The Shattered Mirror as a Metaphor for Depression
The tale begins with the shattering of a magical mirror, its pieces spreading over the world. When a shard enters a person’s eye, they only see the negative aspects of things. When it enters someone’s heart, it turns to ice. The symptoms of depression are eerily similar, including irritability, negative thoughts and perhaps even worse, numbness.
The story shifts thereafter to a little boy and girl, Kay and Gerda. They can be regarded as anam cara, soul-friends. Alternatively, they may be seen as halves of the same soul. Initially, their relationship is happy and loving, reflecting a person in harmony with himself.
Alienation and Self Hatred
When depression strikes, we often become increasingly bitter and self-hating, growing so alienated that we seem lost from ourselves and others, as Kay is whisked away by the Snow Queen. Interestingly, it is the male protagonist, not the female, who needs rescuing. However it is appropriate, as the male principle is generally associated with aggression and vitality. Gerda believes Kay is dead and mourns for him, mirroring the feelings of emptiness and hopelessness common to depression.
Spring comes, and the Sun and the Sparrows reassure Gerda that Kay is not dead. This represents the turning point when we feel a glimmer of hope, a spark of fighting spirit. We believe that healing is possible. However, this entails a journey into the most frightening limits of our psyches, where our pain lies, but also, the lost part that will make us whole.
The Healing Process
Sometimes, in the healing process, what stalls us are not terrifying dangers or monsters, but the soporific effects of being too comfortable where we are. The witch who keeps Gerda in her cottage, combing away her memories so she will forget her quest, does not do so out of malice or evil, but because she loves the girl. After all, we are used to being despondent and hollow. What’s more, the journey before us is terribly daunting! But Gerda’s memory of the happy past before depression struck is awakened by the sight of the roses. She sets off on her quest again, and so too must we.
Gerda encounters obstacles on her journey. She requests news of Kay from the flowers but they are only concerned with their own stories, portraying the indifference and lack of understanding we sometimes encounter from those from whom we seek help. She takes mistaken steps that culminate nowhere. She meets wild, lawless people that in fact set her in the right track, and wise women who give her priceless advice. In the end, she stands alone and nearly naked to the cold before the Snow Queen’s palace, armed with nothing but innocence and faith.
She finds Kay frozen nearly black by the ice. Ice, as Haruki Murakami writes, “contains no future, just the past, sealed away.” Kay is essentially trapped and haunted by his past, examining past events in his mind in the hope they will make sense and set him free, which of course, they do not. He is only healed with tears and prayer. Tears provide healing through catharsis, and research has shown that spiritual faith is a factor in healing from depression. Kay, the mirror-shards gone from his eye and heart, clings to Gerda, signifying wholeness.
Upon reaching home, Kay and Gerda find that the seasons have passed and they are no longer children. But there is no bitterness for the passing of time and lost opportunities. There is only thankfulness and joy, for it is ‘summer, warm delightful summer’.
Source: The Complete Illustrated Works of Hans Christian Andersen, Chancellor Press, London, 1994.
