The Star-Child by Oscar Wilde

The Star-Child by Oscar Wilde @ Classic Reader

"The Star-Child" comes closest of any of Wilde's tales to resembling an actual folk fairy tale in plot as well as in theme.

A "beautiful star" falls, and hoping to find a "crock of gold," the Woodcutters rush to where the star fell. There they find a "cloak of golden tissue, curiously wrought with stars" and discover the cloak contains a sleeping child. The Star-Child is more beautiful than any other child in the village, but the boy is "proud, and cruel, and selfish", he despises other children of the village and no pity has he for the poor. When he is ten years old, his mother comes, disguised as an ugly beggar woman, but he rejects her, and he will be punished for that...

The very end of the story is quite unexpected... a happy ending, but...

The Young King by Oscar Wilde

The Young King by Oscar Wilde @ Classic Reader

So beautiful, so amazing a tale. Cannot really explain why I liked it so much...

‘The Young King is the tale of a young man's metamorphosis, through a dream quest, that opens his eyes to the heart rendering struggle of the poor, who are exploited by the rich and the powerful to satisfy their own selfish needs.

The Fisherman and his Soul by Oscar Wilde

The Fisherman and his Soul by Oscar Wilde @ Classic Reader

"Love is better than wisdom, and more precious than riches, and fairer than the feet of the daughters of men. The fires cannot destroy it, nor can the waters quench it..."

”The Fisherman and his Soul” is a fairy tale first published in November of 1891 in Wilde’s “A House of Pomegranates”. It tells of a fisherman who nets and falls in love with a mermaid. But to be with her he must shed his soul, which goes off to have adventures of its own.

The idea which lies on the surface is that love is the most important thing in the world. However, there is also a more complicated metaphore of a person being tormented by inner conflicts, being split into body, heart and soul, each having its own desires.