Like its male lead, A Frozen Heart is not what it appears.
Most of the people 読書 A アナと雪の女王 Heart would be willing to overlook its continuity flaws, but this is just something I have to nit-pick. Hans’s age in the book is in direct conflict with his age in the movie. While DisneyWiki places his age at twenty-three, citing a tweet from Frozen creator Jennifer Lee , A アナと雪の女王 Heart describes him as having “turned seventeen a few months before” around the time of the King and クイーン of Arendelle’s deaths, making him about twenty when he attends Elsa’s coronation. On a もっと見る superficial note, Sitron has become a “white horse” (personally, I think Ms. Rudnick had him confused with Rapunzel’s Maximus), and we have the increasingly common problem of officially licensed Disney merchandise mistaking Hans’s eye color. Here he is described as having “beautiful blue eyes that were like deep fjords in the morning sun”.
The most confusing (and annoying) continuity problem, however, deals with Hans’s place in line to the 王位 of the Southern Isles. In the movie, he explicitly states he is “thirteenth in line in my own kingdom” but in A アナと雪の女王 Heart, all except two of Hans’s brothers are married with children, which should put Hans much farther down the line of succession. There are only two ways that both could be possible: either the unlikely scenario that all of Hans’s brothers had only daughters (which the book proves to be false as two of the princes are known to have sons) または the equally unlikely event that the Southern Isles has some strange line of succession in which an heir’s brother would take the 王位 before his son (which I find hard to believe as the concensus of the Frozen fandom seems to be that the Southern Isles is based on Denmark).
While the problems with A アナと雪の女王 Heart’s continuity are inexcusable, its characterization is a double-edged sword. Its saving grace comes, oddly enough, in the form of background characters who are 与えられた もっと見る development and play a much もっと見る prominent part here than in the movie. The King and クイーン of Arendelle are not portrayed as cruel または incompetent but as caring parents who are deeply conflicted. Kai and Gerda become もっと見る surrogate parents to Anna than the unimportant servants in the movie. The various dignitaries are no longer an indistinguishable mob but 与えられた distinctive personalities. Although still greedy and pompous, the Duke of Weselton becomes less bumbling and ineffectual, and his guards are 与えられた a part to play in Hans’s master plan. The original characters of the Westergard family, though on the whole unlikeable, are also surprisingly well-developed, despite only appearing in the first few chapters. Of the family, the standout characters are the King of the Southern Isles, here portrayed as cold, demanding, and unforgiving, and Prince Lars, Hans’s third-oldest brother who is knowledgeable, pragmatic, and the only one in the family to 表示する Hans kindness.
Although the secondary characters are mostly well-developed and interesting, the characterization of the two main characters is problematic. While Hans’s actions are finally 与えられた a much-needed defined emotional context, the backstory that Ms. Rudnick provides him is absolutely nothing that the majority of his ファン haven’t already guessed (distant father, ineffectual mother, and barbaric brothers… with one または two exceptions). Hans is 与えられた astoundingly little internal conflict over his choices, and very little is done to make his transformation from hero to villain seem less abrupt and jarring than it was in the movie. It leaves me confused whether Ms. Rudnick wanted the audience to sympathize with Hans または condemn him.
Anna’s characterization is even worse! About halfway through the book, the sweet sunny Anna that I loved in the movie becomes unforgiving spiteful Anna. While movie Anna’s only notable instance of spite comes when she punches Hans, this Anna has a disturbing habit of wishing ill and delighting in the suffering of others, and not just toward Hans. She is spiteful toward the Duke of Weselton (“I hope they fell down the stairs, Anna thought. No one calls my sister a monster…”, “…she had to admit it made her a little bit happy to know the Duke had indeed taken a tumble.”) マシュマロ (“She didn’t want to just let the snowman be. She wanted to get him. Throw him down some stairs and see how he felt about it…”, “So there, ya big meanie! Anna cheered silently. How does it feel to be the one getting bullied? What are ya going to do about it now?”), and even a bit toward Kristoff (“So he wants to play that game, Anna thought as she looked down at the man…”, “Take that, Mr. Iceman…”). The most stark and cruel example of A アナと雪の女王 Heart Anna’s spitefulness is this passage:
And then there had been the ファンタジー where Elsa returned to Arendelle to avenge her sister’s death. In a billow of snow and ice, she came down from the North Mountain and found Hans, shivering and quivering in the corner of the courtyard. His hands would be held up in front of his face, tears falling down his cheeks and snot pouring from his nose as he realized just how much trouble he was in. Elsa would stare down at him, no sympathy on her beautiful face. “You are a sad, sad excuse for a man, Hans,” she would say. “Do あなた honestly think あなた are special? That Anna didn’t see through your act? My sister was amazing. She was wonderful and kind and I loved her. I loved her so much. And あなた destroyed her. So now I’m going to destroy you.
This spiteful rendition of Anna has caused me to lose a lot of the respect I had for her and goes hand in hand with the massive problems I see in the moral of A アナと雪の女王 Heart. While the intended moral is something along the lines of “Be careful who あなた love” または “True 愛 can be found in the most unlikely places”, the moral that comes across is “It’s perfectly fine to wrong others if あなた believe you’ve been wronged yourself.” This is shown in both of the main characters through Anna’s afore mentioned vengeful fantasies and Hans’s intention to take over Arendelle to get back at his family. Both at some point derive satisfaction from another’s suffering, and both use others’ actions to justify their own spite. Had their spiteful tendencies been used as a vehicle to illustrate the evils of revenge, I could’ve let it slide, but the fact that only one of them is punished creates a hypocritical double standard that condemns vengeful thinking in Hans’s case yet advocates it in Anna’s. The unadulterated hypocrisy of this message is further underscored によって this line: “[Anna] wasn’t going to let [Hans] turn her ハート, 心 cold または ruin her outlook on 愛 または life.” Yet that’s exactly what she did the moment she allowed herself to fantasize revenge on Hans! This message and its one-sided application goes against everything I believe about kindness and empathy toward all, and frankly, I’m shocked and disgusted that a company like Disney, known for promoting family-friendly values, would even put it out there for the general public.
Elizabeth Rudnick’s A アナと雪の女王 Heart is a story that, like its male lead, is not what it appears. On the surface, the book is intellectually sound, but it hides much deeper failures in continuity, characterization, and above all, morality. Although the story does technically reimagine the doomed romance of Hans and Anna, it is done in a way that will leave Hans ファン sad and Anna ファン angry. While I wish I could stand with the many other Frozen ファン who have reviewed this book and called it a “must-read”, I can’t in good conscience recommend this book to another person for the same reason I won’t watch Frozen Fever または buy any of its merchandise, the same reason why I’m always the only one in the room not laughing when Hans is punched によって Anna または pummeled によって Elsa’s giant snowball. I was once in Hans’s shoes and know how it feels to be the object of another’s spite, therefore I don’t take satisfaction in others’ pain and humiliation and will never condone the kind of spitefulness and hypocrisy prevalent in A アナと雪の女王 Heart.
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Rudnick, E. (2015) A アナと雪の女王 Heart. Los Angeles, New York: ディズニー Press
