The Little Match Girl Lesson Plan

Published in 1845, "The Little Match Girl" tells the story of an impoverished girl selling matches on the street. At the end of the night, having not sold any matches and afraid to return to her abusive family home, the girl takes shelter between two houses on the street. The little girl lights her matches one by one, each of which offers her a hallucinatory vision of her desires: warmth, food, property, and love. In the end, the young girl succumbs to hypothermia and ascends to heaven with her beloved dead grandmother, the only person who ever offered her love. The next day, the people passing by see her dead body on the street and assume she lit all of her matches in an attempt to...