"When in Doubt - Kill" A Closer Inspection of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinder-Box"

Author's note: I wrote this for a laugh and deliberately inserted an error. My purpose with this piece was to exaggerate and use some rather heavy-handed sarcasm just to show that particular style to my students. In other words: Enjoy this and do not take it more seriously than you have to.

The underdog. Most readers in our culture love him, this lone wolf who fights the authorities and wins in spite of having all odds against him. At first glance, the protagonist in Hans Christian Andersen’s legendary fairy tale “The Tinder-Box” from 1835 is the typical underdog. This soldier manages to achieve all of his goals: Incredible wealth, a significantly higher social status and a beautiful wife. On the surface, this is a happy ending that lets all of us believe in (or at least hope for) an opportunity to improve our ordinary lives. However, a closer look indicates that “The Tinder-Box” may actually be a warning against the dangers of human greed and the effects that war might have on a soldier’s mind. This is what this essay will explore.

From the very first sentence, the perceptive reader may deduce that something is wrong: “A soldier came marching along the high road: ‘Left, right—left, right.’ He had his knapsack on his back, and a sword at his side; he had been to the wars, and was now returning home.” Not only does this break with the “home-away-home structure” so typical for fairy tales, it shows something rather unusual: If this soldier is returning from a finished war and on his own, why is he still armed? Should he not have handed his sword back at the end of hostilities? An obvious answer could be that military life disagreed with the unnamed soldier and he has now become a deserter or some other form of traitor. One might think that he left the army because he was a pacifist, but it is quickly revealed that he has no problem with violence. After returning from the hollow tree with mountains of gold, the soldier bluntly asks the old, somewhat handicapped witch why she wants the tinder-box, even though he promised to find it for her. When the witch does not produce an acceptable answer, the soldier promptly beheads her. That escalated quickly, as they say online. Feeling little remorse for just slaughtering an old lady, the soldier puts “all his money in her apron and slung it on his back like a bundle, put the tinderbox in his pocket, and walked off to the nearest town.” His expert use of a blade and lack of hesitation in looting a corpse hint at a dark and gruesome personality, one that would not even be welcome on the battlefields of the 19^th century. It is indeed possible that this is what made the soldier leave his unit, as his temper and general behaviour were unwanted elements in the armed forces. This clearly is neither a peace-loving man nor a hapless creature suffering from PTSD, but rather a cold-blooded killer.

Apart from a violent streak, the scene with the hollow tree also reveals the soldier’s ever-growing greed. No matter what he receives, he wants more. In the caverns with the dogs, copper coins are replaced with silver ones, which he in turn discards in favour of gold. The soldier clearly cannot handle the thought that something should not be his, hence the slaying of the old witch over something as apparently mundane as a tinder-box. When arriving in the town, the soldier believes that material wealth will solve all of his problems and starts spending money left and right: “Now he was rich, had fine clothes, and many friends, who all declared he was a fine fellow and a real gentleman, and all this gratified him exceedingly.” Coming from a poor background, our protagonist tries to avoid his inferiority complexes by dressing and acting like someone from the upper classes of society, but all of that is on a superficial level. Nothing inside of him changes, and although he generously gives money to the poor – possibly a sign of some degree of remorse – his greed does not go anywhere. The right clothes, rooms and friends are not enough for him, he wants more.

The next target of the soldier’s lust is the local princess. Upon learning that “No one but the king himself can pass in or out, for there has been a prophecy that she will marry a common soldier,” his greed commands him to have her in some way. Clearly not one that likes witnesses, the soldier orders one of his dogs to fetch the princess for him – not one, but three times, since nothing can satisfy his desire. When he sees the sleeping princess “The soldier could not help kissing her, true soldier as he was.” Since this “true soldier” has recently killed a harmless old woman for no particular reason, it is difficult to believe that he would stop at kissing the princess , and “kissing” her – combined with the later statement that he “might have her for a wife” may be Andersen’s euphemism for some other kind of sexual activity (probably with the dog in the same room looking on). Earlier in the tale, the soldier could not see the consequences of spending his money at an alarming rate, and here he is actually dependent on the dog cleaning up his mess when it puts an X on every door to confuse the princess’s worried family. Obviously, he is capable of planning no further ahead than to what he wants right now.

Nevertheless, the soldier is caught and – quite understandably – sentenced to death for his crimes. Since he apparently has lost what conscience he had, the soldier decides that this is the perfect time to overthrow the government. By calling in his supernatural dogs, the royal couple are quickly killed in a brutal manner along with all of the best educated men of the kingdom. Unsurprisingly, this scares the rest of the people, who immediately decide to save themselves by giving the psychotic and violent soldier the king’s crown along with the princess. You would think that the princess would be devastated by being forced to marry the killer of her parents, but according to the text, becoming queen is “very pleasing to her.” Either the princess is no less greedy than her new husband or she suffers from the so-called Stockholm Syndrome and has fallen in love with her kidnapper. Since this story is told almost exclusively from the soldier’s point of view, it is of course also possible that she lies and just tries to stay alive a little longer.

Previously in the story, our protagonist did hand out money to the poor, but as king he only thinks of himself. His first decision (again, a greedy one) is to have a seven-day-long wedding feast, which certainly costs a lot of money. In addition, we also see what could be a growing paranoia when he insists on having his dogs sit at the table for protection, where they “stared with all their eyes.” This is a chilling image, and naturally nobody in their right mind would dare question the rule of this increasingly deranged soldier.

Andersen’s message is cleverly disguised, but a closer look reveals it: Greed may actually allow you to have shallow friends and an apparently prestigious career, but “The Tinder-Box” reveals the terrible cost to everyone else. What appeared to be a somewhat well-working kingdom now has a new king whose past includes betrayal, murder, kidnapping and recklessly spending money on entertainment and fancy clothes. Living in a society like that can only be described as terrible, and this story reminds us to think about the consequences of our decisions and not let money and greed cloud our judgment. Sadly, this message is as relevant today as it was almost 200 years ago.