Pinocchio Short Story Analysis

The story of Pinocchio has formed an integral part of the canon of bedtime stories for a large part of the world’s children. However, like any fairy tale, this story is also found in different forms, mediums and versions all across the world. Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio of the 1880’s for the Italian audience, and Disney’s Pinocchio of 1940 for the American audience, are two forms of the Pinocchio textual network. Poverty is significant to the fulfilment of some of the purposes and aims of the Collodi story of Pinocchio. Aimed at the young boys of Italy, Collodi’s work presents Pinocchio with the same struggles as these Italian boys so that they could connect with his character easily. Poverty was a key part of these struggles and thus, is essential to Collodi’s story. Collodi’s Pinocchio immerges from complete destitution with hard and honest work and by defeating greed. Poverty plays a key role in this representation. Showing his character rising from destitution helps Collodi convey an ideal of a hardworking and honest man upon the young boys of Italy. Collodi’s story also consists characters that choose a path of greed and thievery to overcome their poverty and presents the dire circumstances that they end up in. Their destitution is thus used as a warning by Collodi to avoid such a path. Key morals that Collodi explicitly expresses revolve around the need of money and ways to acquire it. Collodi also uses poverty to magnify the

These revolve around dealing with destitution with hard work. The banishment of poverty from Disney’s film finds its roots in the circumstances that the movie premiered in. This absence of poverty significantly alters this morals and idols of the story, leaving an entertaining tale that reflects and propagates the American dream in post-depression