尼尔斯骑鹅旅行记｜The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

原著作者｜塞尔玛·拉格洛夫 Did you know In the history of the Nobel Prize for Literature only one fairy tale has ever won It is The Wonderful Adventures of Nils In Sweden on this twenty-krona banknote the front shows the author Selma Lagerlöf and the back shows a little boy riding on a goose So what kind of child is Nils In today's words he was a super brat He was fourteen blond and tall quite handsome but his character was terrible He didn't like studying he was lazy and worst of all he lacked empathy Pulling the rooster's comb hitting cows with wooden shoes poking hornets' nests In his world he was the center and other lives were his toys Until one Sunday afternoon everything changed Nils discovered a little elf in his house and his first instinct was to play a prank He caught the elf with a net The elf got angry and cast a spell Bang Nils passed out When he woke up he found himself shrunk to the size of a thumb This setup is brilliant Before he was a giant a master who could kick anyone he didn't like Now he was tiny The chickens and ducks and cats and dogs he used to bully could easily kill him For the first time he truly felt what fear was what it meant to be small Just when Nils was in despair the family's white goose Merton suddenly flew up taking Nils into the sky And so one boy and one goose joined a flock of wild geese and began a journey across Sweden The leader of the flock a wise old goose named Akka would not accept him Why Because he was human In the animal world humans had a terrible reputation But that night a fox named Smirre attacked the flock and snatched a goose The old Nils would have hidden far away but this time he rushed forward without thinking grabbed the fox's tail and saved the goose at the risk of his life This was the first time Nils risked himself for someone else When a person begins to give to others their heart begins to mature The geese accepted him He helped squirrels find nuts he helped small animals untie ropes He was amazed to discover that the joy of helping others was far deeper and longer lasting than the thrill of bullying On this journey he witnessed so many amazing things One night at Kullaberg he saw something he would never forget It was the Dance of the Cranes At that sacred moment all the animals even foxes and rabbits who were usually enemies put aside their grudges and gathered on the hillside of Kullaberg The cranes began to dance They spread their wings spinning and leaping gracefully Moonlight fell on their white feathers like a performance from another world Nils hid behind a rock deeply shaken by this primitive and sacred life force He suddenly realized humans are not masters of the world but just one member of all living beings Later they came to Glimminge Castle Inside lived a colony of ancient black rats who guarded the civilization there But a swarm of savage gray rats invaded trying to wipe them out This was a metaphor for the clash of civilizations The geese wanted to help but could do nothing Once again Nils stepped forward He found a magic whistle in the castle and like the legendary Pied Piper he played a tune and led thousands of gray rats out of the castle far away The black rats were saved Another night Nils saw something even more magical On the beach he watched a magnificent city rise slowly from the sea It was the legendary underwater city of Vineta punished by the gods for its pride and excess and sunk beneath the waves The city rose only once every hundred years If just one living person would buy something even for a penny the city would be saved Ghost merchants desperately showed Nils their treasures their eyes filled with longing a longing for rebirth Nils wanted to buy but he had no money Then he remembered he had picked up a rusty coin on the beach He turned and ran back to find it but by the time he returned with the coin time was up The city collapsed before his eyes sinking back into the sea leaving only silence This story was cruel and profound It told Nils and it tells us opportunities are fleeting and greed and corruption can destroy the greatest civilizations This sense of history's weight settled on Nils's young heart with a burden beyond his years He learned the world is not just play there is regret there is loss What broke his heart the most was the moment they flew over his home He secretly went back to take a look He saw the shabby cottage he used to despise He saw his parents worried about losing their goose and he saw how much they had aged from missing him Before he thought his parents were ordinary and dull Now through the window he saw their love and the hardships of life True growth often begins the moment you truly see your parents He wanted to go home He wanted to tell his parents If you're unhappy just spank me But he was a little elf now he couldn't go back The climax of the story came at the end of the journey The elf told him If he brought the white goose Merton home and let his mother kill it he could 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