Pinocchio

Pinocchio is a character in a children's story, originally written in Italian, but later translated into English and further popularized by many movie, television, and stage adaptations, most famously the 1940 Walt Disney movie Pinocchio. Although more recent adaptations toned down darker aspects of the original story, these versions have generally enhanced the message about the dangers of lying and deception and the importance of obedience.

The main character, Pinocchio, is a wooden puppet constructed by woodcarver Geppetto. Throughout the story, Pinocchio gets into a great deal of mischief both as the perpetrator and as the victim of deceit. Pinocchio's nose grows when he tells a lie, an element of the story that has made an enduring impact on popular culture. The story concludes with Pinocchio's selfless behavior, convincing a fairy to grant his wish of becoming a real boy.

The Adventures of Pinocchio was written in Italian by Florentine writer Carlo Lorenzini (1826–90), under the pen name of Carlo Collodi. The story was originally serialized in Il Giornale dei Bambini, a weekly children's newspaper. It was later published as a novel in 1883. Children's literature was a relatively new genre at the time of Collodi's writing, and the original story contains many elements that might be considered rather dark for a modern children's story. For example, Collodi initially seemed to kill Pinocchio off at the end of the story, with Pinocchio being hanged by assassins as a result of his misdeeds.

When the author was asked to continue the story, Pinocchio was rescued by the fairy with the blue hair (in Walt Disney's adaptation, the Blue Fairy), who became an important character in this portion of the story. It is in this second group of installments that a redemption theme emerges, the very theme that continues to be associated with Pinocchio today. However, in the original installments (Chapters 1 to 15 of the novel), Pinocchio is clever, disobedient, and lazy, and shows little interest in becoming “good.” Only in the second installment (Chapters 16 to 36) is there some attempt to have Pinocchio's moral character develop.

In Collodi's story, the backdrop is one of chronic poverty, and death and violence seem to be constant threats. Pinocchio accidentally kills a cricket (who becomes the Jiminy Cricket character in the Disney version of the tale), and it is the ghost of the cricket who later visits Pinocchio. Pinocchio is caught in a weasel trap, and then tied to a doghouse by a farmer. He bites a cat's paw off, is turned into a donkey, and then [Page 761]is sold to a man who wants to skin him. At one point, the fairy character is presented as a dying young woman.

The Adventures of Pinocchio was first translated into English in 1892, and there have since been additional translations. There have also been numerous movie adaptations, television broadcasts, and operas based on Collodi's novel. Some have argued that over the years, Collodi's strong-willed protagonist, who disobeys inconsistent and unjust authority figures, has, through these adaptations, changed. Instead of being actively involved and agentic in his transition from boyhood to adulthood, he has become an innocent, wide-eyed child, who eventually learns to obey his elders.

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