Book review: The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

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luzvicente353.462 years agoPeakD5 min read

Hello dear friends who love reading, I was a little lost, but I'm back to this beautiful community.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to read me different kinds of stories, there were the common ones about princesses and animals, but there was a book of stories that I liked the most and it is the book of stories by Oscar Wilde and among them was my favorite, which was The Happy Prince and it is the one I am going to tell you about today.

He speaks of a statue of the Happy Prince in a city, it was covered with fine gold, it had two sapphires instead of eyes and in the hilt of his sword a scarlet ruby, so that people admired it with fascination.

Then, he tells that a swallow was looking for shelter, and when he saw the statue on the pedestal decided to perch between the feet of the Happy Prince, was about to put his head under the wing to sleep but he fell on a drop of water although the sky was completely clear and starry, She then thought that the statue was no longer a shelter for her and was about to fly to another place when a third drop fell on her and she noticed that the Happy Prince's eyes were full of tears, so the swallow felt distressed.

Then, it says that the swallow asked the Happy Prince the reason for his crying, to which he replied that when he was alive and his heart was beating, they called him the Happy Prince because he really was, he enjoyed his life, without ever worrying about what was behind the walls of his castle and that now that he had died they had raised his statue so high that he could observe all the misery of his city and he had nothing left to do but cry.

He relates, that he can see through the window of a house a humble seamstress woman and her sick son on a pallet, his mother has nothing more to give him, only river water, so she cries inconsolably. The prince asks the swallow if he can take the ruby from the hilt of his sword to this lady, the swallow tells him that she must go to meet her flying companions, but he begs her to stay one more night to be his messenger, she agreed and the prince felt really grateful.

The swallow plucked the ruby from the sword, placed it in his beak and flew away, after flying for a while, he arrived at the house of the seamstress, the child was stirring with fever in his bed and the mother had fallen asleep from exhaustion, the swallow entered the house and left the ruby on the table and flew to the prince to tell him what he had done, the swallow felt a great joy.

The prince asked the swallow to stay one more night, as he could see a young man finishing a play for a theater director, but he is too cold and hungry to continue writing. The prince tells her to pluck out one of the sapphires in her eyes, the swallow began to cry because she did not feel able to pluck out one of her eyes, but she ended up doing so and leaving the sapphire to the young writer.

Then he plucked out his other eye to donate it as well, the swallow told the prince that now that he was blind she would stay with him forever, she flew and told him everything she saw, the wealth, but also the misery, so the prince asked her to tear off the gold cloak that covered it and to distribute it among the needy.

Winter had arrived and the poor swallow felt colder and colder but she did not want to leave the prince alone because she loved him, until she understood that she was going to die, she just wanted to say goodbye to the prince, after giving him a kiss on the mouth she fell dead at his feet, she felt a crunch and it was that the statue had also broken.

As you could observe, the tale is too touching. Remembering this story takes me to travel through my imagination to my happy childhood, when I used to fall asleep on my mother's lap listening to her voice full of love. We should not only live aware of our own reality, but also pay attention to the people around us, we can always help them in one way or another.

I hope you liked my post and that I can come back soon to tell you more of my favorite reads.