The Third Wish By Joan Aiken: Literary Analysis

Literary Analysis Final of “The Third Wish”

If you had to choose between your happiness or someone else’s, who would you choose to be happy? The short story, “The Third Wish” by Joan Aiken, a normal, lonely, and kind man frees a swan that was tangled in a bush. Once he frees the swan, he gets granted three wishes by a king and is handed three leaves. For his first wish, he wishes for a beautiful wife. He gets his wife, but then he sees that she is sad that she got changed from a swan to a woman. She is upset that she isn't with her sister who is still a swan. So Mr. Peters decides to use his second wish on turning her back into a swan. Then, Mr. Peters dies in bed holding a leaf (what he would use to make his third wish), and a white feather. ¨The Third Wish¨ by Joan Aiken shows us that love, sacrifice, and kindness are all important traits.

The theme of kindness and sacrifice, first appears in ¨The Third Wish¨ when Mr. Peters helps the swan be free. First in the story, Mr. Peters is driving down a road at dusk, and he hears a struggle in the forest. The narrator says,”As Mr. Peters enters a straight empty stretch of road, he seemed to hear a faint crying, and struggling, and
Peters learns the importance of using the traits kindness, caring, and sacrifice by the end of the story. You first see this when Mr. Peters helps the swan. Then, you see him care when he wishes for a wife. Finally, you see sacrifice when Mr. Peters changes Leila back into a swan and dies holding a feather and a leaf. Mr. Peters learns the important traits of being kind, caring, and willing to sacrifice. Choosing between your happiness or someone else's would be a hard choice that most people wouldn't know how to choose between. But giving up something for someone else to gain is a difficult thing to do. How you treat others and what you put them through does reflect on yourself. Would you sacrifice your happiness for someone