“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” said the Swallow. “I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?”
And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
The statue of the Happy Prince asks his new friend to help him in his mission to save his townspeople. The bird is initially reluctant but develops a strong bond with the statue. At this moment, the Swallow has continuously sacrificed himself for his friend. Just before he succumbs to the cold, he kisses the the statue on the lips, which is both a romantic gesture and a symbol of unconditional love. The framework of the fairy tale with its frequent animism and personification allowed Wilde to get away with this male/male kiss when it almost never would have been allowed in literature (especially children's literature) otherwise.
“Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.”
After hearing a lovelorn student’s cry for a red rose, the Nightingale goes on a mission to help him. When she realizes her only option to produce a red rose requires her to sacrifice her life, she hesitates but is convinced the student is truly in love. This passage is heartbreaking, because the Nightingale is literally pouring her heart out by singing a song of Love. She is sacrificing herself, like Christ did before he was put in the tomb, in the name of Love, something she knows to be greater than her own life. Her song reaches a climax as she finally offers her life for a complete stranger’s happiness. What makes this sacrifice all the more tragic is that the student's beloved rejects the rose so it is all for naught.
“Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant; “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”
“Nay!” answered the child; “but these are the wounds of Love.”
Years have gone by since the Giant has seen his favorite child playing in his garden. When the child returns, the Giant is now old and weary, but he delights in seeing the child once more. On the boy's hands, though, are the marks of the stigmata, and while the Giant reveals that he does not quite understand this, the reader immediately realizes the child is Christ. Wilde's other clues then fall into place—the tree, referencing the Crucifixion; the solitary nature of the boy; the promise of an afterlife for the Giant.
“Certainly,” cried little Hans, “I take it quite as a compliment your coming to me, and I will start off at once. But you must lend me your lantern, as the night is so dark that I am afraid I might fall into the ditch.”
“I am very sorry,” answered the Miller, “but it is my new lantern, and it would be a great loss to me if anything happened to it.”
After selling his primary work tool in order to survive winter, Hans is desperate to find a way to afford a new wheelbarrow. Hans, the most altruistic human in the tales, continues to be naively blinded by his devotion to his selfish friend the Miller, and is constantly agreeing to do favors for him. Here the the irony is in the Miller refusing to lend his lantern to his “friend,” after asking him to brave dangerous weather conditions at night to fetch a doctor for his ill son. This irony permeates the entire tale because Hans is the devoted friend and the Miller is not; Hans is worthy of emulation and the Miller is not, though he certainly thinks himself worthy of it.
Suddenly, a sharp, dry cough was heard, and they all looked round.
It came from a tall, supercilious-looking Rocket, who was tied to the end of a long stick. He always coughed before he made any observation, so as to attract attention.
This introduction to the Rocket is a perfect encapsulation of his character. He coughs to call the attention of all the others, which is an obnoxious quality of a self-important character. He believes himself to be the most impressive firework to be used in celebrating nuptials of the royal couple. His narcissism leads him to burst into tears just to prove the depth of his character, which makes his goal of bursting in air for all to see an impossible one. Nevertheless, Wilde does not punish his Rocket, for when the Rocket explodes no one sees it, but the Rocket does not actually know that. Wilde's characters like the Rocket, Hugh the Miller, and the Infanta never have a comeuppance and are simply allowed to persist in their self-centered, delusional states. This is more realistic, the writer suggests, than all good people being rewarded and all bad people being punished.
...the King gave orders that the page's salary was to be doubled. As he received no salary at all this was not of much use to him, but it was considered a great honour, and was duly published in the Court Gazette.
This is a small and insignificant moment in perhaps the least notable of the tales, but it is one that speaks to Wilde's amusing, insouciant irony and his ability to skewer the rich with one simple phrase. It is ironic because doubling a salary of zero is, of course, still zero, and the fact that this is published in the paper when it really means nothing changes for the page at all adds to the humor. Then there is the fact that the King has no idea what his pages make and most likely does not care at all, which bespeaks the indifference of the rich to the poor that is also articulated in "The Young King" when the boy in his dreams visits poor weavers who complain, "We must work to live, and [the rich] give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time..." (75).
...he would sometimes be accompanied by the slim, fair-haired Court pages, with their floating mantles, and gay fluttering ribands...
"The Young King" may be a tale that is embedded with traditional moral messages, but it also has subtle hints of Wilde's homosexuality. The young King is beautiful, lithesome, elegant, and obsessed with all that is splendid and decadent. He surrounds himself not with a coterie of lovely young women but with these pages, also charming and youthfully handsome. They follow him around and he even has a favorite one, suggesting a relationship between the two.
And she sang a marvelous song.
Wilde's tales are gorgeous, sumptuous aesthetic marvels in their language and their structure, and they also espouse the value of art and beauty in their content. Paintings, sculptures, flowers and gardens, jewels, stars, songs, and pretty performances permeate his tales. Here the Mermaid uses song to bring beauty into the world; her art is one of creation and celebration. The Nightingale does a similar thing, as does the Young King when he is lit up with the glory of God like a medieval altarpiece. The arts are singularly important to Wilde, though he does probe their sometimes tenuous connection to morality.
"She said she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student, "but in all my garden there is no red rose."
This opening line of one of Wilde's most melancholy tales cleverly but subtly sets out what we are to encounter. The image of the rose is a potent one, as it symbolizes love and beauty and desire. The rose, however, also has thorns and can bring about pain and suffering; the color red is associated with blood and death. The Nightingale will be able to create this red rose for the Student but she will only do so by literally pricking herself with a thorn and bleeding the rose into existence. At the end of the tale the Nightingale is gone, the Rose is destroyed, and the Student is still bereft of his beloved.
As for the Infanta, she absolutely fascinated him.
The Dwarf is a monstrous, ugly creature who has no place among the beauty and wealth of the Infanta and her palace. Though he is not aware of what he really looks like, he does instinctively know that this is not his world. He is thus captivated by the Infanta because she exemplifies beauty, youth, and art. She is like a little painting, splendidly and richly painted in jewel tones. She is all artifice, separated from the real world. The Dwarf cannot help but be attracted by her as most humans are attracted to Art and Beauty, but Wilde suggests that this is a dangerous thing. The Dwarf's fantasies and his assumption that he can be part of this rarefied world are completely wrong; he ends up dying because he has pursued something that cannot bring fulfillment or life. Art and Beauty are thus enticing but deadly.
