Lang's Little Match Girl Passion: Fairy Tale Research Paper

Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion: Fairy Tale Research Paper
The original story is written by the renowned Danish fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and was first published in 1845. It is an inexpressibly tender and sad fairy tale set on New Year’s eve about an ailing and poorly dressed little girl forced to roam around the cold city streets and futilely sell matches in the midst of snow. She needs to be able to sell the matches, otherwise her father would beat her up so as she continues to unsuccessfully wander through the streets, she continues to be ignored and end up freezing to death. What is incredibly touching about Andersen’s simple yet impactful fairy tale is despite the suffering and struggle, and the somewhat desperate situation, the little match girl in a way manages to keep her Christian purity and ironically is so filled of hope.["The Little Match Girl." In The Christmas Encyclopedia, by William D. Crump. 3rd ed. McFarland, 2013. ]
As the story progresses, we find the little match girl hunkered in the corner of a cold street as she starts to light a match one after the other in a desperate effort to keep warm. With each match stroked, splendid visions start to appear before her, visions of a magnificent fire to keep her warm, then an impressive banquet of dinner followed by the comforting image of a well-trimmed Christmas tree. As she gazes into the night sky she sees a falling star that made her think about her late grandmother who told her that a falling star is a symbol that signals a soul coming to God. Another strike of the match brings back her grandmother’s image smiling back at her and in desperation to keep her grandmother’s face the little match girl strikes all the remaining matches and pleads for her grandmother to take her. As the light of the matches billows, the grandmother holds her tightly in her arms and carries her eternally to be with God.
What is interesting about the Passion story is you get to see the hopefulness in a background of suffering and struggle. The Christian context of the passion of Christ is about Jesus Christ’s suffering through the cross for the hope of mankind’s salvation. In the same way, the little match girl was also scorned by a crowd, dies and is then reformed. This research paper aims to look into the cultural implication of religiosity as superficially portrayed by Lang’s little match girl passion and how Christianity is shaped by this raw balance between suffering and faith.
David Lang is well recognized as one of the cofounders of New York’s Bang on a Can music festival.He was born in Los Angeles, California in January of 1957 and has been in three famous universities in the United States, namely, Stanford University, The University of Iowa and Yale University, the latter at which he is now teaching his art of composition. His website would include a perfect biography of himself, which includes his mission in composition which is “embodying the restless spirit of invention… committing to music that resists categorization, constantly in the act of creating new forms.”[ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-p...