The story is certainly one of Andersen's longest and most incredibly acclaimed stories. It's commonly incorporated in selected memories and collections of his work and is most likely reprinted in illustrated storybook editions for children.
Synopsis :
An evil troll (called the "devil") has made a magic mirror that distorts the looks of the whole lot it displays. It fails to mirror the good and gorgeous features of men and women and things, while magnifying their bad and unsightly elements. The satan, who teaches a "satan school," took the mirror and his students during the arena, delighting in utilizing it to distort everyone and everything; the mirror made the most adorable landscapes look like "boiled spinach." They tried to carry the replicate into Heaven with the proposal of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lifted it, the more the reflect grinned and shook with pleasure, and it slipped from their grasp and fell again to earth, shattering into thousands of pieces. These splinters some no better than a grain of sand had been blown round and got into people's hearts and eyes, freezing their hearts like blocks of ice and making their eyes like the troll-replicate itself, seeing best the unhealthy and unsightly in individuals and matters.
Vilhelm Pedersen illustration
Years later, a bit boy Kai and somewhat woman Gerda reside subsequent door to one another within the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a tremendous city. One could get from Gerda's to Kai's home just by stepping over the gutters of each and every constructing. The two households grow vegetables and roses in window bins positioned on the gutters. Gerda and Kai have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates.
Kai's grandmother tells the children in regards to the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the "snow bees" — snowflakes that appear like bees. As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she or he is noticeable the place the snowflakes cluster essentially the most. Watching out of his frosted window one winter, Kai sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to return together with her. Kai attracts back in worry from the window.
By using the next spring, Gerda has realized a tune that she sings to Kai: the place the roses deck the flowery vale, there, boy or girl Jesus thee we hail! When you consider that roses embellish the window field garden, the sight of roses always reminds Gerda of her love for Kai.
On a high-quality summer day, splinters of the troll-replicate get into Kai's coronary heart and eyes whilst he and Gerda are watching at a picture booklet in their window-field backyard. Kai turns into cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes enjoyable of his grandmother, and he now not cares about Gerda, on the grounds that all of them now appear dangerous and unsightly to him. The only gorgeous and excellent matters to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees via a magnifying glass.
The next wintry weather, Kai goes out along with his sled to play within the snowy market square and "as was once the custom" hitches it to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a girl in a white fur-coat. External the city she displays herself to Kai and kisses him twice: once to numb him from the bloodless, and a 2nd time to make him omit about Gerda and his loved ones; a third kiss would kill him. She takes Kai in her sleigh to her palace. The men and women of the town conclude that Kai died in the local river. Gerda, heartbroken, goes out to seem for him and questions every person and the whole thing about Kai's whereabouts. She presents her new purple sneakers to the river in alternate for Kai; via now not taking the reward in the beginning, the river lets her recognize that Kai did not drown. Gerda next visits an old sorceress with a beautiful garden of eternal summer season. The sorceress needs Gerda to stick with her eternally, so she motives Gerda to overlook all about Kai, and reasons all the roses in her backyard to sink below the earth, when you consider that she knows that the sight of them will remind Gerda of her friend. Gerda's warm tears raise one bush above the ground, and it tells her that it could see the entire dead whilst it used to be under the earth, and Kai is not among them. Gerda flees and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai is in the princess's palace. Gerda goes to the palace and meets the princess and the prince, who just isn't Kai, but appears like him. Gerda tells them her story, they usually furnish her with heat clothes and a gorgeous educate. At the same time journeying in the educate Gerda is captured via robbers and brought to their fortress, where she befriends a little robber lady, whose pet doves tell her that they noticed Kai when he used to be carried away with the aid of the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows easy methods to get to Lapland on the grounds that it is his house.
Vilhelm Pedersen illustration
The robber lady frees Gerda and the reindeer to journey north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first on the Lapp lady's home and then on the Finn lady's residence. The Finn lady tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's exact vigour to save Kai is in her candy and harmless child's coronary heart:
When Gerda reaches the Snow Queen's palace, she is halted by using the snowflakes guarding it. She prays the Lord's Prayer, which explanations her breath to take the form of angels, who resist the snowflakes and permit Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai by myself and virtually immobile on a frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "replicate of cause", on which her throne sits. Kai is engaged in the project that the Snow Queen gave him: he need to use pieces of ice like a chinese language puzzle to type characters and phrases. If he's ready to type the phrase "eternity" (Danish: Evigheden), the Snow Queen will unlock him from her vigour and provides him a pair of skates. Gerda runs up to Kai and kisses him, and he's saved via the vigor of her love: Gerda weeps heat tears on him, melting his heart and burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. Accordingly, Kai bursts into tears (which dislodge the splinter from his eye) and becomes cheerful and healthy again with glowing eyes and rosy cheeks, and also recognizes Gerda. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai had been playing with are caught up into the dance. Once they tire of dancing they fall right down to spell "eternity," the very word Kai used to be seeking to spell. Even supposing the Snow Queen have been to come back (despite the fact that it is in no way stated from the place), she would be obliged to free Kai. Kai and Gerda then depart the Snow Queen's area with the support of the reindeer, the Finn lady, and the Lapp lady. They meet the robber lady, and from there they stroll again to their residence, "the gigantic city."
Kai and Gerda in finding that the whole lot at residence is the same and that it is they who've changed; they're now grown up, and are additionally delighted to look that it is summertime.
Trailer :
Source : The Snow Queen