The Adventures of Pinocchio
The
Adventures of Pinocchio (/pɪˈnoʊki.oʊ/ pi-NOH-kee-oh; Italian: Le avventure di Pinocchio [le
avvenˈtuːre di piˈnɔkkjo]), also
simply known as Pinocchio, is a novel for children
by Italian author Carlo Collodi,
written in Pescia. It is about the mischievous adventures of an animated marionette named Pinocchio and his father, a poor woodcarver named Geppetto.
It
was originally published in a serial
form as The Story of a Puppet (Italian: La storia di un burattino) in the Giornale per i bambini, one of the earliest
Italian weekly magazines for children, starting from 7 July 1881. The story
stopped after nearly 4 months and 8 episodes at Chapter 15, but by popular
demand from readers, the episodes were resumed on 16 February 1882.[1] In February 1883, the story was published in a single book.
Since then, the spread of Pinocchio on the main markets for children's
books of the time has been continuous and uninterrupted, and it was met with
enthusiastic reviews worldwide.[1]
A
universal icon and a metaphor
of the human condition,
the book is considered a canonical piece of children's literature and has had
great impact on world culture. Philosopher Benedetto
Croce reputed it as one of the greatest
works of Italian literature.[2] Since its first publication, it has inspired hundreds of
new editions, stage plays, merchandising, television series and movies, such as
Walt
Disney's iconic animated version,
and commonplace ideas such as a liar's long nose.
According
to extensive research done by the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi in
the late 1990s and based on UNESCO sources, the book has been adapted in over 260 languages
worldwide,[3] while as of 2018 it has been translated into over 300
languages.[4] That makes it the most
translated non-religious book
in the world[3] and one of the best-selling books ever published,[5] with over 80 million copies sold in recent years[6] (the total sales since its first publication are unknown
because of the many public domain
re-releases begun in 1940).[3] According to Francelia
Butler, it remains "the most
translated Italian book and, after the Bible, the most widely read".[7]
Plot
The
story begins in Tuscany,
Italy. A carpenter
named Master Antonio, but whom everyone calls Master Cherry, has found a block
of wood which he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he begins,
however, the log shouts out. Frightened by the talking log, Master Cherry gives
it to his neighbor Geppetto, an extremely poor man who plans to make a living as a
puppeteer in hopes of earning "a crust of bread and a glass of wine".
Geppetto
carves the block into a boy and names him "Pinocchio". As soon as Pinocchio's nose has been carved, it
begins to grow with his congenital impudence. Before he is even built,
Pinocchio already has a mischievous attitude; no sooner than Geppetto is
finished carving Pinocchio's feet does the puppet proceed to kick him. Once the
puppet has been finished and Geppetto teaches him to walk, Pinocchio runs out
the door and away into the town. He is caught by a Carabiniere, who assumes Pinocchio has been mistreated and imprisons
Geppetto.
Left
alone, Pinocchio heads back to Geppetto's house to get something to eat. Once
he arrives at home, a talking
cricket who has lived in the house for over
a century warns him of the perils of disobedience and hedonism. In retaliation,
Pinocchio throws a hammer at the cricket, more accurately than he intended to,
and accidentally kills it. That evening, Pinocchio falls asleep with his feet
on the stove, and wakes to find that they have burned off. Geppetto is released
from prison and makes Pinocchio a new pair of feet. In gratitude, Pinocchio
promises to attend school, and Geppetto sells his only coat to buy him a school
book.
On
his way to school the next morning, Pinocchio encounters the Great Marionette
Theatre, and he sells his school book in order to buy a ticket for the show.
The marionettes on stage recognize him in the audience and call out to him,
angering the puppet master Mangiafuoco. The puppet master initially decides to use Pinocchio as
firewood but ultimately releases him and gives him five gold pieces to give to
Geppetto.
As
Pinocchio travels home to give the coins to his father, he meets a fox and a cat.
The Cat pretends to be blind, and the Fox pretends to be lame. A white blackbird tries to warn Pinocchio of their lies, but the blackbird is
eaten by the Cat. The two animals convince Pinocchio that if he plants his
coins in the Field of Miracles outside the city of Catchfools, they will grow into a tree with gold coins. They stop at
an inn, where the Fox and the Cat gorge themselves on food at Pinocchio's
expense and ask to be awoken by midnight. Two hours before the set time, the
pair abandon Pinocchio, leaving him to pay for the meal with one of his coins.
They instruct the innkeeper to tell Pinocchio that they left after receiving a
message stating that the Cat's eldest kitten had fallen ill and that they would
meet Pinocchio at the Field of Miracles in the morning.
They
take off ahead of Pinocchio and disguise themselves as bandits while Pinocchio continues on toward Catchfools, despite
warnings from the Talking Cricket's ghost. The disguised Fox and Cat ambush
Pinocchio, but the puppet escapes to a white house after biting off the Cat's
paw. Upon knocking on the door, Pinocchio is greeted by a young fairy with turquoise hair who says she is dead and waiting for a hearse. Unfortunately,
the bandits catch him and hang
him in a tree. After a while, the Fox and Cat get tired of waiting for the
puppet to suffocate, and they leave.
The
Fairy has Pinocchio rescued by summoning a falcon to get him down and having her poodle servant pick him up in her stagecoach. The Fairy calls in three famous doctors to tell her
whether Pinocchio is dead. Two of them, an owl and a crow,
are unsure of Pinocchio's status. The third doctor is the Ghost of the Talking
Cricket, who says that the puppet is fine, but has been disobedient and hurt
his father. The Fairy administers medicine to Pinocchio who consents to take it
after four undertaker
rabbits arrive to carry away his body. Recovered, Pinocchio lies to
the Fairy when she asks what has happened to the gold coins, and his nose grows
until it is so long that he cannot turn around in the room. The Fairy explains
that Pinocchio's lies are making his nose grow and calls in a flock of
woodpeckers to chisel it down to size. The Fairy sends for Geppetto to come and
live with them in the forest cottage.
When
Pinocchio heads out to meet his father, he once again encounters the Fox and
the Cat. When Pinocchio notices the Cat's missing paw, the Fox claims that they
had to sacrifice it to feed a hungry old wolf. They remind the puppet of the
Field of Miracles, and finally, he agrees to go with them and plant his gold.
They finally reach the city of Catchfools, where every animal in town has done
something exceedingly foolish and now suffers as a result. Upon reaching the
Field of Miracles, Pinocchio buries his coins and then leaves for the twenty
minutes that it will take for his gold to grow into gold coin trees. After
Pinocchio leaves, the Fox and the Cat dig up the coins and run away.
Once
Pinocchio returns, he learns of the Fox and the Cat's treachery from a parrot
who mocks Pinocchio for falling for their tricks. Pinocchio rushes to the
Catchfools courthouse where he reports the theft of the coins to a gorilla
judge. Although he is moved by Pinocchio's plea, the judge sentences Pinocchio
to four months in prison for the crime of foolishness. Fortunately, all
criminals are released early by the jailers when the unseen young Emperor of
Catchfools declares a celebration following his army's victory over the town's
enemies. Upon being released by stating to the jailer that he committed a
crime, Pinocchio leaves Catchfools.
Pinocchio
then heads back to the Fairy's house in the forest, but he sneaks into a farmer's
yard to steal some grapes. He is caught in a weasel trap where he encounters a glowworm. The farmer finds Pinocchio and ties him up in the doghouse
of his late watch dog Melampo to guard the chicken coop. When Pinocchio foils
the chicken-stealing weasels,
the farmer frees the puppet as a reward. Pinocchio finally comes to where the
cottage was, finds nothing but a gravestone, and believes that the Fairy has
died of sorrow.
A
friendly pigeon sees Pinocchio mourning the Fairy's death and offers to give
him a ride to the seashore, where Geppetto is building a boat in which to
search for Pinocchio. Pinocchio is washed ashore when he tries to swim to his
father. Geppetto is then swallowed by The Terrible Dogfish. Pinocchio accepts a ride from a dolphin to the nearest
island called the Island of Busy Bees. Upon arriving on the Island of Busy
Bees, Pinocchio can only get food in return for labor. Pinocchio offers to
carry a lady's jug home in return for food and water. When they get to the
lady's house, Pinocchio recognizes the lady as the Fairy, now miraculously old
enough to be his mother. She says she will act as his mother, and Pinocchio
will begin going to school. She hints that if Pinocchio does well in school and
tries his hardest to be good for one whole year, then he will become a real
boy.
Pinocchio
studies hard and rises to the top of his class, but this makes the other
schoolboys jealous. The other boys trick Pinocchio into playing hookey by
saying they saw a large sea monster at the beach, the same one that swallowed
Geppetto. However, the boys were lying and a fight breaks out. One boy named
Eugene is hit by Pinocchio's school book, though Pinocchio did not throw it.
Pinocchio is accused of injuring Eugene by two Carabinieres, but the puppet
escapes. During his escape, Pinocchio saves a drowning Mastiff named Alidoro.
In exchange, Alidoro later saves Pinocchio from The Green Fisherman,
who was going to eat the marionette, as Pinocchio returns home. After meeting
the Snail that works for the Fairy, Pinocchio is given another chance by the
Fairy.
Pinocchio
does excellently in school and passes with high honors. The Fairy promises that
Pinocchio will be a real boy the next day and says he should invite all his
friends to a party. He goes to invite everyone, but he is sidetracked when he
meets a boy nicknamed Candlewick
who is about to go to a place called Toyland where everyone plays all day and never works. Pinocchio
goes along with him when they are taken there by The
Coachman, and they have a wonderful time for
the next five months.
One
morning in the fifth month, Pinocchio and Candlewick awake with donkeys' ears.
A Dormouse tells Pinocchio that he has got a donkey fever: boys who do
nothing but play and never study always turn into donkeys. Soon both Pinocchio
and Candlewick are fully transformed, and Pinocchio is sold to a circus by The
Coachman. He is trained by the ringmaster
to do tricks until he falls and sprains his leg. The ringmaster then sells
Pinocchio to a man who wants to skin him and make a drum. The man throws the
donkey into the sea to drown him. But when the man goes to retrieve the corpse,
all he finds is a living marionette. Pinocchio explains that the fish ate all
the donkey skin off him, and he is now a puppet again.
Pinocchio
dives back into the water and swims out to sea. When the Terrible Dogfish
appears, Pinocchio swims from it at the advice of the Fairy in the form of a
little blue-furred goat from atop a high rock, but is swallowed by it. Inside
the Dogfish, Pinocchio unexpectedly finds Geppetto, who has been living on a ship
inside the Dogfish. Pinocchio and Geppetto manage to escape the monster and
search for a place to stay.
Pinocchio
and Geppetto pass two beggars: the Fox and the Cat. The Cat has really become
blind, and the Fox has really become lame and is also thin, is almost hairless,
and has chopped off his tail to sell for food. The Fox and the Cat plead for
food or money, but Pinocchio rebuffs them and tells them that their misfortunes
have served them right for their wickedness. Geppetto and Pinocchio arrive at a
small house, which is home to the Talking Cricket. The Talking Cricket says
they can stay and reveals that he got his house from a little goat with
turquoise hair. Pinocchio gets a job doing work for a farmer and recognizes the
farmer's dying donkey as his friend Candlewick.
After
long months of working for the farmer and supporting the ailing Geppetto,
Pinocchio goes to town with the forty pennies he has saved to buy himself a new
suit. He discovers that the Fairy is ill and needs money. Pinocchio instantly
gives the Snail he met back on the Island of Busy Bees all the money he has.
That night, he dreams that he is visited by the Fairy, who kisses him. When he
wakes up, he is a real boy at last. His former puppet body lies lifeless on a
chair. Furthermore, Pinocchio finds that the Fairy has left him a new suit,
boots, and a bag in which he thinks are the forty pennies that he originally
gave to her. Instead, the boy is shocked to find forty freshly-minted gold
coins. Geppetto also returns to health.
Characters
- Pinocchio – Pinocchio is a marionette who gains wisdom through a series of misadventures which lead him to becoming a real human as reward for his good deeds.
- Mister Geppetto – Geppetto is an elderly, impoverished woodcarver and the creator (and thus father) of Pinocchio. He wears a yellow wig that looks like cornmeal mush (or polendina), and subsequently the children of the neighborhood (as well as some of the adults) call him "Polendina", which greatly annoys him. "Geppetto" is a syncopated form of Giuseppetto, which in turn is a diminutive of the name Giuseppe (Italian for Joseph).
- Mastro Antonio ([anˈtɔːnjo] in Italian, /ɑːnˈtoʊnjoʊ/ ahn-TOH-nyoh in English) – Antonio is an elderly carpenter. He finds the log that eventually becomes Pinocchio, planning to make it into a table leg until it cries out "Please be careful!" The children call Antonio "Mastro Ciliegia (cherry)" because of his red nose.
- The Talking Cricket (il Grillo Parlante) – The Talking Cricket is a cricket whom Pinocchio kills after it tries to give him some advice. The Cricket comes back as a ghost to continue advising the puppet.
- Mangiafuoco – Mangiafuoco ("Fire-Eater" in English) is the wealthy director of the Great Marionette Theater. He has red eyes and a black beard which reaches to the floor, and his mouth is "as wide as an oven [with] teeth like yellow fangs". Despite his appearances however, Mangiafuoco (which the story says is his given name) is not evil.
- Harlequin (Arlecchino), Punch (Pulcinella), and Signora Rosaura – Harlequin, Punch, and Signora Rosaura are marionettes at the theater who embrace Pinocchio as their brother.
- The Fox and the Cat (la Volpe e il Gatto) – Greedy animals pretending to be lame and blind respectively, the pair lead Pinocchio astray, rob him and eventually try to hang him.
- The Innkeeper (l'Oste) – An innkeeper who is in tricked by the Fox and the Cat where he unknowingly leads Pinocchio into an ambush.
- The Fairy with Turquoise Hair (la Fata dai capelli turchini) – The Blue-haired Fairy is the spirit of the forest who rescues Pinocchio and adopts him first as her brother, then as her son.
- The Falcon (il Falco) – A falcon who helps the Fairy with Turquoise Hair rescue Pinocchio from his hanging.
- Medoro ([meˈdɔːro] in Italian) – A poodle who is the stagecoach driver for the Fairy with Turquoise Hair. He is described as being dressed in court livery, a tricorn trimmed with gold lace was set at a rakish angle over a wig of white curls that dropped down to his waist, a jaunty coat of chocolate-colored velvet with diamond buttons and two huge pockets which were always filled with bones (dropped there at dinner by his loving mistress), breeches of crimson velvet, silk stockings, and low silver-buckled slippers completed his costume.
- The Owl (la Civetta) and the Crow (il Corvo) – Two famous doctors who diagnose Pinocchio alongside the Talking Cricket.
- The Parrot (il Pappagallo) – A parrot who tells Pinocchio of the Fox and the Cat's trickery that they played on him outside of Catchfools and mocks him for being tricked by them.
- The Judge (il Giudice) – A gorilla venerable with age who works as a judge of Catchfools.
- The Serpent (il Serpente) – A large serpent with bright green skin, fiery eyes which glowed and burned, and a pointed tail that smoked and burned.
- The Farmer (il Contadino) – An unnamed farmer whose chickens are plagued by weasel attacks. He previously owned a watch dog named Melampo.
- The Glowworm (la Lucciola) – A glowworm that Pinocchio encounters in the farmer's grape field.
- The Terrible Dogfish (Il terribile Pesce-cane) – A mile-long, five-story-high fish. Pescecane, while literally meaning "dog fish", generally means "shark" in Italian.
- The Pigeon (il Colombo) – A pigeon who gives Pinocchio a ride to the seashore.
- The Dolphin (il Delfino) – A dolphin who gives Pinocchio a ride to Busy Bee Island.
- The Snail (la Lumaca) – A snail who works for the Fairy with Turquoise Hair. Pinocchio later gives all his money to the Snail.
- Alidoro ([aliˈdɔːro] in Italian, /ˌɑːliˈdɒroʊ/ AH-lee-DORR-oh in English, literally "Golden Wings"; il can Mastino) – The old mastiff of a carabineer.
- The Green Fisherman (il Pescatore verde) – A green-skinned ogre who catches Pinocchio in his fishing net and attempts to eat him.
- Romeo/"Lampwick" or "Candlewick" (Lucignolo) – A tall, thin boy (like a wick) who is Pinocchio's best friend and a trouble-maker.
- The Little Man (l'Omino) – The owner of the Land of Toys.
- The Dormouse (la Marmotta) – A Dormouse who lives in the Land of Toys. She is the one who tells Pinocchio about the donkey fever.
- The Ringmaster (il Direttore) – The unnamed ringmaster of a circus.
- The Master (il Compratore) – A man who wants to make Pinocchio's hide into a drum.
- The Tuna Fish (il Tonno) – A tuna fish as "large as a two-year-old horse" who has been swallowed by the Terrible Shark.
- Giangio ([ˈdʒandʒo] in Italian, /ˈdʒɑːndʒoʊ/ JAHN-joh in English) – The farmer who buys Romeo as a donkey and who Pinocchio briefly works for. He is also called Farmer John in some versions.
History
"The
Adventures of Pinocchio" is a story about an animated puppet, boys who
turn into donkeys, and other fairy
tale devices. The setting of the story
is the Tuscan area of Italy. It was a unique literary marriage of genres
for its time. The story's Italian
language is peppered with Florentine
dialect features, such as the protagonist's Florentine name.
As
a young man, Collodi joined the seminary. However, the cause of Italian unification
(Risorgimento) usurped his calling, as he took to journalism as a means
of supporting the Risorgimento in its struggle with the Austrian Empire.[8] In the 1850s, Collodi began to have a variety of both
fiction and non-fiction books published. Once, he translated some French fairy-tales
so well that he was asked whether he would like to write some of his own. In
1848, Collodi started publishing Il Lampione, a newspaper of political
satire. With the founding of the Kingdom
of Italy in 1861, Collodi ceased his
journalistic and militaristic activities and began writing children's books.[8]
Collodi
wrote a number of didactic children's stories for the recently unified Italy,
including Viaggio per l'Italia di Giannettino ("Little Johnny's
voyage through Italy"; 1876), a series about an unruly boy who undergoes
humiliating experiences while traveling the country, and Minuzzolo
(1878).[9] In 1881, he sent a short episode in the life of a wooden
puppet to a friend who edited a newspaper in Rome, wondering whether the editor
would be interested in publishing this "bit of foolishness" in his
children's section. The editor did, and the children loved it.[10]
The
Adventures of Pinocchio was
originally published in serial form in the Giornale per i bambini, one
of the earliest Italian weekly magazines for children, starting from 7 July
1881. In the original, serialized version, Pinocchio dies a gruesome death:
hanged for his innumerable faults, at the end of Chapter 15. At the request of
his editor, Collodi added chapters 16–36, in which the Fairy with Turquoise Hair rescues Pinocchio and eventually transforms him into a real
boy, when he acquires a deeper understanding of himself, making the story more
suitable for children. In the second half of the book, the maternal figure of
the Blue-haired Fairy is the dominant character, versus the paternal figure of
Geppetto in the first part. In February 1883, the story was published in a
single book with huge success.[1]
Children's
literature was a new idea in Collodi's time, an innovation in the 19th century.
Thus in content and style it was new and modern, opening the way to many
writers of the following century.
International popularity
Some of the more than 260
translations of the book displayed at the Accademia della Crusca library, Florence.
As
of October 2018, The Adventures of Pinocchio became the world's most
translated book (over 300 languages) excluding religious works.[4] The book has had great impact on world culture, and it was
met with enthusiastic reviews worldwide. The title character is a cultural
icon and one of the most reimagined
characters in children's literature.[11] The popularity of the story was bolstered by the powerful
philosopher-critic Benedetto
Croce, who greatly admired the tale and
reputed it as one of the greatest works of Italian literature.[2]
Carlo
Collodi, who died in 1890, was respected during his lifetime as a talented
writer and social commentator, and his fame continued to grow when Pinocchio
was first translated into English by Mary Alice Murray in 1892, whose translation was added to the widely read Everyman's Library
in 1911. Other well regarded English translations include the 1926 translation
by Carol Della Chiesa, and the 1986 bilingual edition by Nicolas J. Perella. The first appearance of the book in the United States was
in 1898, with publication of the first US edition in 1901, translated and
illustrated by Walter S. Cramp and Charles Copeland.[1] From that time, the story was one of the most famous
children's books in the United States and an important step for many
illustrators.[1]
Together
with those from the United Kingdom, the American editions contributed to the
popularity of Pinocchio in countries more culturally distant from Italy, such
as Iceland and Asian countries.[1] In 1905, Otto Julius Bierbaum published a new version of the book in Germany, entitled Zapfelkerns
Abenteuer (lit. The Adventures of Pine Nut), and the first French
edition was published in 1902. Between 1911 and 1945, translations were made
into all European languages and several languages of Asia, Africa and Oceania.[4][1] In 1936, Soviet writer Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy published a reworked version of Pinocchio titled The
Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino
(originally a character in the commedia dell'arte),
which became one of the most popular characters of Russian children's
literature.
The
first stage adaptation was launched in 1899, written by Gattesco Gatteschi and
Enrico Guidotti and directed by Luigi Rasi.[1] Also, Pinocchio was adopted as a pioneer of cinema: in
1911, Giulio Antamoro
featured him in a 45-minute hand-coloured silent film starring Polidor (an
almost complete version of the film was restored in the 1990s).[1] In 1932, Noburō
Ōfuji directed a Japanese movie with an
experimental technique using animated puppets,[1] while in the 1930s in Italy, there was an attempt to
produce a full-length animated cartoon film of the same title. The 1940 Walt Disney version
was a groundbreaking achievement in the area of effects animation, giving
realistic movement to vehicles, machinery and natural elements such as rain,
lightning, smoke, shadows and water.
Proverbial figures
Many
concepts and situations expressed in the book have become proverbial, such as:
- The long nose, commonly attributed to those who tell lies. The fairy says that "there are the lies that have short legs, and the lies that have the long nose".
- The land of Toys, to indicate cockaigne that hides another.
- The saying "burst into laughter" (also known as Ridere a crepapelle in Italian, literally "laugh to crack skin") has also created after the release of the book, in reference to the episode of the death of the giant snake.
Similarly,
many of the characters have become typical quintessential human models, still
cited frequently in everyday language:
- Mangiafuoco: (literally "fire eater") a gruff and irascible man.
- the Fox and the Cat: an unreliable pair.
- Lampwick: a rebellious and wayward boy.
- Pinocchio: a dishonest boy.
Literary analysis
Before
writing Pinocchio, Collodi wrote a number of didactic children's stories
for the recently unified Italy,
including a series about an unruly boy who undergoes humiliating experiences
while traveling the country, titled Viaggio per l'Italia di Giannettino
("Little Johnny's voyage through Italy").[9] Throughout Pinocchio, Collodi chastises Pinocchio
for his lack of moral fiber and his persistent rejection of responsibility and
desire for fun.
The
structure of the story of Pinocchio follows that of the folk-tales of peasants
who venture out into the world but are naively unprepared for what they find,
and get into ridiculous situations.[12] At the time of the writing of the book, this was a serious
problem, arising partly from the industrialization of Italy, which led to a growing need for reliable labour in the
cities; the problem was exacerbated by similar, more or less simultaneous,
demands for labour in the industrialization of other countries. One major
effect was the emigration
of much of the Italian peasantry to cities and to foreign countries such as
South and North America.
Some
literary analysts have described Pinocchio as an epic hero. According to Thomas
J. Morrissey and Richard Wunderlich in Death and Rebirth in Pinocchio
(1983) "such mythological events probably imitate the annual cycle of
vegetative birth, death, and renascence, and they often serve as paradigms for
the frequent symbolic deaths and rebirths encountered in literature. Two such
symbolic renderings are most prominent: re-emergence from a journey to hell and
rebirth through metamorphosis. Journeys to the underworld are a common feature
of Western literary epics: Gilgamesh, Odysseus,
Aeneas, and Dante
all benefit from the knowledge and power they put on after such descents.
Rebirth through metamorphosis, on the other hand, is a motif generally
consigned to fantasy or speculative literature [...] These two figurative
manifestations of the death-rebirth trope are rarely combined; however, Carlo
Collodi's great fantasy-epic, The Adventures of Pinocchio, is a work in
which a hero experiences symbolic death and rebirth through both infernal
descent and metamorphosis. Pinocchio is truly a fantasy hero of epic
proportions [...] Beneath the book's comic-fantasy texture—but not far
beneath—lies a symbolic journey to the underworld, from which Pinocchio emerges
whole."[13]
The
main imperatives demanded of Pinocchio are to work, be good, and study. And in
the end Pinocchio's willingness to provide for his father and devote himself to
these things transforms him into a real boy with modern comforts. "as a
hero of what is, in the classic sense, a comedy, Pinocchio is protected
from ultimate catastrophe, although he suffers quite a few moderate calamities.
Collodi never lets the reader forget that disaster is always a possibility; in
fact, that is just what Pinocchio's mentors —Geppetto, the Talking Cricket, and
the Fairy— repeatedly tell him. Although they are part of a comedy, Pinocchio's
adventures are not always funny. Indeed, they are sometimes sinister. The
book's fictive world does not exclude injury, pain, or even death—they are
stylized but not absent. [...] Accommodate them he does, by using the
archetypal birth-death-rebirth motif as a means of structuring his hero's
growth to responsible boyhood. Of course, the success of the puppet's growth is
rendered in terms of his metamorphic rebirth as a flesh-and-blood human."[13]
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