Religious motifs : Overview. Search. About religious motifs
Humility is in Andersen's writings almost always connected with persons' being world-oriented, thus often also against its creator, God, or being self-centered. Self-satisfied and self-sufficient characters are often exposed in Andersen' oeuvre. Their charateristics are pettiness, intolerance, a narrow mind, insensibility, being ungratified, because the world seems cruel and unjust and doesn't give them enough, and arrogant pride. The proud and self-sufficient persons thinks that all that is good comes from him-/herself. The humble sees the world around her and her own conditions as sent from God. The humble is satisfied with the facts of life and even thanks (God) for everything.
The rose in "The Snail and the Rosebush" is, in contradiction to the snail, a pious grateful and extrovert type, giving its best to the world. "The Snail and the Rosebush" is a textbook example of the motif and is in addition extraordinary, because God isn't mentioned explicitly as the source of the gifts of life.
Overview
The tales are sorted by year. The leading numbers refer to the number of occurrences of the motif in the respective texts.
- 1 The Buckwheat (1841)
- 3 The Nightingale (1843)
- 1 The Phoenix Bird (1850)
- 1 The Old Tombstone (1852)
- 1 On Judgment Day (1852)
- 1 Under The Willow Tree (1852)
- 1 Five Peas from a Pod (1852)
- 1 A Leaf from Heaven (1853)
- 2 Something (1858)
- 2 The Marsh King's Daughter (1858)
- 1 The Wind Tells about Valdemar Daae and His Daughters (1859)
- 2 The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf (1859)
- 1 Pen and Inkstand (1859)
- 1 The Ice Maiden (1861)
- 1 The Psyche (1861)
- 1 The Snail and the Rosebush (1861)
- 1 The Porter's Son (1866)
- 2 The Goblin and the Woman (1867)
- 1 Sunshine Stories (1869)
- 1 What the Whole Family Said (1870)
- 1 The Candles (1870)
- 1 The Cripple (1872)
- 1 Aunty Toothache (1872)
- 1 De blaae Bjerge (Danish title) (1972)