The First Book: a Looking-Glass and the Broken Fragments

This chapter tells of a devil making a mirror that only reflects what is ugly and hateful for his mere amusement. In his attempt to bring the mirror to heaven to spite the holy, the mirror breaks into a million brilliant pieces, each retaining the evil magic imbued in the mirror. The shattered pieces then spread with the wind, getting into people’s eyes and hearts, making them see only the bad in things.

However, it is left ambiguous to the fragments’ true effect, with Andersen inserting an additional layer of what the mirror really did from the point of view of the devil and the students of his kind.

“…for the first time one could really see, they felt, what the world and people really looked like”

The Second Book: a Little Boy and a Little Girl

Kay and Gerda, children as close as brother and sister, were told the story of the Snow Queen, who makes a brief appearance to Kay.

“She was very fine and beautiful, but made of ice, of blinding, twinkling ice, and yet she was alive; her eyes stared like two bright stars, although there was no calmness or rest in them.”

Kay is later struck by one of the broken fragments of the mirror, gaining seemingly heightened intelligence (at the cost of his heart freezing) that resulted in his disengagement from stories (that his grandmother tells him) and relationships. He is then taken away by the Snow Queen.

Andersen stylizes the story metaphorically to suggest that the abandonment or disregard of stories and love is congruent to spiritual death — a death that often goes unnoticed.

“…it was as if he was going to die; — but only for a moment, then it felt fine; he could no longer notice the cold around him."

The Third Book: the Flower Garden of the Woman Who Could Conjure

After his disappearance, Gerda wonders if Kay is alive and leaves home to search for her friend. She meets a witch and asks the witch’s flowers for help in her quest. The flowers each sang their own story…

“There was such a sweet scent, and the girls went off into the forest: the scent grew stronger — three coffins, in which the lovely girls lay down…Are the dancing girls asleep, or are they dead?”

…,though intriguing, none of which was related to Kay.

“We do not toll for Kay, him we do not know! we are just singing our song, the only one we know!”

The flowers and their stories are often seen as Andersen’s portrayal of self-involvement — something that Gerda had to forsake and abandon in order to continue on her journey to find her loved friend. The scene he paints has also often been construed to be an intentional mockery of the thoughts and writings of intellectuals that bored Andersen to pieces.

“‘I don’t care about that!’ Gerda said. ‘That’s nothing to tell me about!’”