Little Thumb by Charles Perrault

This essay will discuss about a fairy tale story for children written by Charles Perrault, a French author. The first part of this essay will discuss about the summary of the story. Then it will move on to analyze the main character, the conflict and resolution and how it is important to understand the story and lastly the setting. The second part will discuss about the opinion of this essay writer on the intended age of the story, how the story aids writers stage of development and the most remembered characteristic of the story. First is the summary of the story. The story is about the life of a fagot-maker (firewood collector) couple who have seven children and the youngest is very small but brave and intelligent. They all live a happy life until the day the parents can no longer support his children. Because of the suffering, the father decided to take all seven of his children to forest and let them die there. He decided to do this because he cannot stand to watch his children die in hunger. However, little thumb found out about it. The next day he collected pebbles to mark the way his parents used when taking them to the forest. Little thumb and his siblings found their way home the first time. However the second time their parents leave them, he did not manage to collect pebbles but marked the way using bread crumbs. This time it was a failure because the bread crumbs were eaten by birds. Little Thumbs and his siblings came upon an ogre house inside the forest. The ogres wife was very kind but the ogre decided to kill them. Little Thumb tricked the ogre to kill his seven daughters and escaped with the gold crowns they stole from the ogres daughter. The Ogre chased them but fall asleep because he was tired. Little Thumb stole the Ogres boots and used it to lie to the Ogres wife saying that the Ogre was in trouble and he needs gold to get out of it. With the gold theyve have, Little Thumbs return to his parents and live a happy life. After all of the incidents, using the magical power of the boots, he became a very effective messenger and he gained a lot of money from it. Second is how the main character supports the storys main idea. The main idea of the story is how great wisdom can overcome the limit of a small size. At the beginning of the story, readers were told that Little Thumb is the youngest, smallest and viewed as the dumbest of his siblings. This explanation indicates that Little Thumb was look down by others because of his lack of normal characteristic. However throughout the story readers we showed that Little Thumb is a great listener and thinker. He used his small size to secretly eavesdrop on his parents conversation and quickly think of an escape plan to avoid being left in the forest. Then he again showed his quality of a great wisdom in a bad situation when he decided to climb a tree to look out for a way out of the forest. Little Thumbs power of wisdom finally tested during the Ogre incidents. At that time the Ogre was surely going to kill him and his six siblings, however her slowly planned a strategy that made the Ogre killed his daughters instead of them. He also managed to escape with the Ogres treasure. Again he used his wisdom to trick the Ogres wife for more treasure. At the end of the story, he used the magical power of the Ogres boot to its advantage to become a great messenger to earn money for his family. The events that have been provided prove that with wisdom and quick thinking skills, a person can do

almost anything to make his/her life better. Through the actions of Little Thumb, the main idea was perfectly delivered to the readers. Third is how main conflict and resolution contribute to the understanding of the story. The main conflict of the story is parental abandonment. Throughout the story, readers known that Little Thumb was not the favorite son of the seven siblings. One evidence that shows the way his parents treat him bad is, when the mother clearly stated that she loves her first child more than others and she taught that Little Thumb is stupid because he rarely speak. He has to be smart in order to survive. Making things worse, he discovered his parents plan to dump them in the forest. How he resolve this complete? By logic Little Thumb should do something to make his parents regret their actions towards him. However he did otherwise, rather than taking revenge, he used his intelligent to acquire the love from his family. First he saved all of his siblings from the forest and the Ogre wrath, and then he used the treasure he gained and earned to live a happy life with his family. The actions Little Thumbs took to resolve the conflicts really help in understanding the story. It shows no matter what happen, family comes first, maybe his actions is some kind a lesson intended for his parents and siblings to let them know that never abandon your family in the face of danger. The message is also good for the readers because it helps them understand the value of family relationship. Fourth and the final paragraph of the first part are about how the author used the setting to develop the central idea of the story. The story was set in a medieval magical land where giants, small people and magical things exist. The reason why this setting was used I because it can really show how big the danger Little Thumb faced and how small he was when facing it. It somehow creates a tension where readers will hope Little Thumb will succeed and be amazed on the things that Little Thumb had done. The social setting of a society living in famine and cannot support the family also helps in developing the central idea. The social setting helps rationalized Little Thumb parents decision to dump their children in the forest because they cannot stand the reality of seeing their children died from hunger. We can agree that place, time and the social setting of the story really help in developing and presenting the central idea to the readers.

Next we move on to the second part of this essay. First point will discuss the story intended age of the reader and when does it mattered to me. From my opinion, this story was intended for children from the age of 6-9 years old. The reason I said this is because I assume that the main characters age on this story is around the intended age. Little Thumb is still a boy and he was the youngest siblings in this story. By making the age closer to the readers, he will be more attached to the readers and they will feel amused by the things Little Thumb had done in the story. The use of magical things like the seven-leagued boots that grants the user a great speed when running seems really interesting to the readers inside the intended age. If the story targets much more mature readers, I might not have accomplished the same effect.

Second is how and when the story came across to me during my developmental stage. To say the precise moment will be hard because I did not came across the story directly until recently. However, I know some stories that have similar form like it during my primary school years. My age would be around 9-10 years old. The story that shares the same form with it would be Hansel and Gretel. How the story aid me during my stage of development? I think the story did not contributed much during my stage of development because I read comics more than fairy tales. Plus the story I have read was not the full version, it was a graphical version of the story. The only thing that aided my stage of development was it taught me some new vocabularies and how to spell complex words. Third and the final point would be what would be the thing I remembered the most about the story. The things that made me remembered the most about the story were the plot and the conflicts that happened in it. First of all the plot is somewhat similar with Hansel and Gretel and the scene where Little Thumb tricked the Ogre was similar to Malaysian folks tale the Pak Pandir series. Other than that would be the actions of the parents living their child in the forest. Those events really made me scared because I was afraid may parents would do the same for me if I did something that might make them angry. In conclusion, Little Thumb is a very interesting story written for children. The characters in the story display a consistent and brilliant role in the face of danger. The conflicts and resolution help readers understand the story through the values provided and the setting allowed children to imagine outside of their expectation. Even though its contribution is only little for me, but for others I think it will provides more help to their developmental stages.

References 1. Jamie Mackintosh and Haley Hymas (2011). perrault: little thumb. [ONLINE] Available at: http://haleyhymas.blogspot.com/2011/01/perrault-little-thumb.html. [Last Accessed 23 October 2013]. 2. Jean, Lydie, (September 2007). . CHARLES PERRAULT'S PARADOX: HOW ARISTOCRATIC FAIRY TALES BECAME SYNONYMOUS WITH FOLKLORE CONSERVATION. 11 (3), pp.276 3. Literature: Hop-o'-My-Thumb. [ONLINE] Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/HopOMyThumb?from=Main.HopOMyTh umb. [Last Accessed 22 October 2013]. 4. SUSAN BAUER (). THE HISTORY OF TOM THUMB. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/TTEssay.htm. [Last Accessed 23 October 2013]. 5. The annotations for the Hop o My Thumb. [ONLINE] Available http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hopomythumb/notes.html. [Last Accessed October 2013]. at: 23

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA SHAH ALAM

TSL 651 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULTS

ASSINGMENT 1

Submitted to: MADAM SYAHREENA MOHD SHAHROM

Prepared by: MOHD TAUFIK BIN MANAP 2009598939