Religious motifs : Overview. Search. About religious motifs
See also Devil, Satan
Keywords:
Satan, the devil, evil, death
Description of this motif: Hell isn't as important as Heaven in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. In his literary universe people aren't going either to hell or to heaven after dying. If you aren't good enough to enter heaven, where an open mind and heart, a childlike innocence, is needed, you won't be condemned to Hell, but will be going through a trial period in a sort of intermediate state, from which you may go to heaven later. Cf. e.g. "On Judgment Day", "Something" og "The Garden of Paradise" and "The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf". Cf. the motif Intermediate state.
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 Garden of Paradise (1839)
- 1 The Metal Pig (1842)
- 3 A Story (1851)
- 1 On Judgment Day (1852)
- 1 The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf (1859)
- 1 The Ice Maiden (1861)
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