The short story, “The Happy Prince,” written by Oscar Wilde is a magnificent piece that has layers of themes and lessons to dive deep into. In the story itself, we see a dead Prince being honored as a golden statue. He is adored by all and seen as a marvelous being, who all should strive to be like. He is adored simply, for the position of power he possessed as a living Prince, and for his now obvious appearance of wealth as a golden statue. He is adored for shallow, materialistic reasons and not for being the charitable hero that a Prince is meant to be. I suppose that in this story, the author is trying to teach us to be decent people, despite the cards we are dealt in life, whether we are rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. However, because the Prince lived an ignorant life, he now possesses a lead heart and is frozen in a state of purgatory as a statue, which leads to the major theme of redeption with the help of Swallow. The pair do a number of selfless, good deeds, such as helping the less fortunate, thus transforming from selfish to kind. The duo is able to right wrongs, and in doing so, find love and companionship that we see through Swallow’s ultimate sacrifice. In this story, we find that love and redemption, require a dark sacrifice, for the Prince, this meant removing his beautiful jewels and giving them to them poor, ultimately resulting in this death, while the Swallow sacrifices migrating to Egypt, also resulting in his death. At the end of the story, the Prince and Swallow are seen as the “most precious things in the city,” by God and they are brought up to the “garden of Paradise,” were we are given as sense of hope and freedom. However, these things don’t come for free, the ultimate sacrifices are needed in order to reach love, redemption, and freedom.