Line #15 Literature/TheLittleMermaid


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3	Published in 1837, "The Little Mermaid" ("Den lille havfrue" in the original Danish) is a classic FairyTale written by Creator/HansChristianAndersen, about a mermaid who seeks to become human.
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5	Merfolk live for centuries but have no afterlife. One of them, a princess, is deeply curious about the world above but isn't permitted to go to the surface until she turns fifteen. She is the youngest of her sisters, and when each of them comes of age, they return with stories about the wonderful sights to be seen up there. When it's finally her turn, she sees a prince celebrating his sixteenth birthday on a ship, and she saves him from drowning when his ship capsizes. She leaves him unconscious on the shore, near a temple where he can be found, but she has already fallen in love with him.
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7	No longer content with life below the waves, the mermaid makes a deal with the Sea Witch to become human. The cost is steep: the Sea Witch can grant her legs and inhuman grace, but every step will feel like she is walking on knives. The mermaid must also give her tongue as payment. And her humanity is only conditional: if she can make the prince fall in love with her and marry her, she can gain a share in his soul and be truly human, but if he marries someone else, she will die at the next sunrise.
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9	The prince she loves finds her and takes her in. She becomes his pet companion, accompanying him on many of his outings and dancing beautifully for him despite the excruciating pain in her feet. But he does not truly love her: he has lost his heart to a temple maiden who (as he believes) once saved him from drowning.
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11	Then he is betrothed and sent unwillingly off on a ship to meet his intended bride. Lo and behold, she is the temple maiden! The prince is overjoyed, but the mermaid silently mourns. They are married immediately and begin their honeymoon on the return voyage, with the mermaid thinking of nothing but her impending death. But just before dawn, her sisters appear to her with a dearly-bought LastSecondChance -- if she kills the prince with the enchanted knife they have brought her, she can become a mermaid again and live out her centuries under the sea. The little mermaid considers it, but she is unable to murder the man she still loves. She throws the knife away and jumps overboard, dissolving into sea foam.
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13	Unexpectedly, the mermaid finds herself rising from the water in the company of the Daughters of the Air, benevolent spirits who, after 300 years of good deeds, will [[EarnYourHappyEnding earn a soul and ascend to Heaven]]. Whenever they see good and obedient children, their service is shortened, but disobedient ones will make it longer.
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15	The story has been adapted several times, from ballets, to musicals, to a [[Animation/TheLittleMermaid1968 Soviet short]] and, [[AudienceColoringAdaptation of course]], a [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Disney animated musical]]. The film changed the BittersweetEnding to a HappilyEverAfter, and several [[LostInImitation adaptations]] have followed suit.
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17	It can be read online [[http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html here]].
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19	!!Provides Examples Of
20	* ActOfTrueLove: The mermaid is given one last chance to save herself by killing the prince as he lies sleeping. She refuses it, allowing him to live happily with his new wife. In doing so, she is rewarded by being transformed into a daughter of the air.
21	* AnAesop:
22	** On the surface, it seems to say "[[LoveMakesYouDumb Don't give up your life for love]]", as the Little Mermaid forfeits her centuries of existence because she loves the prince, even after it's clear he doesn't love her. However, by her sacrifice the Little Mermaid earns everything she truly wanted, so the message becomes "''Do'' give up your life for love, because [[LoveRedeems the rewards of love are greater than all the sufferings.]]"
23	** It also includes a more explicit moral: Be good, children who hear this story, because the time the mermaid must serve gets shorter every time she sees a good child but longer every time she sees a bad one.
24	* AgonyOfTheFeet: The Little Mermaid feels like she is walking on knives while she is human. Severe exertion actually makes them bleed, but no one notices.
25	* AlienBlood: The Sea Witch's blood that is used in the potion is the color black.
26	* AllLoveIsUnrequited: The mermaid loves the prince, but he has already lost his heart to a temple maiden who (he thinks) rescued him from drowning. When it turns out that the maiden is actually the princess to whom he is betrothed, he is overjoyed -- the poor mermaid, of course, cannot tell him that ''she'' is the one who saved him.
27	* AmbiguousSituation: The Sea Witch's appearance is never fully described, leaving it unclear whether she's supposed to have a mermaid tail, legs or what. Several adaptations give her the lower body of a different sea creature from the standard mermaid fish.
28	* AuthorAvatar: The story was written around when a man Andersen loved romantically was getting married. There are claims that at the time, Andersen was writing desperate letters that he didn't dare send, saying "I want to tell my love, but I cannot speak." Sound familiar?
29	* BeautyEqualsGoodness: The "truth and purity" of the prince's chosen bride are evident in her beautiful blue eyes.
30	* BecomeARealBoy: Mermaids live for three hundred years and then dissolve into sea foam, having no afterlife of any kind. The protagonist's fascination with humanity comes directly from her desire for immortality, though in many adaptations this is completely ignored in favor of emphasizing the love story.
31	* ABirthdayNotABreak: The prince nearly drowns on his sixteenth birthday, but he is rescued by the titular mermaid... on her fifteenth birthday.
32	* BittersweetEnding: The mermaid is given a LastSecondChance to kill the prince and return to the sea. She chooses death instead. However, the sacrifice earns her a provisional afterlife as a sort of ministering spirit, and when her time is done, she will gain an immortal soul and go to heaven.
33	* BlowYouAway: The Daughters of the Air are air spirits who can manipulate the wind.
34	* BloodMagic: The Sea Witch uses her own blood in the potion that turns the mermaid into a human. Later, the human mermaid is told that blood from the prince's heart, sprinkled on her legs, will restore her tail.
35	* CannotKillTheirLovedOnes: The prince ends up marrying a different girl. The mermaid's sisters buy her a way to kill the prince and become a mermaid again, but she can't bring herself to do it.
36	* CelestialDeadline: If the prince marries anyone but the mermaid, her life will end at sunrise the next morning.
37	* CessationOfExistence: Mermaids live much longer than humans, but don't have an afterlife, and dissolve into sea foam when they die. The mermaid wants to escape this fate by gaining an immortal soul and going to heaven.
38	* ChildMarriageVeto: The prince tells the mermaid he won't marry the princess his parents have chosen for him, because she won't be the girl he really pines for (the temple maiden) nor the mermaid who reminds him of her. Unfortunately, that all flies out the window when the princess actually ''is'' the temple maiden.
39	* ContrivedCoincidence: The prince dreamed of marrying the girl he thought that had saved him from drowning, and ta-da! That girl and the one her parents betrothed to him are the same.
40	* CurseEscapeClause: The mermaid's older sisters buy her a knife which will undo the human transformation and let the little mermaid return to the sea -- ''if'' she kills the prince on his wedding night.
41	* CuteMute: The mermaid as a human.
42	* DarkIsNotEvil: Unlike the villainous Ursula from the Disney movie, the sea witch is a neutral character with no ulterior motives. She tells the little mermaid exactly what the cost will be, and she even lets the mermaid's sisters buy her a means of escape.
43	* DealWithTheDevil: For the mere ''chance'' to gain a soul, the mermaid gives up her centuries-long lifespan and her voice. She gains human legs with extraordinary grace but feels like she's ''walking on knives'', making her feet bleed every time she dances. If she marries the prince, she'll gain a soul, but if he marries someone else, she'll die permanently. However, the sea witch is open from the start about the consequences, and later helps her sisters when they want to save her.
44	* DiedHappilyEverAfter: The mermaid dies despairing, but finds happiness immediately after among the Daughters of the Air. Played with, however, in that she's still in a phase of "trial" that requires her to do invisible good deeds to earn her soul: the true happiness of Heaven is still to come. Andersen wrote several stories where the protagonist dying and going to Heaven was their 'happy' ending, and this story follows that pattern.
45	* DrivenToSuicide: The mermaid chooses death over killing the prince and reverting to mermaid form.
46	* EarnYourHappyEnding: The mermaid is told she can gain a share in the prince's soul (and permanent humanity) if he marries her. When that falls through and all seems lost, she chooses death over killing him to save her own life, and unexpectedly finds herself among the Daughters of the Air, on the way to earning a soul of her own.
47	* ElementalEmbodiment: The mermaids are water elemental embodiments while the Daughters of the Air are air embodiments.
48	* EveryoneHasStandards: The mermaid's older sisters trade their hair for a knife that she can use to kill the prince and save herself. Despite having no soul and no compelling reason not to, she refuses (an act which is implied to ''earn'' her a soul).
49	* {{Expy}}: The Little Mermaid was heavily inspired by Undine, the protagonist in the story of the same name. Both are merfolk who are told they must win the love of a human man in order to gain a soul.
50	* EyeOfNewt: The Sea Witch uses her own black blood as an ingredient in the potion.
51	* {{Familiar}}: The Sea Witch has sea snakes and a toad for familiars.
52	* FashionHurts: The little mermaid has oysters attached to her tail by her grandmother to show her great rank. They hurt, but her grandmother tells her that "pride must suffer pain."
53	* FriendOrIdolDecision: The mermaid has the choice to kill the prince and save herself, or spare his life at the cost of her own. She chooses the latter.
54	* GodivaHair: When she wakes up on shore, the little mermaid is naked, so she wraps her long hair around herself.
55	* HeavenAbove: The mermaid knows {{Heaven}} as "that glorious world above the stars." This description of Heaven as sky also furthers the distance between the mermaid and the eternal realm, since land-dwelling humans are closer to the sky while the soulless mermaids cannot even leave the water. The story also describes angelic spirits as "Daughters of the Air."
56	* HeroicSacrifice
57	** The mermaid is given the chance to kill the prince so she can live, but she rejects it and dies instead.
58	** SellingOnesOwnHair would have been understood as a great sacrifice by the original readers.
59	* HopeSpot: Two -- when the prince tells the mermaid he'd rather make her his bride than the princess to whom he is betrothed, believing that the latter does not resemble the girl in the Temple whom he believes rescued him; and much later (after he does marry the princess), when the mermaid's sisters bring her one last chance to save her life.
60	* IfICantHaveYou: {{Invoked\|Trope}} by the mermaid's sisters and the sea witch. They give her a dagger to use to kill the prince on his wedding night, and then let the blood drip on her legs so she will become a mermaid once more. Ultimately {{defied}} by the little mermaid herself, who chooses to die rather than kill him.
61	* InnocentlyInsensitive: The prince involves the mermaid in his wedding, having her dance at the reception and even carry the bride's train, thinking she will want to share in his happiness.
62	* {{Irony}}: The mermaid saves the prince's life, but he doesn't know it was her. The same spell that gives her legs so she can be near him also costs her the tongue she might have used to tell him.
63	* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: The mermaid chooses to spare the prince and accepts that he's happy with another woman.
64	* LanguageBarrier: A one-way barrier, at that. While mermaids can understand humans, humans apparently cannot understand them.
65	** The little mermaid's sisters try to communicate to imperiled sailors, but fail because of this:
66	--> Yet often, in the evening hours, the five sisters would twine their arms round each other, and rise to the surface, in a row. They had more beautiful voices than any human being could have; and before the approach of a storm, and when they expected a ship would be lost, they swam before the vessel, and sang sweetly of the delights to be found in the depths of the sea, and begging the sailors not to fear if they sank to the bottom. But the sailors could not understand the song, they took it for the howling of the storm.
67	** The mermaid evidently cannot speak to her prince in writing or any nonverbal way, except possibly with her eyes.
68	* LastSecondChance: The mermaid can save her own life, even after the prince marries another, if she kills him before the sun rises.
69	* LikeBrotherAndSister: The prince's feelings towards the mermaid.
70	* LockedAwayInAMonastery: The temple maiden turns out to be a princess in fosterage, not a consecrated virgin.
71	* LostInImitation: Few young children know the original tragic ending thanks to the [[Franchise/TheLittleMermaid Disney retelling]]. Several adaptations that came after the 1989 movie imitated the ending by having the prince indeed fall in love with the little mermaid, and the two of them marry and live HappilyEverAfter.
72	* LoveAtFirstSight: The mermaid towards the prince. [[AllLoveIsUnrequited The prince towards another girl.]]
73	* LoveHurts: The mermaid is heartbroken to learn that the prince is going to marry the princess of a neighbouring kingdom, whom he believes is the one who rescued him from drowning. He did not know that the mermaid, who is in love with him, was his true rescuer.
74	* LoveRedeems: The reason why the mermaid chose to die rather than kill the prince.
75	* MassiveNumberedSiblings: The Little Mermaid is the youngest of six mermaid siblings.
76	* NamelessNarrative: No one is referred to by name, just their titles.
77	* NatureSpirit: The merfolk are water spirits while the Daughters of the Air are air spirits.
78	* NoAntagonist: The tale is a tragedy, but doesn't have a real villain.
79	* OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding: The mermaid goes joyfully to her new mission as a daughter of the air, and the prince gets to marry the girl he loves...but the mermaid's sisters are doomed to dissolution at about the same time the Little Mermaid qualifies for heaven, and none of them will ever see each other again. Even the prince and his bride have a moment at the end where they look for the 'mute girl' and sadly conclude she must have jumped overboard.
80	* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: They can go to the surface when they are old enough, and lack immortal souls. They also live for 300 years.
81	* OurSoulsAreDifferent: Mermaids lack one, humans have one, and daughters of the air can gain one.
82	* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: Although the Little Mermaid accidentally helps that along, the prince and the girl from the temple fall in love when it turns out she's a princess from a neighboring kingdom.
83	* PowerAtAPrice: The Sea Witch will not do magic for anyone without a sacrifice. And even then, the spells come with painful side effects.
84	* PrincessProtagonist: The titular little mermaid is the youngest of six princesses. Her father is the Sea King.
85	* ReallyRoyaltyReveal: The object of the prince's unrequited love -- the temple maiden -- was actually a princess being fostered out. He doesn't realize it until he arrives in her kingdom for his ArrangedMarriage to her.
86	* RescueRomance: Tragically in the case of the mermaid; the prince she rescues doesn't love her and instead falls for the girl he ''thinks'' was his rescuer.
87	* SecretTestOfCharacter: It's implied that the only reason the Little Mermaid does not dissolve into sea foam at the end is that she refused to kill the prince. Killing him would have cost her a chance at an immortal soul forever.
88	* SellingOnesOwnHair: After the mermaid's sisters learn of her awful deal in which she is doomed to die after the prince is married, they make their own deal with the Sea Witch: having their long, beautiful hair shorn off by the sea witch as payment for an enchanted dagger that will free the Little Mermaid from the curse if she kills the prince. In Hans Christian Andersen's time, long, flowing hair made a woman beautiful -- short hair was socially unacceptable and utterly taboo. Thus this it meant sacrificing all of their earthly beauty and femininity. At least their hair can grow back, however, while the Little Mermaid can never regain her voice, because her tongue was cut out.
89	* SignificantBirthDate: The fifteenth birthday of the little mermaid, is also the sixteenth of her prince, and were it not so, he wouldn't have anyone to save him from drowning.
90	* SolitarySorceress: The Sea Witch lives by herself in a dangerous part of the ocean. Unlike the [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Disney adaptation]], she has no evil agenda, and she tells the mermaid every negative consequence her spell will have.
91	* TheSoulless: Mermaids have no souls and therefore no afterlife. This was inspired by a long tradition of water fairies without souls. Andersen was particularly inspired by the 1811 novella ''Literature/{{Undine}}'', which in turn was inspired by Paracelsus' AlchemicElementals.
92	* SpeciesSpecificAfterlife: Unlike humans, mermaids cease to exist when they die. The titular mermaid is horrified by this. At least half of her motivation to win and marry the prince comes from her desire for eternal life, which she is told she can gain by marrying a human.
93	* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: The prince is destined for an ArrangedMarriage with the princess from another kingdom. Even if he had loved the mermaid -- or hadn't been [[PerfectlyArrangedMarriage happy with his new bride]] -- he never really had the option to marry for love.
94	* TakeAThirdOption: Either the prince must marry the mermaid, or she will die at the next sunrise if he marries another woman. With the sea witch's help, her sisters try to give her an option that will save her -- but it would involve killing the prince, so she doesn't take it. In doing so, she unwittingly takes a fourth option and becomes a Daughter of the air.
95	* TongueTrauma: The Little Mermaid has her tongue cut out by the sea witch as part of the deal.
96	* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: The innocent and sweet mermaid who sacrifices her undersea life for love ends up giving up the boy she loves and sacrificing her earthly life too. However, the story makes it clear throughout that what she truly wants is a soul and immortality -- and upon her death, she is given a place among the daughters of the air, who have been judged worthy to ''earn'' a soul through centuries of good deeds.
97	* UnrequitedTragicMaiden: The titular mermaid, who ultimately chooses the prince's happiness over her own life and turns into sea foam. Unexpectedly, she is rewarded for her sacrifice by becoming an air spirit, who will earn an immortal soul and go to {{Heaven}} after three hundred years of doing good deeds for mankind.
98	* WantingIsBetterThanHaving: The Little Mermaid wishes to be a human and marry the prince. Because she gave up her mermaid life and became a human not being able to ever speak again and feel pain when she walked and danced and the possibility that she will die, it seems it would have been better for her to keep wanting instead of getting it. On the other hand, her actions do put her in a position where she can gain an immortal soul, which she might have wanted even more than the prince.
99	* WaterIsAir: The Sea Witch brews the potion over fire.
100	* WhatBeautifulEyes: The little mermaid is known for her beautiful blue 'speaking' eyes.
101	* WhatYouAreInTheDark: The mermaid has nothing to gain and everything to lose by sparing the prince. She does it anyway. It is implied that this is the moment she earns a place among the Daughters of the Air.

Context Literature / TheLittleMermaid