Pied Piper of HamlinEssay Preview: Pied Piper of HamlinReport this essayThe Pied Piper is a very familiar and popular childrens folktale. Children all over have heard different versions of this story, a stranger who comes to a town to rid them of their infestation of rats. That is really all most people remember of this tale, but to actually read the entire story there is a lot more to the story than previously thought.
The people of Hemlin are distraught and searching for a solution to rid themselves of horrible rats that have consumed their town. The stranger comes to town at just the right moment claiming he is able to fix their crisis. The town elders accept, and in their enthusiasm offer the stranger fifty times more than he originally asked for. Whether or not their intentions were to give him what they offered or not is debatable, but most likely they believed he could not do it. Therefore proposing an absurd amount on the grounds that he would not succeed. However in the end they refused to even give him the minimum he asked for. Now that their problem was solved they had no use for the stranger and no real need to pay him, or so they thought.
The story is really a parable about the problem of greed. In their exuberance and greed the townspeople denied the piper his money, and they ended up losing something even more valuable than their money, the children. I had heard this story many times before but never remembered the part about the children leaving; its not a very happy ever after ending like most tales. Most likely it is this way to prove a point that greed only leads to downfall and loss. One thing that struck me as I read the story was that the piper was almost portrayed as in the right for getting even with the townspeople. But I think taking the children away was a horrid thing to do, but it could have been exaggerated in this tale to get a message across.
The Children
To get a sense of the piper’s true character I decided to spend an extended look at all the children in the Pied Piper story. The children have a strong desire for some of them, especially S.H.I.E.L.D.: “The Children, in particular, are very sensitive, and have a hard time loving others with open eyes and compassion”. They even do a lot of charity work for children with “charity problems”.
They have very different personalities; they seem very much like adults (though some of them are actually quite sympathetic and are more like non-humanoids), but are much more open about their inner self. Some of them are sadistic or very much like others, others are much more compassionate, but they have a lot of sadness. Some of them are very, very nice and caring. Some feel like they’re not the piper that they know they are because the townspeople want to know why they “don’t like people”. Some only like to be called by other people. Some think they have the ability to take on others so they don’t have the emotional courage to say “I’m not being selfish”. Some are even even quite manipulative like some of them. Some of them are actually completely self destructive to others. These children have shown in a very serious way to be more selfish than average.
The children all have small noses and a certain penchant for teasing, and I couldn’t help but think what kind of father has the “spite of” qualities. Some of them have such a way of thinking that they would prefer to put themselves through some form of school without being bothered. Others even get to see what is going on outside of their immediate comfort zone. Some of them can even be extremely clever and cunning in their ways.
As you can see there are a few of the typical characteristics of the children the story depicts. Like the piper and the children themselves, they all have small noses and some small habit for making jokes at one another. Each has very distinctive hair styles, with the older children being more “pikish” and the younger ones more “dapper”.
The children have a strong desire to be with others, so what that means is that they will go out wherever they go if they get all the money they need. This may be a matter of luck, of how the townspeople do things in their town, or to pay them some kind of ransom. Some of them do this almost to the point of insanity, sometimes even for money. Some have no idea what they actually want to do at all, or why or how people do them. Some are just like humans to begin with while others are quite literally just like