The Red Shoes

‘The Red Shoes’ is an imaginary and unreal story related by Hans Christian Anderson. Anderson makes effective use of fantasy to teach a moral lesson. He builds up the story in such a way that the reader does not care for the validity of the incidents. The moral lesson is that the proud and the disobedient must suffer.




Disobedience is a sin, and according to the Christian belief it is what started the demise in the heavens above, so anybody who commits it must suffer. Whatever sins man commits in his lifetime he is punished for them. If only he repents for his sins can he be forgiven and at least he can die in peace. God forgives them only when they repent for their sins.


The story also presents another facts of the Christian belief about sin and punishment, which is based on the strict principles of repentance and forgiveness.




In the story Karen is a poor but beautiful girl. At the death of her mother, a rich old lady takes her to her home and brings her up. The widow of the cobbler gave Karen a pair of red shoes, which she wore for the first time on her mother’s funeral. The old lady who adopted Karen disliked, the red shoes greatly because of Karen’s obsession for them and so she burnt them. Then once Karen saw the princess wearing beautiful red shoes. Her love for these shoes got re-ignited; she liked them a lot indeed.




Karen grew up to be a beautiful damsel. She was to be made the member of the church. Her foster mother, the rich old lady bought her a lovely pair of shoes incidentally those shoes were also red in color. This fact has escaped the old lady’s notice, but Karen found them to be exactly what she yearned for. She went to church in those red shoes. She thought that everyone in the church was looking at her shoes. She wore them at the time of confirmation, which was not the proper occasion to wear them. Karen felt very proud of them. She even forgot to pray in the...