The story under the title “The Happy Prince” was written by an Irish poet and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Wintermere's Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde). Among Wilde's other best-known works are his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which deals very similar theme as Robert Luis Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Wilde's fairy tales are very popular - the motifs have been compared to those of Hans Christian Andersen.
The plot of the story under analysis centers round a swallow, which travels a lot and finally finds a statue of the Happy Prince. Being alive the Happy Prince didn’t know what the sorrow was, only after the death he being set up as a statue could see “all the ugliness and all the misery of his city”. The swallow who obeyed his commands in the sake of the good, finally died, and they both were thrown in a dust-heap.
The core of the problem raised in the story is good and evil, wealth and poverty.
An important point is that the story resembles a fairy tale. While reading we come across various things and objects, which usually don’t possess emotions and feelings, the ability to speak, or aren’t alive at all. They are speaking birds and the statue, alive reeds, etc.
We know the Swallow loved the Reed and offered to be his wife. It’s obvious that only in fairy tales the ally of different kinds of things is possible. "It is a ridiculous attachment," twittered the other Swallows; "she has no money, and far too many relations" – this exact sentence is the example of a fairy tale form, but at the same time it depicts in swallows usual features of real life, such as greediness. So, it contributes to the problem, and proves it is quite vital.
The main idea of the story is that we start appreciating what we possessed only after losing it. The Happy Prince “lived in the Palace of Sans- Souci, where sorrow was not allowed to enter”, but death let him see all the sorrows of people living near him.
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