My favorite fairy tale character is the ugly little duck from Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”, which is quite an unusual fairy tale because most of the very popular fairy tales have human main characters but this tale doesn’t. However, the reason I like it so much is that the poor ugly duckling has problems that people are able to relate to and it teaches us a very important message.
You just can’t help but fall in love with a baby duckling, an animal we all consider to be very cute. But then when his family is mean to him because he’s ugly we just feel very sad and extremely sorry for him. Anyone who had ever been bullied can understand exactly how the duckling is feeling and we can’t help but identify with him and want him to be happy.
As he leaves home because his family is so cruel, we feel even more sorry for him and can’t help but wish he could fit in with his family. He finds a home with an old woman, but her cat is very nasty to him and he can’t be happy there either, so now he feels even worse and he’s so do we because being picked on by somebody so much bigger than him, and has to leave his new home as well, when all he wants to fit in. The hopelessness that he feels after he is frightened out of his third home is just heart-breaking and so it’s impossible not to love the little duckling and feel for him as he spends a long, cold winter alone.
He is also an admirable character though, because despite the fact that he is all alone in the world, he keeps on going and manages to survive against all the odds, because he’s only a baby. Then, when he is accepted by the swans and discovers that he is one of them, we can’t help but share all of his happiness.
The reason that he is my favorite fairy tale character and this is my favorite is that I feel like I can relate to him, and many other people can too. At times we can all feel ugly, or perhaps that we’re not very good at something or don’t fit in, and the ugly duckling epitomizes this feeling. The moral of the story is essentially that although he may not be like the others around him, being different does not make him ugly, and when his brothers and sisters grow up to be brown and dull, he will be stunning and bright white. The ugly duckling is a character that may be different from everyone else but is actually the most beautiful of all.
