I watched a movie few days ago. Suddenly I remembered reading something very good on Pinocchio. After few searches, located the article.
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Heartwarming Tale of a Puppet’s Search
By Marguerite Theophil
The magical, almost otherworldly streets of Florence are lined with shops selling Puppets. Pinocchio is everyone’s favorite. Wide-eyed and long nosed, his fixed bemused smile suggests he is not too sure of his much-publicized desire to become a ‘real boy’ – he seems to beg you to take him with you. And many do. Over a hundred years after he was ‘created’, Pinocchio’s dream of being wanted, of belonging comes true – again and again. What is it about this simple story that has caught our fancy?
Disney’s version of the story begins with a lonely carpenter Gepetto, longing for a child. He carves out a wooden puppet-child for himself. The book itself starts out somewhat differently, with the carpenter discovering a block of wood in his workshop that talked, laughed and cried like a child. According to psychiatrist Gaylin and Lorenzini this beginning is simpler, yet ultimately more sophisticated: a metaphor for a parent who is given a newborn with potential within, but still hidden. The Disney fantasy of the human creation of life parallels the everyday miracle that is human development.
Margaret Blount, an authority on children’s literature, points out that Pinocchio “fall from grace with the monotonous regularity of most humans”. His failings and blunders are allegories for the slow and painful process of ‘growing up’. The underlying theme of Pinocchio’s desire and attempts to ‘become human’ replicate every human being’s journey. He has to learn to hear the voice of conscience and ignore outwards distractions, which are symbolized in the story, by the character, Cricket.
On his journey, Pinocchio, learns his limitations. There are moments of helplessness – he sleeps too near a fire and his feet being wooden, get burnt. He learns the value of work when he turns into a donkey and must work like one. His nose, which grows uncontrollably whenever he tells a lie, teaches him the power of lying as well as its painful consequences. The environment acts on him as much as he acts on the environment, and the exchange slowly provides him with the clues to becoming truly human.
The blue-haired fairy plays a very special role in Pinocchio’s life. She teaches Pinocchio about love in its many forms. The wooden one first meets the fairy when assassins are pursuing him. He sees a house in the distance, runs towards it and knocks wildly with fear. A window opens and he sees the fairy, in the guise of the beautiful child. She, however, shuts the window and the assassins capture him. Her role is not that of rescuer here; she leaves him to fend for himself so that he can learn to be independent. She later takes on a more maternal role, and acts particularly tough when it comes to his lying. Though she seems to forgive all, and her compassion serves as a model for her charge, she still has to get him to learn that being loved is only one of loving. He must still learn to change enough to love in return. Pinocchio wonders why fairy changes so much from encounter to encounter but he never seems to change. The fairy tells him that it is people who grow; puppets never grow, they are born as puppets, live as puppets and die as puppets. In one particularly poignant moment later in the story, the puppet recognizes the fairy despite her unfamiliar appearance. When she wants to know how, he says, “It was my great affection for you that told me.” Pinocchio too, it seems , is changing.
It is Pinocchio acquisition of a ‘good heart’ that brings about his transformation. Pinocchio continues to do good and bad, because he becomes human, not a saint, but his newly developed capacity for love and empathy, and above all, hope, is what finally makes him real.
