What Stories Unfold

Hans Christian Andersen's personal plight of unrequited love echoes in this story as it does in so many of his. The intangibility of his female characters, their loss of place, overcoming the desires of undeserving others, and their final arrival at a truth not of their own making are the hallmarks of Andersen's central characters.

An original Grimm Brothers tale that has since morphed the hedgehog into a tortoise, this story asks the reader if lying or at the least cheating to succeed is the lesser sin of being overly proud of oneself.

Sometimes we are faced with the challenge to remain humble in the face of what we perceive is stupidity. But with humility comes rewards that have a value far beyond the fleeting feeling of being superior.

This story must have been close to Hans Christian Andersen's heart as it tells a story about unconditional love set in the wonderous regions of Scandinavia. Adventure and challenges invite the listener to stay true and always choose a love that is selfless.

Japanese culture and stories have a deeply ingrained connection to nature. It is by no small measure then that this story is told through the eyes of two frogs. However, in anthropomorphizing them, we learn that if we do not focus on what is ahead of us in life, and instead look back, we may very well end up where we started without the new knowledge we sought in our journeys.

There is a an old Chinese proverb that says, "perseverance brings success". This may depend upon who is not giving up, and for what they are trying so hard. Jack tries harder when he discovers his fate, but it was his own grit that led him to the discovery and ultimately his journey to taake his rightful place in the world. 

What remains is our inner self, our own true nature, which is perfectly imperfect, unique and original not only to the world but to what we see in our own reflection.

On the surface, this is an origin-myth, a "reductio ad absurdum". Thought to originate in ancient Greece, then in Norse oral storytelling traditions, and then later the Grimm Brothers who called the tale "Sweet Porridge", this may be another early interaction between dark forces and human greed which we all know, although they attract each other for the same means, never mix well in the end.

Although the story begins with an act of kindness on the part of a youngest son of three named Simpleton (or from a more direct German-to-English translation "Dummling" - little dummy), it is about want turning into greed and persistence, for the right reasons, turning into reward.

What begins as a tale of greed becomes a story of redemption of sorts. Recall that this took place at a time when slavery was commonplace and the ideals of Arabian culture were not so far from those of the Wild West.