The Tinderbox project and a story synopsis

Short Project Overview

As of Monday the 7th of October I received my first university project. What I have to do is choose one character from Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Tinder-Box' and then adapt them to which ever era you received. I was given Iron Age Britain and so I have to find plenty of references from this period to make sure my character would fit the era. Overall I am looking forward to working on this project as I hope it will push me a little out of my comfort zone and allow me to try different styles of drawing.

 

A synopsis on ‘The Tinder box’ by Hans Christian Andersen

 The story ‘The Tinderbox’ is about a solider returning from war. On his journey home he met a witch who offered him riches beyond his wildest dreams but only on one condition, and this was to retrieve the tinderbox which resides inside a hollow tree. After entering the tree, managing to pass 3 different sizes of dogs and collect bountiful amounts of gold the solider brought the tinderbox back to the surface. When the witch refused to tell him what was inside, the solider simply cut off her head and made off with tinderbox, heading into town and greedily started spending the money he retrieved. Foolishly he managed to spend a large sum of his money in a short space of time but once he decided to open the tinderbox it releases a power to summon the dogs from inside the tree. This allowed the solider to use the dogs as slaves to bring him money and other items he craved, like a mysterious princess who is locked away from the world by her father, the king.

He instructs the hounds to bring her to him so that he can see her beauty in the flesh. The princess believes it only to be a recurring dream but as her father was told his daughter was destined to marry a common solider he decided to act on his rage and find the man who has been ‘kidnapping’ the princess.  A servant, ordered to stay at the princess’s side followed the dog as it carried the young maiden away yet again, and when she reached the house of the solider she drew a large cross in chalk on the door so that she could find the building again in the morning. The solider, as sneaky as he was, then drew x’s on all the doors of the villagers houses in town to try and deter anyone from finding him.  As the Queen was a highly intelligent women and had seen what the solider had done, she came up with a plan to tie a small bag of wheat flour round her daughters neck so that it would leave a trail behind her when the dog next took her away and would lead them straight to the house they were searching for. Sure enough this plan worked, the solider was found and sentenced to death by hanging. Before he was taken away he'd paid the shoe makers son to collect the tinderbox for him so he could take it with him to his death.

When the time of his hanging arrived, he opened the box and called for the hounds to save him from his sentence. The largest dog bounded into action, killing the judges and councillors and viciously murdered the King and Queen as well. Out of pure fear the villagers appointed the solider king and the right to marry the princess.

Overall the story doesn’t particularly have a positive moral to it, or any moral for that matter. It could possibly be a warning, telling you that there are cruel and ruthless people out there willing to anything to get what they want.