“The theme might be defined as the screenwriter’s point of view toward the material.” – The Tools of Screenwriting
“The culmination is the lighthouse toward which the dramatist steers his ship, and the resolution is the safe harbor towards which that lighthouse guides him. ” - The Tools of Screenwriting
Unfortunately, the prince married another. After the ceremony, the little princess lingered on deck and leaned over the edge. She sees her sisters rising out of the water. They said, “We have given our hair to the witch, that you may not die this morning. She has given us a knife. It is very sharp. Before the sun rises, you must plunge this knife into the heart of the prince. When his warm blood falls upon your feet, they will grow together again and form a fish’s tail, and you will once more be a mermaid and return to us to live out your three hundred years. But either he or you must die as the sun rises.”
However, the little mermaid could not kill the prince. She flung the knife into the water, and then threw herself from the ship into the sea. She began to feel her body dissolve into foam. However, as the sun’s rays feel unto the princess, she did not feel as though she were dying. The little mermaid saw that her body, now transparent, and that she was rising higher and higher out of the foam.
She was among the daughters of the air. One said, “A mermaid does not have an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she winds the love of a human. Her eternal destiny depends on the power of another. ” The daughters of the air explained that, though they do not have immortal souls, they could earn one by doing good deeds for three hundred years.
The daughters of the air said, “You, little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we do, You have suffered and have endured and raised yourself by your good deeds. Now by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you too may obtain an immortal soul.”
The mermaid joined the daughters of the air, “After three hundred years, we shall gain immortal souls,” she said aloud.
“If the protagonist and his objective constitute the first two important elements in the construction of a story, the various obstacles collectively constitute the third. Without impediments to the attainment of the protagonist’s desire there would be no conflict and no story.” – The Tools of Screenwriting
Before the sea witch gives the little mermaid the potion, she tells her that with every step it will feel like treading upon glass. The mermaid accepts this. Then the witch says that once the mermaid takes human form, she can never return to the sea again. Also, should the prince marry someone else, the morning after he marries another, the mermaid’s heart will break and she will become foam on the crest of the waves. The mermaid agrees to all of this.
The primary obstacle comes in the form of payment. The sea witch wants the mermaid’s beautiful voice. How is the little mermaid princess suppose to get the prince to fall in love with her without being able to speak to him? Still she gave her voice to the sea witch and took the potion.
She drank the potion on the marble steps of the palace. By sunrise, she had legs and before her stood the prince.
“Conflict is actually created not by histrionics and excessive behaviors but by a character wanting something that is difficult to get or achieve.” – The Tools of Screenwriting
As stated in objective, what the little mermaid wants is clear: she wants to be with the prince. What makes her objective difficult to achieve is the simple fact that she is a mermaid and he is a human.
The little mermaid goes to a sea witch, and the witch already knows what the princess wants. “You want to get rid of your fish’s tail and have two legs instead, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince will fall in love with you, and you may gain an immortal soul.”
While the sea witch is able to give the princess a potion to make her have two legs, nothing is ever too easy in fairytales…
“The character’s want or desire or pursuit usually focuses and intensifies as the story evolves; it is not a static, unchanging want.” - Tools of Screenwriting
What began as mere curiosity of the world above the sea, evolved into a full-blown infatuation. The little mermaid princess is head-over-heels in love with the prince and is obsessed with finding a way to be with him.
After her encounter with the prince, her only comfort is sitting in the garden and gaze at a marble statue that resembles her prince. One evening, her sisters take her to the palace where the prince lives. Every evening after, she spends in the waters near the palace.
One day, she asks her grandmother if humans didn’t drowned, if they could live forever. Her grandmother said, “they too must die, and their lives are much shorter than our own. We sometimes love to three hundred years, but when we die, we become foam on the surface of the water. We do not have immortal souls. Human beings have souls that live after their bodies have turned to dust. Their souls rise up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water and behold the earth, they rise to unknown and glorious places that we shall never see.”
The little mermaid said that she would give up hundreds of years to have an immortal soul, and asked how she might gain an immortal soul.
Her grandmother said, “unless a human being loved you so much that you were more precious to him than his father or mother. All his thoughts and all his love would have to be fixed upon you, and he would have to take you for his bride. Only then would his soul glide into your body, and you would obtain a share in the happiness of mankind. He would give a soul to you and retain his own as well.”
After this conversation with her grandmother, the little mermaid’s objective is clear: get the prince to love and marry her so she can win an immortal soul.
“The chief characteristic of the protagonist is a desire, usually intense, to achieve a certain goal, and it is the interest of the audience in watching him move toward that objective that constitutes its absorption in the story” – The Tools of Screenwriting
The central character of the The Little Mermaid is the little mermaid princess. She is the youngest and prettiest of all the sea princesses. The little princess loved to hear about the world above the sea. She made her grandmother tell her all she knew of the ships and the towns, the people and the animals.
When a mermaid reached her fifteenth year, she is allowed to rise up out of the sea. So the little mermaid watched and waited as each of her sisters, all six one year apart in age, take their turn to rise to the surface of the ocean. After six years it was finally the little princess’s turn.
Her grandmother adorn her with a wreath of white blossoms in her hair, and in every flower she placed a pearl. When she rose to the surface of the water, she saw a large ship. The little mermaid peers into a cabin window. Though the porthole she observed a handsome prince celebrating his sixteenth birthday.
After a while the waves rose higher as a dreadful storm approached. The ship groaned and creaked under the lashing of the sea as the waves broke over the deck, and the thick planks began to give way. The little mermaid swam among the beans and planks that floated on the sea, looking for the handsome prince. When at last she found him, she brought him to the surface and laid him on the beach. She waited near the shore for him to awake, and when he did she swam back to the palace, longing to rejoin her prince on land.
