English · Chapter 10
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish poet, playwright and novelist, best remembered for the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. "The Selfish Giant" appeared in his 1888 collection of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, which Wilde said was written partly for children and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy. On the surface it is a simple fairy tale about a Giant who shuts children out of his garden. Beneath the surface it is a Christian allegory of selfishness, repentance, love and redemption, told in Wilde's graceful, musical prose.
Every afternoon, on their way home from school, the children go to play in the Giant's garden. It is a large and lovely garden with soft green grass, flowers like stars, and twelve peach trees that break into pink and pearl blossom in spring and bear rich fruit in autumn. The birds sing so sweetly there that the children stop their games to listen. The Giant himself has been away for seven years visiting his friend, the Cornish ogre. When the seven years are over and he has said all he has to say, he returns home and finds the children in his garden. In a gruff voice he demands what they are doing there, and they run away. Declaring that his own garden is his own garden and that nobody but himself will play in it, he builds a high wall round it and puts up a notice board reading "Trespassers will be prosecuted." The children now have nowhere to play; the road is dusty and full of hard stones, and they wander round the high wall talking about the beautiful garden inside.