Summary
The little girl’s hands are so cold and numb they seem to be nearly dead. She remembers her matches and thinks happily about how they could warm her.
With difficulty, she removes one from the box and strikes it with a scratching sound. She is thrilled by how the match head sputters and burns. The bright and warm flame is like a little candle she holds her hands over.
However, the match gives off a peculiar light: it seems to the little girl as if she is sitting in front of an iron stove—she can even see its brass knobs and brass cover. The fire in the stove burns wonderfully, making her feel comfortable. She extends her frozen feet to warm them against the stove. However, the flame extinguishes itself and the stove disappears, leaving her in the dark with the burnt matchstick in her hand.
The girl strikes a second match against the wall. This one also burns brightly. The light on the wall next to her turns the wall transparent, as if it is a thin veil through which she could see into the room on the other side.
She sees a table covered in a snow-white cloth. The table is set with shining silverware and plates and dinner service objects. A roast goose steams gloriously in the center; it is stuffed with prunes and apples. With a knife and fork stuck in its breast, the goose jumps off the dish and waddles over the floor toward the little girl.
The match goes out before the goose reaches her, and she can see only the cold wall. She lights a third match and is suddenly sitting under a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. The tree is larger and more beautiful than one she had seen the previous Christmas behind the glass door of a rich merchant’s home. Thousands of candles burn on the tree’s green branches; she sees colorful pictures, like she’s seen in print shops.
Just as she reaches her hands toward the pictures, the match goes out. The Christmas tree lights move to the sky, where she now sees them as brightly shining stars. She sees one of the stars fall; a long line of fire marks its trajectory. The little girl takes the shooting star as a sign that someone is dying. This belief comes from her dead grandmother, the only person who had loved the little girl. Her grandmother told her that when a star fell from the sky, a soul went up to God.
Analysis
The story reaches a turning point when the little girl remembers she can strike her matches to create some warmth. Though her red and blue appendages suggest that frostbite has already begun, the girl is able to focus happily on the satisfying act of striking a match, which Andersen conveys through auditory imagery, capturing the scratch and sputter of the ignited match head.
Striking the first match introduces the motif of matches bringing visions to the girl, while simultaneously introducing the theme of imagination. In her dying confusion, the girl sees a vision of a warm stove on which she can warm herself. However, the vision vanishes when the match goes out, leaving her to strike a second one in confusion.
The next match brings a vision in which the house wall becomes transparent. The olfactory imagery of roast goose in the air combines with her imagination, and she sees the goose on the table, soon to waddle toward her as though animated. This second image is more surreal than the first, suggesting her connection to reality is growing progressively tenuous.
The third match brings the vision of a Christmas tree lit with candles, as would have been common for Christmas trees before the invention of electric string lights. When the match burns out the girl finds that the tree lights are replaced in her vision with the stars above her.
The little girl sees a shooting star, which she understands to be symbolic of a human ascending to the afterlife to be with God, based on what her grandmother once told her. The moment she thinks that someone must be dying presents an instance of dramatic irony. The reader understands something the little girl does not: she is the dying person.
