a happy connotation. However, there is a less visible, darker side to loving someone: the pain caused when your loved one leaves you. Although adults may not consider this cost when falling in love, this aspect of relationships is presented to young children in the context of two classic children’s books: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit. In The Little Prince, the pilot builds a relationship with the Prince after both becoming stranded in the Sahara Desert. Alternatively, in The Velveteen Rabbit, a boy, called the Boy, builds a relationship with his toy rabbit, the Rabbit, and …show more content…

In this book, the term “Real” is used to describe someone who is loved. The Rabbit first learns about becoming Real from the Skin Horse, another one of the Boy’s toys, who says, “‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt’” (Williams 5). Here, the Skin Horse articulates that there is pain associated with becoming Real and the Rabbit understands. Later in this conversation, the Skin Horse elaborates on the effects of becoming Real, “‘…by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand’” (Williams 8). From the Skin Horse, the Rabbit learns that although being Real has its costs, the damage done doesn’t matter because the love from the relationship overpowers the sorrow from turning old and ragged. After the Rabbit learns the negative effects of becoming Real, he decides that, regardless of the pain he will eventually feel, he wants badly to be Real. Although, he is not quite comfortable with the fact that he will go through these great pains, “He wished that he could become [Real] without these uncomfortable things happening to him” (Williams 8). At this point, the Rabbit explicitly states that he understands the cost of love. These examples suggest that the Rabbit knew the consequences that becoming Real would bring upon

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