The Little Mermaid is a Danish legend written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837.
In Andersen’s original tale, the transformation from mermaid to human is a brutal sacrifice. The Sea Witch’s Price cuts her tongue out with a knife. The potion given to her splits her tail into legs, but every step she takes on land feels as if she was walking on razor blades, causing her feet to bleed constantly (yet, she must dance gracefully for the Prince).
In the legend, mermaids do not have immortal souls: when they die, they turn into sea foam. The only way for the Little Mermaid to get a human soul is to make the Prince fall in love with her and marry her. If he marries someone else, she will die of a broken heart the very next morning and dissolve into the ocean.
The Prince likes the Mermaid, but as a mute pet or a child rather than a romantic partner. He eventually falls in love with a foreign princess and marries her instead.
On the night of their wedding cruise, the Mermaid looks out at the sea, waiting for the sunrise that will end her life. Suddenly, her mermaid sisters rise from the water. They have traded their beautiful long hair to the Sea Witch in exchange for a magical dagger.
They tell her:
If you plunge this dagger into the Prince’s heart before the sun rises, his warm blood will drip onto your feet, turning them back into a mermaid tail, and you can come home to the ocean
The Little Mermaid takes the knife and enters the Prince’s wedding cabin. She looks at him sleeping next to his new bride, but she realizes she loves him too much to kill him. She throws the dagger into the waves, throws herself into the sea, and her body begins to dissolve into sea foam.
Instead of vanishing, the Mermaid feels herself floating into the sky. Because of her ultimate selfless sacrifice, she is greeted by the Daughters of the Air. They tell her that she has been granted a chance to earn her own immortal soul by flying around the world for 300 years doing good deeds for mankind.
Historians and biographers have discovered that Hans Christian Andersen wrote this story as a coded love letter. Andersen was deeply in love with his close friend, a young man named Edvard Collin. When Collin decided to get married to a woman, a heartbroken Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid to express his own feelings: he felt like a mute outsider, trapped in a world where he couldn’t speak his truth, watching the person he loved marry someone else.
The Disney films completely changed the narrative to give it a happy ending, but the actual legend written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 is a dark, tragic, and deeply psychological masterpiece [14.1].
- Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) - Flounder
- Caribbean Spiny Lobster (Panulirus argus) - Sebastian
- Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) - Ursula
- Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) - Scuttle
Peces del arrecife:
- Queen Angelfish (Holacanthus ciliaris)
- Yellowtail Parrotfish (Sparisoma rubripinne)
- Blue Tang (Paracanthurus hepatus)
- Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellatus)
Otros animales marinos:
- Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)
- Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
- Various sharks (Carcharhinus spp.)
FLORA MARINA:
- Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera)
- Sea Lettuce (Ulva lactuca)
- Brain Coral (Diploria labyrinthiformis)
- Sea Anemone (Condylactis gigantea)
- Various seagrasses (Thalassia testudinum)