The Velveteen Rabbit was always more than a children’s book
vulture.com
vulture.com
'...the greatest works of children’s literature have dealt in “the sadness which is inseparable from life, which has to do with growth and change and impermanence, and with the very essence of beauty.”'
Imagine traveling to a destination. The way is fraught and perilous, but you reach your goal- a blissful paradise. Would you say that the whole experience was happy?
It's the same with literature: it's about the journey, not the destination.
Life is far too valuable to be defined in a single moment. And for many people, this single moment is not even a conscious one, they could be sleeping, or in a hospital bed, or it would happen too fast for them to notice. So it is also something they never experience.
Life is every moment we spent with our loved ones, and the experiences we leave behind. Every interaction matters, a single experience may matter more for some people than for others, and these experiences will stay in the memories of these others when we are gone. So we should strive to live the best of these experiences.
I also believe in your 'no wiggle room' attitude. So this comment is not really for you. It is for anyone else who reads your comment in the future, so they can also see there's strong disagreement with your comment and all its ideas.
Have you ever suffered from insomnia? You cannot think about anything, you cannot focus on anything, you cannot do anything. You just have one overwhelming thought in your mind: to go to sleep. Imagine that forever and ever. That is far worse than any physical pain one can experience.
Meanwhile, there will be many sensual delights in the New Jerusalem, but the best one will be the freedom to sleep any time you want.
Literally, it means that being sacrificed upon a pyre is a transcendence.
Figuratively, it requires change, from one form to another.
Change in life is never easy.
JK Rowling has actually tried to write a novel around similar themes called “Christmas Pig” and to be fair, it is a fun read as a bed time story for kids but doesn’t hit quite as hard as the Velveteen rabbit.
I don't think that there is any way that I could have loved them more but by giving them this new life, and letting them live again in the needs of my job. This is "technical debt."
I do miss them.
I live alone. That is the best love that I'll ever know.
This becomes less and less true as they pump out more movies. They clearly have peaked a long time ago now.
Yes, when the meanings are so curved you almost miss their reflection… but don’t. And that is what makes the story so beautiful!
> Adults aren't more sophisticated than a teenager, they just have better impulse control
is reductionist and absurd.
Some experiences are only available to adulthood. Some experiences take decades to transpire; some experiences need decades to pass after their conclusion before they can be fully understood, contextualized, and woven into one's self.
http://www.nostalgia.pl/zajaczek-z-rozbitego-lusterka
Seems it left an impression on others as well and also features a rabbit of sorts.
Later in life, after becoming familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell (Hero with a Thousand Faces) and Jordan Peterson (c.f. his lectures that unpack Pinnochio, The Lion King and his Biblical series), I began to understand the underlying elements in the story that make it reach so deep into our psyches.
Theme 1: pure love as a purifying crucible. Love as the ultimate goal and the ultimate sacrifice. The boy loves the rabbit, but it goes from being new and shiny to being torn and ragged. But love makes it "real". In that sense it is not a sacrifice, but the achievement of a higher ideal.
Theme 2: rebirth and redemption. The Phoenix story. The rabbit is burnt, shedding everything but its purest essence. The tear symbolizes the remnants of attachments to its past self.
As one raised in evangelical Christianity, I always see in The Velveteen Rabbit the theme of Love as a means of sanctification through devotion to the ideal, come hell or high water - becoming "Real".
It works particularly well through that lense, as the deus ex machina at the end is exactly right for a Christian worldview, not a cheap trick to escape the hard reality.
I still wish there were more sites/foundries with licenses like his, but helpful nonetheless!
Mixing sans-serif and serif fonts can really work on webpages and it shows here.
> There is time enough to be real. And if it never happens, that can be all right, too.