The Selfish Giant

Thursday I was tutoring at the learning center. Around 5 I had a slow stretch. All of the kids appeared to be on task and need know assistance. So I looked around for something to read. We mostly have children's books around of course. I found some short stories by Oscar Wilde. I had read two of his plays before "The Importance of Being Ernest" and "Salome" and I liked them both very much.
The story, "The Selfish Giant" surprised me on two levels. The first was that I didn't know Oscar Wilde had written children stories. The second surprise came towards the end of the story so I'll save it for closer to the end of my post.
The story is about a garden. It is the Giants garden, but he has been away. It is a beautiful garden where children play on twelve peach trees. When the Giant returns. He kicks all the kids out. He says shi garden is for him alone. He puts up a not tresspassing sign. With the children gone the Spring weather ceases. It becomes cold and frosty all the time. Hail bangs on the Giant's house. Even when it is Spring, Summer, and Fall everywhere else it is always Winter for the Giant.
One day the Giant hears a bird singing in his garden. He looks and beholds that the children have snuck back in and are playing in the trees. With them of course spring has sprung.
So far in my reading I'm thinking. OK nice fairy tale; nice fable. But its so simple. I might as well be reading some other children's book. I might as well have picked "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" of "The Cat in the Hat."
Back to the action. There is one corner and one tree where it is still winter there is one boy there crying because he can't get up the tree. The Giant is cut to the heart he repents of his selfishness. He will from now on open his garden to the children. The Giant went out and lifted the crying boy into the tree. The tree blossomed the boy huged and kissed the Giant in joy.
The Giant now loved all the children, but he loved best the one he had put in the tree. But he did not see him for years as the others came and played everday.
One day again he saw him. The boy was by a tree with silver fruit hanging down. When he came down he saw that the boy was wounded in his palms and his feet.
The Giant said,"Who hath dared to wound thee?" "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."
And the story ends with this:
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."
And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.
What Wilde accomplished with this tale was to hit the targe at which all short stories should aim. There is one moment one climax. In this moment we are struck with emotion and it wakes us up.
I was surprised to see such a vivid picture of the Gospel written by a man who was not a believer through out his life (although according to wikipiedia he converted to Catholicism on his death bed). In fact from what I've read it appears that Wilde himself was quite a worldy hedonist. Actually, come to think of it, everything I've read of his seems to have an interest in Christianity. Sometimes a mocking interest. Some times an apreciation of the aesthetic beauty of the revelation even without a belief or commitment to it.
Certainly in the Selfish Giant he gave a touching allegory of salvation and of Christ.
See how the Giants selfishness kept out all of the light and joy. Like the natrual man unable to see the glory of God. Dead in sin, "passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another."
Then he is giving eyes to see. He beholds the beauty. He has new eyes and a new life. His regeneration precedes his repentance. On belholding the Glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus he is stcurck by his own sin. He turns away from his selfishness to serve the living God.
Then there is the child. The suffering Christ crushed for Giants transgression. Who never the less gives him his love and his joy. The child who brings him safely to a greater garden than the Giant could ever give. The child who carries a Giant to Paradise.