28 pages • 56 minutes read
Oscar WildeThe Selfish Giant
Fiction | Short Story | Middle Grade | Published in 1888A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Trees
Trees, especially the little boy’s tree in the far corner of the garden, are perhaps the most important and prominent symbol in “The Selfish Giant.” There are 12 peach trees in the Giant’s garden, which, as the number of Jesus’s disciples, is often associated with perfection and completeness in Christianity. While the trees change throughout the seasons, they are always in bloom or fruitful when the children are near, paralleling their vibrancy and purity. Thus, the trees support the theme of Divine Providence in Nature, as the garden mirrors the morality of those within it.
The symbol of the tree also contributes to the characterization of the little boy as Christ or a Christ figure: “Tree” is a word sometimes used to reference the cross on which Christ died, making the moment the Giant helps the boy into the tree a symbolic crucifixion. The boy later reappears underneath the tree the Giant had helped him climb years before, which is now silver and gold and covered in white blossoms and fruit. This imagery, evocative of more-than-worldly purity and bountifulness, signals the Giant’s imminent entrance into paradise and the culmination of The Journey of Contrition, Penance, and Redemption.
The Linnet
The linnet is a songbird that is common in Britain. “The Selfish Giant” only mentions the linnet once, but it is the bird’s song that alerts the Giant to the change that has occurred in his garden with the children’s return. The linnet’s beautiful song causes the Giant to think that “it must be the King’s musicians passing by” (61). This assumption that beauty must signify wealth and status reflects the Giant’s worldliness at this point in the story, but by drawing the Giant to the garden, the linnet heralds a major shift in the Giant’s understanding of Selfishness, Selflessness, and Self-Reliance.
Songbirds such as the linnet and the nightingale commonly represent such shifts of consciousness in 19th-century literature. Wilde uses a linnet as the primary storyteller in “The Devoted Friend,” the story that follows “The Selfish Giant” in The Happy Prince and Other Tales; this linnet conveys not only the tale but its moral to his listeners. Similarly, birds appear as recurring symbols in the Bible, often as the bringers of good news.
Playing
The act of playing is a motif that occurs throughout the story and underscores the Giant’s struggle between selfishness and selflessness. Wilde depicts the children’s desire to play in the garden as something entirely ordinary and appropriate, as nature thrives during their games. The Giant only becomes good and selfless when he recognizes the purity of the children’s actions, even joining in them himself. When the Giant grows too old to take part in their play, he nevertheless continues to appreciate it, watching the children from his window. Play represents the most natural and innocent of human impulses, with any efforts to interfere in it an act of complete selfishness.
Related Titles
By Oscar Wilde
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