The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl is a short story written by Hans Christian Anderson. Like pretty much everything he wrote, this story is extremely depressing. So depressing in fact that when Disney created an animated short they didn't Disneyify the ending like they did with another of their HCA animated adaptations: The Little Mermaid. The story is about a young girl who is wandering around, barefoot, in the snow on new-years eve. She is afraid to return home due to the fact that she was unable to sell any of her matches, and her father will beat her if she doesn't return with any money. Hiding away in an alley, she decides to strike a match to warm herself a bit. After doing so she starts hallucinating, seeing herself in a warm house with a family that cares for her. The match burns out and she finds herself back in the alley. She repeats the process multiple times, until she looks up and sees a shooting star. This reminds her that her grandmother once told her that a shooting star means that someone is dying. Lighting another match, she sees her grandmother. She realizes that when the match burns out her grandmother will disappear, so she lights all of her matches at once and she get taken to heaven. The story ends the next morning, new-years day, when she is found, dead, surrounded by burnt matches. Believe it or not this was considered a happy ending by HCA, what with the little girl spening her last moments with her deceased grandmother and going to heaven, celebrating the new year as she freezes to death. This story was first published in 1845 and life was pretty shitty for children at the time, so I guess that death would be preferable to living with an abusive father in poverty. Other adaptations generally keep the ending more or less the same, mostly changing the girl to an orphan at most. One orphan ending goes a bit further with police investagating the orphanage she lived in, which leads to reform among all orphanages. Another adaptation spares the girls life and she goes home to her father who realised over night that his daughter was more important to him than any amount of money, so he changes for the better. I can't really make jokes about this due to how depressing the whole thing was. HCA believed that the ultimate happy ending was dying and going to heaven, which is evident in this story. So yeah there isn't really anything funny i can say about this. I'm gonna go cry in a corner now.

Requested by Chirstopher