Speaker 1: Welcome to Spotlight Advanced.
Speaker 2: I'm Roger Bassing and I'm Alice Irrasari. Spotlight uses a
Speaker 2: special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people
Speaker 2: to understand no matter where in the world they live.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty three, the Danish writer Hans Christian Anderson
Speaker 1: published a story. He called it The Ugly Duckling. The
Speaker 1: story follows the life of a young water bird. All
Speaker 1: of the creatures are amazed when this duckling comes out
Speaker 1: of its egg. He is the strangest looking creature they
Speaker 1: have ever seen. The duckling's parents, brothers, and sisters call
Speaker 1: him names and heard him. Soon he runs from their home.
Speaker 2: The duckling finds new places to live, but other creatures
Speaker 2: always drive him away. He spends his first year alone,
Speaker 2: surviving through the winter's cold. The only joy he finds
Speaker 2: is watching the swans. These larger waterbirds have long, graceful necks.
Speaker 2: In their beauty, the duckling sees everything that he is not.
Speaker 1: At the end of his first year, the duckling decides
Speaker 1: to go to the swans. He believes the swans will
Speaker 1: kill him because of his appearance, but when he arrives,
Speaker 1: the birds welcome him. He looks down at his reflection
Speaker 1: in the water, he discovers that he has grown up
Speaker 1: to be a swan. He was never a duck. He
Speaker 1: was always a young swan. The animals who made fun
Speaker 1: of him did not recognize his beauty underneath. At the
Speaker 1: end of the story, the ugly Duckling flies away with
Speaker 1: his new family, proving everyone who made fun of him wrong.
Speaker 2: The Ugly Duckling is a story for children. Its message
Speaker 2: is that not everyone sees talent or beauty for what
Speaker 2: it is at first, but the story may as well
Speaker 2: be a story of Anderson's first years. Insulted for his
Speaker 2: appearance and ideas, the young Anderson eventually grew to be
Speaker 2: one of Denmark's most celebrated writers. Like his duckling, Anderson
Speaker 2: flew on to other greater things. On today's Spotlight, we
Speaker 2: talk about his story.
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Andersen was born in eighteen oh five. He
Speaker 1: grew up knowing he loved art. His family was poor.
Speaker 1: He was meant to earn his living making clothing for others,
Speaker 1: but when he was a child, his father read him
Speaker 1: famous stories like the one thousand and one Nights, and
Speaker 1: he lived in a small city with its own theater.
Speaker 1: Seeing stories on the stage and listening to his father
Speaker 1: read stories made him feel as if there were something better.
Speaker 2: When he was just fourteen, Anderson moved to the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
Speaker 2: There he tried to act and sing for a living.
Speaker 2: But while Anderson could sing, he could not act well.
Speaker 2: He did not look like the roles he wanted. He
Speaker 2: spent three years trying to act for the theater without success.
Speaker 2: He soon understood that writing was a better choice for him.
Speaker 1: But Anderson's writing work did not begin easily either. A
Speaker 1: friend and helped send him to school, but his teachers
Speaker 1: were very unkind. Simon Meisling was the head of Anderson's school.
Speaker 1: He told Anderson that he was not supposed to write creatively.
Speaker 1: Meisling hurt Anderson when he disobeyed once.
Speaker 3: Meisling said, you are a stupid boy. You will never
Speaker 3: be any good when you are on your own. You
Speaker 3: can write a lot of nonsense, but no one will
Speaker 3: read what you write. It will be sold on cheap paper.
Speaker 2: Anderson's time at school almost made him stop writing. He
Speaker 2: almost gave up on his art, but somehow he kept going.
Speaker 2: He knew that he would one day become as great
Speaker 2: as the swan in his story.
Speaker 1: Anderson began writing seriously after he left school. His first
Speaker 1: pieces were about the places he traveled, but the stories
Speaker 1: that brought him his most success or his fairy tales.
Speaker 1: A fairy tale is a short story that is not
Speaker 1: based in real life. Often, these stories teach a life
Speaker 1: lesson and include magical characters or events. They are usually
Speaker 1: for children, but some fairy tales are dark and frightening.
Speaker 2: Anderson's fairy tales were different than other written stories. Anderson
Speaker 2: had a conversational style. He wrote like he talked. His
Speaker 2: writing was easy to read. His style had a warmth
Speaker 2: and closeness that other writers of his days lacked.
Speaker 1: Some of Anderson's fairy tales were retellings of old folk tales,
Speaker 1: but his original stories are the ones that made him famous.
Speaker 1: One of these stories is called The Little Mermaid.
Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid tells the story of a mermaid girl
Speaker 2: who lives under the water. She and her family have
Speaker 2: tails instead of legs, but the Little Mermaid dreams of
Speaker 2: the surface world. She even falls in love with the
Speaker 2: son of a king, and she rescues him from drowning.
Speaker 1: The Little Mermaid chooses to live on the surface. She
Speaker 1: gives up her voice and swimming ability. She leaves her
Speaker 1: family under the sea. It hurts for her to walk
Speaker 1: like she is stepping on glass, and the prince she
Speaker 1: loves does not love her back. He marries someone else.
Speaker 1: On the day he does, the Little Mermaid dies. She
Speaker 1: turns into a spirit of the air so that she
Speaker 1: can have a new life. She is given a second chance.
Speaker 2: Anderson's story is like a folk tale, but it is
Speaker 2: also influenced by his Christian faith. Christians believe that Jesus
Speaker 2: is the son of God. Jesus offers to save believers
Speaker 2: from the pain of this life. The Little Mermaid made
Speaker 2: many bad decisions. She suffered for these, but she was
Speaker 2: saved at the last possible moment. Her second chance is
Speaker 2: one of the wonderful gifts in this tale, but it
Speaker 2: is also the story of someone being saved even though
Speaker 2: she made bad decisions.
Speaker 1: Anderson's work made him a success. By the time he
Speaker 1: was thirty. He met with real kings, real princesses, and
Speaker 1: the most famous people in his country. He was living
Speaker 1: proof that his teachers were wrong about him.
Speaker 2: But Anderson's personal life was difficult, like many of his characters.
Speaker 2: He fell in love early and often. He had very
Speaker 2: strong emotional attachments to people, but these attachments caused him problems.
Speaker 2: He loved people with whom he could not have relationships,
Speaker 2: so he was often unhappy. He had a hard time
Speaker 2: taking disapproval or failure. Problems in his life would leave
Speaker 2: him emotionally destroyed, unable to speak for crying. He became famous,
Speaker 2: but he never stopped feeling like an outcast.
Speaker 1: Even though he had difficulties. Anderson's writing made him famous.
Speaker 1: By the time he died, his stories had been translated
Speaker 1: into dozens of languages. Today, his stories are some of
Speaker 1: the most well known in the Western world. Many of
Speaker 1: his stories, such as The Little Mermaid, The Princess and
Speaker 1: the Pea, and the Emperor's New Clothes have been retold films,
Speaker 1: television shows, ballets, and theater musicals. The city of Copenhagen
Speaker 1: honored Anderson by placing a statue of the Little Mermaid
Speaker 1: on a rock in its harbor. Hans Christian Andersen's name
Speaker 1: is tied to the fairytale. His writing is proof that
Speaker 1: he overcame many difficulties. And Chinsom wrote for the Telegraph
Speaker 1: about Anderson.
Speaker 4: She said, His stories are the best possible evidence to
Speaker 4: the great importance of a complex man. They are evidence
Speaker 4: to the transforming power of art.
Speaker 2: Have you worked through any childhood difficulties? What challenges have
Speaker 2: you overcome? Do you have a favorite story by Anderson?
Speaker 2: You can leave a comment on our website at www
Speaker 2: dot Spotlight English dot com. You can also find us
Speaker 2: on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and x. You can also get
Speaker 2: our programs delivered directly to your Android or Apple device
Speaker 2: through our free official Spotlight English app. You can find
Speaker 2: another Anderson tail, the Story of the Little match Girl,
Speaker 2: on the Spotlight website.
Speaker 1: The writer and producer of this program was Dan Chrisman.
Speaker 1: The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and
Speaker 1: the United States. All quotes were adapted for this program
Speaker 1: and voiced by Spotlight. This program is called Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Andersen the Storyteller.
Speaker 2: We hope you can join us again for the next
Speaker 2: Spotlight program. Goodbye,