The Selfish Giant

Fiction | Short Story | Middle Grade | Published in 1888

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Themes

The Journey of Contrition, Penance, and Redemption

The Giant’s path toward redemption is central to the plot of the story. In the beginning, his actions reflect the selfishness the title references. However, the Giant does not consider his actions toward the children wrong, seeing nothing objectionable with keeping his property to himself. His ignorance of his guilt is an impediment to his character growth, not least because in the Christian faith, contrition—acknowledgment of and remorse for the sins one has committed—is the first step toward redemption. Spring’s abandonment of the garden is his first clue that something is wrong; more than mere punishment, the winter that takes hold of the garden is a logical outgrowth of his actions, which create an inhospitable environment. In keeping with Christian thought, the Giant’s “sin” violates the proper order of things (the cycle of seasons) and brings suffering to the sinner himself. However, the Giant does not recognize the source of his suffering until the children return to the garden. Moved by their innate innocence, he declares, “How selfish I have been […] now I know why the Spring would not come here” (63).

The Christian idea of penance—atonement for one’s sins through one’s actions—is especially central to Catholicism, in which it is a sacrament. Wilde was interested in Catholicism and toyed with the idea of converting, so it isn’t surprising that the concept informs “The Selfish Giant”: Having shown contrition for his cruelty, the Giant next does penance for his sin by lifting the small boy into the tree and letting the children back into his garden. The resulting return of spring implies that the Giant has been absolved of his guilt.

However, the Giant’s spiritual journey is not complete until his passage into heaven is assured. This in Christian teaching requires the intercession of Christ, here embodied as the little boy who, at the hour of the Giant’s death, reappears bearing stigmata and underneath a tree—a symbol of the cross. The imagery underscores the necessity of Jesus’s sacrificial death to human redemption; as good and selfless as the Giant has become, he is still fundamentally flawed, as evidenced by his well-intentioned but misguided offer to kill the boy’s attacker. The revelation of the boy’s identity also adds nuance to the Giant’s earlier interactions with the boy. Though the Giant did not know it at the time, God had a hand in guiding him to contrition and penance, as it was the sight of the little boy crying and the act of lifting him into the tree (an echo of the crucifixion) that sealed the Giant’s conversion. The boy invites the Giant to his own “garden,” and the white blossoms that adorn the Giant’s body after death imply, in their purity, that the Giant has in fact entered paradise. In promoting virtues such as forgiveness and charity, Wilde both echoes the religious beliefs and moral standards of the Victorian public and provides basic moral guidance as to how the audience might achieve the ultimate reward.

Divine Providence in Nature

Providence is the belief that there is a natural order to the world that is directed by God; it is a core feature of Christianity. In “The Selfish Giant,” this theme manifests primarily through descriptions of nature and the seasons. While the Giant is away, the garden appears to conform to a natural order. The seasons progress as they normally would, with “delicate blossoms of pink and pearl” on the trees in the spring and “rich fruit” in the autumn (57). Nature also seems to respond sentiently to the inhabitants of the garden: As the children playing there are innately good and kind, nature responds by providing a similar environment.

The idyllic garden setting recalls the Garden of Eden, where humanity lived in harmony with nature. In the biblical tale, one consequence of Adam and Eve’s fall is that the natural world becomes hostile to human survival; likewise, the Giant’s “sin” transforms the character of the garden, which is plunged into an unnaturally harsh and prolonged winter. This is a form of punishment, but it is one that flows from his own actions. As the personified Snow and Frost say, “Spring has forgotten this garden […] so we will live here all the year round” (59-60). Like the birds who “did not care to sing” and the trees that “forgot to blossom” (59), these natural forces operate according to a sense of justice, but it is not their sense. Rather, their natural inclinations—i.e., spring’s preference for the children—emanate from God’s moral ordering of the world.

The return of spring when the Giant helps the little boy affirms providence’s role in nature. As soon as the Giant helps the boy, “the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it” (63-64). When the Giant is accepted among the children, spring returns to the garden fully, and the normal cycle of seasons resumes. Though winter later returns, it does not do so as a punishment, as the Giant himself recognizes. That the Giant now sees winter “merely [as] the Spring asleep” and as a time for the flowers to “rest[]” suggests that he has come to recognize the wisdom and necessity of God having structured the world in a particular way (66).

Selfishness, Selflessness, and Self-Reliance

As suggested by the title, the Giant’s selfishness is the problem that drives this story. Notably, his selfishness consists of refusing to allow children into his garden and, further, of designating the garden as his private property. The Giant’s belief that “any one [could] understand” such actions is reasonable (58), as respect for property rights was well established in Victorian England. Yet in the fairy tale context of the story, the legalism of his threat to “prosecute” interlopers reads as absurd and out of place. Wilde would pen an essay in support of socialism (“The Soul of Man Under Socialism”) just a few years after publishing his fairy tales. Here, he places the familiar language of property rights in a fantastical setting to challenge readers’ casual acceptance of it.

Closely related to this critique is Wilde’s promotion of love and cooperation among neighbors—a rejection of the Victorian ideal of self-reliance. The Giant would not have recognized that he had done anything wrong if not for the children; they are crucial to his character development. Nor are the benefits one way, as the child would not have been able to climb into the tree if not for the Giant—an act that in turn furthers the Giant’s moral rehabilitation. Wilde suggests that such mutual aid among neighbors can reward all involved and even transform the character of the world itself. After the Giant joins the children, “the people […] going to market […] found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen” (64), implying that the interaction of the Giant and the children has added to the garden’s beauty.

Wilde combines this social message with a religious one, painting the Giant’s early actions as uncharitable in the Christian sense of the word. By preventing the children from sharing the joy the garden brings to him, the Giant ignores the message of selfless love urged in Mark 12:31: “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” That the Giant ultimately recognizes the error of his ways is largely thanks to the little boy, who is revealed to be Christ or a Christ-figure and thus the ultimate embodiment of selflessness. Jesus’s sacrificial death on behalf of humankind is even alluded to at the end of the short story when the child appears beneath the tree—a symbol of the cross—with nail marks on his hands and feet that he describes as the “wounds of Love” (66).