Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Selfish Giant’- What Is It About?
‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde was published in the year 1888. The plot of this fantastical short story is very simple but the depth is profound especially when analyzed from the standpoint of Wilde’s own life.
The story has multiple levels of meaning, the dominant one being the theme of love and redemption. The Giant in the story is selfish as he builds a wall around his garden in order to stop the children from playing there. What happens to the garden straight after this is very similar to the state of the environment in the beast fable ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (1740) written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve: winter sets in. In the garden the blossoming spring gives way as “Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak”, Frost “painted all the trees silver”, the birds stopped singing and the chilly North Wind comes to stay. With time the Giant grows weary and longs for spring when finally he hears a linnet sing. He rushes to his window to see that one side of his garden is blossoming as children are playing there while one corner of the garden is still trapped in winter. We witness a blend of fantasy and reality as the trees, birds and flowers gaily interact with the children. However, in one corner winter is still present because there is a boy who cannot reach the branches of the tree. This is the turning point in the story, a moment of epiphany for the Giant who realizes why winter’s stay was so unending. On seeing this sight his “heart melted” and he rushed to lift the boy up on to the tree. After doing so, that part of the garden starts blooming again but the other part goes back to being winter because the children playing at the other end run away after seeing the Giant come running out in that manner.
The theme of love is central to this story as seen in the changing nature of the Giant who now breaks down the walls he built to keep “TRESPASSERS” out. The epiphany gives way to realization which in turn paves the way for redemption for the Giant who is no longer selfish. Nature can also be looked at as a holistic entity which cannot be walled in as it does not personally belong to anyone. There is an important paragraph in Wilde’s letter (1897) to his love interest Lord Alfred Douglas which was written at the time when he was jailed for his homosexuality which was considered unnatural and sinful in Victorian England. In the letter he writes- “When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice…It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else — the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver — would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy.” This paragraph is highly relevant in understanding the man as he was and it also gives us a deeper insight into ‘The Selfish Giant’. Although the story was published a decade before he was put in jail we can say with certainty that Oscar Wilde knew what was coming to him. Being caught up in an illiberal society which was ruled by the the diktats of religion, Wilde found it difficult to exist as a normal human being. In this regard the Giant can be seen as society which places restrictions on others in the form of norms and values when the most important values must be love and acceptance as seen in the figure of the small boy who at the end of the story responds to the Giant’s concern for his nailed hands and feet by saying “these are the wounds of Love.” The nails on the palms and feet of the child is enough of an indication: he is none other than Jesus Christ who was crucified on the cross by the Romans. This surprise ending only goes on to add more depth to the story as it emphasizes on the central focus of Jesus’s teachings which is love.
If the selfish Giant is society in its oppressive form then one might ask- who is Oscar Wilde? Well, Wilde can be seen as one of those children who were playing in the other side of the garden which was blooming. In the image of the Giant breaking down the walls we can see Wilde hoping for a future where society changes by doing away with age old norms which denies human beings their individuality and respect. As seen in his 1897 letter- the earth and all its beauty exists for each one of us to experience irrespective of who we are and that is life. At the end of the story, Jesus in the form of the child forgives the Giant, after he redeems himself by breaking down the walls and takes him to the pinnacle of beauty- Paradise. This can be looked at as a personal re-imagining of the idea of religion with emphasis on the aspects of love, respect, acceptance and forgiveness: Society will flourish and prosper only when these qualities are to be truly realized.
