Kaitlin’s Response to Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant

            In Oscar Wilde’s short story, The Selfish Giant, Wilde shares the story of a Giant who returns to his beautiful garden after a seven-year hiatus. Upon his return, he sees children playing in his beautiful garden home and becomes enraged. He then builds a barricade and places a noticeboard on the wall which forbids any trespassers. The Giant then experiences an endless and isolated winter inside his garden where there he remains alone without any children or visitors. He eventually becomes tired of being alone and wishes for the end of winter and the beginning of spring. The Giant then lets the children back into his garden and the barricade is broken down. 

            In my interpretation of the story, I found that Oscar Wilde portrays disability through the Giant and the character’s various highs and lows throughout his life in a similar pattern to those who are diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. The prolonged winter is a symbol for the Giant’s depressive episode. The winter is described as a “cloak” that covers the garden which can be portrayed as a symbol of hiding and isolation. He separates himself from all of the outside world and remains alone without explanation. In contrast to his depressive episode, the springtime in the garden is a high for the character. The springtime breaks down the barricade guarding his garden and allows the children back into the Giants life. I interpreted the children and sunshine to represent his happiness and how he is removing himself from isolation, or a depressive episode. I found parallels between Oscar Wilde’s Giant and Mary Shelley’s character Victor in Frankenstein. Victor exhibited similar drastic highs and lows throughout his story. He was content and happy during his time creating his creature, and isolated while he was avoiding the monster and his peers when spending time alone laying in his bed. 

            The language used to surround the Giant also aligns with the societal stereotype of using negative descriptive language to describe those with disabilities even when it is unintentional. He is the “selfish” Giant for remaining in isolation and not sharing his home with the children in town. There are often negative terminologies used to display those struggling with mental illness because it is not a physically shown disable. Similarly in Simi Linton’s “Reassigning Meaning” article, she discusses the way that language is used to describe those with disabilities that was created from the outside community and how it makes those who are disabled seem like a “burden or a problem” and “devalued” (Linton 22). Linton also discusses how it forced an “us and them division of the population” which is found in Wilde’s story as the Giant is separated from the townspeople and not considered to be the same (Linton 23). This language is counterproductive to society and Wilde shows the divide in the community between the Giant and the rest of the community. 

            Wilde represents disability in The Selfish Giant similarly to Mary Shelley in Frankenstein because they both illustrate characters that portray disabilities that are not mentioned, and their characters are looked at negatively by their communities and seen as abnormal. 

I pledge. 

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