I knew Andersen’s Fairy Tales quite earlier when I was a kid. I am the youngest child in my family. My sister is much older than me and she loves to buy books. So I can read a lot when I was young. Andersen’s Fairy Tales was one of them. I read those stories more than one time and believed them. Nowadays by chance I read these tales again. I find a different perception from before. I’ll take the Tinderbox for instance.

In this story, a soldier meets a witch, who promises him gold if he can go down into a hollow tree and bring her a tinderbox. Inside the tree there are three rooms filled with money separately guaranteed by three dogs, which is more bigger one after one. The soldier successfully fetches the tinderbox and returns back to the ground with his pockets full of gold. He kills the witch because she refuses to tell him what the tinderbox is used for. The soldier goes to town and lives a luxury life. When he squanders all his money, he finds the secret of the tinderbox. He uses the tinderbox to bring him the princess and marries her in the final. Everyone is pleased. The end.

I have so many questions about this story from my today’s perspective.

Initially, the witch gives the soldier as many gold as she promised. But why he killed her only because the witch was unwilling to tell him how to use the tinderbox? The evil should be the soldier, not the witch, isn’t it?

Furthermore, the princess lives with her parents in the palace. The soldier asks his ugly dog to bring her to him in her sleep. He falls in love with the princess and even wants to marry her. Isn’t this a forcing method?

Additionally, the queen and the king find the soldier, throw him in jail and condemn to death. The soldier calls all his three dogs out in the last minute and defeat the king as well as the national army. The soldier becomes the king in the end. The dogs attend the wedding feast and stare at everyone with their weird large eyes. How can this be called a happy ending? Is the princess - or maybe I should call the queen happy living with the soldier? Won't she miss her king farther and queen mother?? As my understanding, the soldier's responsibility is to protect the country.? But in this story the soldier replaces the king. Can it be said the evil defeat the good man?