Comparative Analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s and Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid

Abstract

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, published on April 7, 1837, remains an exemplary childhood classic that Disney Studios retold as an animated film on November 17, 1989. This paper examines the comparison between Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid and Disney’s Little Mermaid through a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of literary elements found in each version. Dissecting such elements reveals the characters' motivations and goals by highlighting the differences between the fiction and film versions. Structuralism and New Criticism research has used canonical evidence to examine this comparative analysis. The discourse analysis method is used to incorporate non-numerical data presentation in Andersen’s Little Mermaid and the visual-textual features of Disney’s version, ultimately forming a structured narrative about its dissimilitude and resemblance. This literary study emphasizes the artistic changes between the written version and its film rendition to understand the story's underlying themes, which may be distorted in dramatization.