11/1/11 The selfish giant

The story The Selfish Giant Is about a giant who goes away for seven years to his friends house, and when he returns, he finds that children have taken to playing in his garden. The giant, as selfish as he is bans the children form playing in the garden and builds a large wall around it to prevent them from getting in. The flowers and trees and grass all stop growing, because they are sad that there are no children playing there. Winter sets in permanently, and it is cold, windy, and snowy all year and the giant is confused as to why it is this way. He is unaware that the reason it is winter all year round and spring never comes is because there are no children playing in his garden. One day, the children sneak into his garden through a little hole in the wall, and sit in the trees and the spring comes back, except for in one corner of the garden where a little boy is too small to get into the tree. The giant realizes that his selfishness was the problem all along and happily runs over and puts the child in the tree and knocks down the wall. After this, the children came and played freely with him in his garden after school daily until he grew old. But the one child in the corner he helped into the tree never showed up again, even when he asked the other kids nobody knew where he lived or anything about him. Finally, on one day under the tree in the corner he found the child. When he came over he found there were wounds on his hands and feet. He asked the child who had hurt him but the child replied "…these are wounds of love" and he said "You let me play one in your garden today you shall come with me to my garden, which is paradise." This child represented Jesus, the wounds on his hands and feet were from being nailed to the cross to save us. Thats why he said they were wounds of love. When the children came back the next day they found the giant dead. The child (Jesus) was talking about heaven so when the giant came to "his garden", heaven he died and the children found him dead next to the tree.