Title: The Adventures of Pinocchio

Author: Carlo Collodi

First Date of Publication: 1883

Type: Novel

Characters: None

Themes: ANDROID; POSTHUMAN; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER

Critical Summary: The original Italian story is quite different from the Disney version best known by American audiences. Pinocchio is still a marionette, or string puppet, built by Geppetto, a woodcarver; his nose grows when he is under duress, especially from lying. Crafted out of magic wood, the puppet is animated, but still desires to be a real boy and to be loved. Geppetto treats him like a son. However, Pinocchio, at one point called a “wretched boy” just as Frankenstein’s monster is called a “wretch,” is disobedient and runs away in the beginning. The story, first published serially, follows a number of attempts of the puppet to reform that end in backsliding. For example, when the talking cricket, famous in the Disney version as Jiminy Cricket, appears to warn Pinocchio to behave, the puppet ends up killing the cricket by smashing it with a hammer. Eventually, the Blue Fairy appears and offers Pinocchio the chance to become a human boy, if he will be good, and all ends well.

The creators in Collodi’s story and Shelley’s contrast sharply. When Pinocchio runs away, it breaks Geppetto’s heart. Victor only hopes the monster he made will never return. When their creations return, each an outcast wanting help from a “father,” Geppetto takes responsibility and loves his creation while Victor despises what he made. Both Pinocchio and the Creature can be violent and willful, contributing to their outcast state by their actions as well as their inhuman bodies. Both stories are father and son stories, with creator and created at odds. When Pinocchio tells others that Geppetto abused him, the woodcarver ends up in jail for a time. Both animated beings desires for the human make them sympathetic monsters. The Creature, unloved, returns his creator’s hate to the end of the novel; Pinocchio only had to learn that his father truly cares for him to be able to be redeemed. The story of the willful outcast has been remade in Collodi’s novel as a children’s story, with dark feelings of loneliness and selfishness examined, but the parent’s steady love proving enough in the end (though the serial ending may have been intended to conclude before the Blue Fairy arrived, meaning Pinocchio would have ended an outcast, as a warning to disobedient children).

Administrative Notes: Jade Spencer, Shenandoah University; Dr. David Sandner (editor)