The Selfish Giant Summary & Analysis

In the story’s Christian allegory, the Giant’s garden is analogous to the biblical Garden of Eden, the idyllic paradise where humans first came into being. The creation myth in the Book of Genesis describes Adam and Eve, the first humans, as innocent and naive, lacking all knowledge of good and evil. Many Christian writers see parallels between childhood—a time when such moral distinctions as “good” or “evil” are hazy—and the state of humanity in Eden, before their Fall. Wilde clearly follows in this literary tradition, placing the innocent children in a garden setting from which they are about to be expelled.

This moment establishes the Giant’s selfishness as his defining characteristic, as well as the source of the story’s conflict. The wall he raises is a symbol of the emotional barrier he maintains between himself and the children, which prevents him from forming any kind of relationship with them. The sign, meanwhile, speaks to how unreasonable his selfishness is—only a truly cynical person would take legal action against children.

Continuing the implicit comparison to the Garden of Eden, here Wilde shows the harsh world outside the garden, where the earth is hard and unyielding. Crucially, however, the children do not deserve this hardship; it is the Giant’s sin which expelled them from their paradise.

The harsh, long-winded winter weather is the consequence of the Giant’s selfishness. By rejecting the children, the Giant has unknowingly rejected the other good and natural things which once resided in his garden.

Just as the Giant’s selfishness drives out warmth and cheer, it attracts only cold, inhospitable weather. The implicit comparison between the coldhearted Giant and the wintry weather around him is straightforward enough. In broader terms, however, this section also suggests a system of cosmic justice at work, punishing the Giant in a way that fits his sin.

This moment establishes a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the Giant’s selfishness and his present suffering: the warm seasons do not return precisely because he is too selfish. The Giant’s inability to see this line of causality shows that he is not yet ready to atone for what he did—and it also suggests that redemption is not easily achievable without some kind of moral guidance. No one has shown the Giant the error of his ways, and so he cannot see the error at all. This moment also harkens back to his earlier claim that “My own garden is my own garden, […] any one can understand that.” With this, the Giant frames his own standards of property and propriety as universal and expects others to see them as a plain matter of fact, but when faced with the actual laws of the universe, by his own admission he “cannot understand” why Spring does not come to his garden.

The Giant has been so long deprived of good weather that he now truly appreciates its value. This follows from the Christian idea that suffering has purifying, redemptive power. Suffering a long penance makes goodness feel all the sweeter, and it makes one all the more eager to participate in it. Since the long winter was the direct result of the Giant’s selfishness, and was uniquely suited to his sin, it can be considered a “penance” in this context; clearly it has had the intended psychological effect of a penance. A linnet also appears in Wilde’s “The Devoted Friend,” another fairytale story that deals with selfishness, generosity, and friendship.

Not only does this moment show the cosmic order at work, sending just rewards to those who deserve them, but it also shows the transformative power that children can have on the world. Simply by virtue of their purity and goodness, the children have brought springtime back to the garden. The Giant himself does not deserve this, but the children’s good nature outweighs the Giant’s bad behavior, and so the garden has returned to its natural state.

The sight of the children’s return was the missing piece of information that kept the Giant from understanding that he himself was the cause of the long winter. The sudden change in seasons prompts the Giant to compare himself to the children, which causes him to reflect upon his shortcomings and realize that he has been selfish. This exemplifies the biblical lesson from Matthew 19:14: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Without even realizing it, the children improve the Giant morally. Had he allowed them into his garden and into his life, as in the passage, he never would have suffered as he did.

This is the moment in which the Giant atones for his wrongdoing in the eyes of heaven. Before he helps the little boy into the tree, the Giant’s approach scares of the children and re-invites winter weather into the garden—but as soon as he performs this unselfish gesture, the world responds by blossoming into spring once more, just as it does for the children. The Giant has earned the approval of the cosmic powers that have thus far only punished him.

The 19th-century belief in the innate goodness of children also yielded the belief that children have a natural internal sense for good or malicious intent, otherwise known as discernment. This scene clearly follows from that line of thought, as the children are immediately able to sense the Giant’s good intent and forgive him.

This moment foreshadows the story’s ending and the little boy’s return. It also proceeds from the Catholic concept of charity: love for God above all, which in turn provokes love for one’s neighbor. The Giant loves the little boy best of all, and this relationship is what begins his broader friendship with the other children.

The Giant’s character has greatly developed since his first appearance, and it shows in how he now values the children far above his possessions. He once loved the garden because it was his, but now he values the children because of their innate goodness and beauty. His self-interest is no longer a part of how he assigns value to the world.

This is the first sign that the little boy is not what he seems. His appearance in this passage, seemingly still the same age as years ago, is itself a miracle—but in addition to this, the tree’s transformation is far beyond what the neighborhood children brought about earlier in the story. At this point in the story, the tree builds into a symbol of the cross, and its adornment with gold and silver seems to mirror ornate Catholic crucifixes.

The wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion, called the Stigmata of Christ in the Christian tradition, are the clearest identifying marker that the boy receives without being named outright as Jesus Christ. They are distinctive enough that the Giant, upon recognizing what they signify, at once kneels reverently before the boy. Sometimes the Stigmata do not signify Jesus Christ himself, but a merely a holy person—but even so, this is clearly someone to whom the Giant should show respect.

The story’s ending completes the Giant’s character arc and the Christian allegory told through him. In the Christian framework that Wilde sets in place, the reward of heaven is what holds the story’s moral center in place. It gives legitimacy to the Giant’s kind actions beyond what any mere social reward can provide. It is the surest, clearest sign that generosity and love are the right moral path, and that the world operates according to a just cosmic order. Furthermore, that the little boy talks of “my garden, which is Paradise” seems to point to both Eden and heaven, which is further evidence that he is the Christ Child. This point is made all the clearer when the Giant dies that day under the tree—symbolic of the Cross—covered in white blossoms, a color that commonly symbolizes purity.