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A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

7119 A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing The Story of Anitra Hamilton's Sardonic Sartorial
I have sympathy for the naïve young boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Hijacking the folk story, “De lo que contesció a un rey con los burladores que fizieron el paño [Of that which happened to a king and three imposters],” found in “Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio [Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio],” a medieval Spanish collection of cautionary tales by Don Juan Manuel, Andersen updates his version by changing the “whistle-blowing” character from an African to an innocent young boy. (Zerubavel, 2) In doing so, Andersen tells a tale of vanity and social legitimacy rather than one of race and cultural belonging. Andersen’s (anti) hero is no longer a “barbaric” outsider who breaks the “conspiracy of silence” (Zerubavel, 2) in order to topple the power structures that are strategically set in place to hold up “the lie.” In Andersen’s version, it is innocence—not bravery—that compels the whistle-blower to speak the five little words that everyone else is thinking but dare not speak: “But he has nothing … on.” (Anderson, n.pag) No longer the spark of an anti-conformist uprising, these words are now an inadvertent intervention into the day’s event by a naïve insider with nothing at stake by exposing the truth. But this is not why I feel sympathy for him. 




Works Cited

This page has paths:

  1. The GAP Emelie Chhangur

Contents of this path:

  1. Power Stripped Bare
  2. Hijacking not Coopting!
  3. Reversals
  4. Intention
  5. Realization
  6. The Gap is a Trap
  7. The Trap is a Gap
  8. The Cover Up
  9. The Lie
  10. The Hidden Tensions in the Gap
  11. The End

This page has tags:

  1. Works Cited Emelie Chhangur

Contents of this tag:

  1. Watch the Gap