This first part of the story is very different from the following six—it contains none of the same characters or settings, but it serves to explain the significance of everything that happens next. It’s vital to understanding Kai, to understanding the Snow Queen, and to understanding the themes of the rest of the story.
In this section, a demon makes a mirror that distorts every good thing it reflects, and amplifies everything bad. The demons rejoice that this mirror allows others to see the world as it truly is, and fly it to the heavens to see how it reflects the angels. But they drop it, and break it, at fragments of the enchanted glass fly all over the world. Some of these fragments land it people’s eyes or hearts, corrupting and changing them, and two of these, we’ll learn in the next section, land in Kai—one in his eye, and one in his heart.
Though he won’t be mentioned again, the devil who made the mirror is the true villain of the story—not the Snow Queen. The Snow Queen is…incidental. For Kai, this is a story about the world—represented by the enchanted mirror—corrupting a child. If there were no mirror shard, he would never go away with the Snow Queen. This broken mirror is the driving force behind the story.
The first part is vital, fundamental, and pretty
straightforward, so I don’t have much to say about it today. Be sure to read
the actual text, which I’ve posted here, and check back in next week for part
two.
No comments:
Post a Comment