Vigen Guroian: Fairy Tales, Classical Learning, and The Moral Imagination
The Moral Imagination
The Ugly Duckling
The ugly duckling resists bitterness, jealousy and resentfulness. And instead grows in humility and gratitude for the beautiful world that he has been given. That's why we forget the inevitableness of his physical train and rejoice in the alteration of his appearance as a genuine transformation. His willingness even to abandon himself just to be near beauty is not suicidal. To think of him as a victim is false. He triumphs. But it's rooted in a kind of ideological reading of the story, which is really one hand Marxist.
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