The Pea of Truth: Sensitivity as the Essence of Realness in Andersen’s Tales
The soul yearns for the real. It aches when we sleep on the artificial.
What makes Hans Christian Andersen a genius is his ability to capture absolute metaphors — striking comparisons that cannot be easily interpreted in multiple ways. One such metaphor is the metaphor of sensitivity in “The Princess and the Pea.”
A prince was looking for a real princess. I remember thinking as a child, “What does he mean by ‘real’?” If she …
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