The Five Boons of Life
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION:
The story “The Five Boons of Life” is written by Samuel Langhorne Clemens is popularly known by his pen name Mark Twain. It features a fairy and a man over the span of a man’s lifetime. The story conveys a valuable message that there is nothing pure in life and every good thing ones experienced is shadowed by its value.
EXPLANATION:
A fairy offers a young man one of her five gifts: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure and Death. The fairy tells him that only one of these gifts is valuable, so he should choose wisely. But each time he seems to make the wrong choice. The first four choices he makes are Pleasure, Love, Fame and Wealth. None of these is found to be valuable. Pleasure is followed by pain, Love by grief, Fame by envy and decay, and Wealth by poverty. He seeks for Death last of all realizing that he has nothing to live for. But the fairy gives her gift of Death to a child leaving the man in a miserable state.
Fairy expressed her dissatisfied with his every choice. This time he had choose riches. He thought wealth gives him power. But, wealth is followed by poverty. Finally he realised that death is the only gift which soothes him in vain it was already given to an innocent girl. Thus the man cries out for his ignorance. The fairy has already given Death to an innocent child.
Thus, the man ends up seeing what he thought are great gifts are actually lending. Thus the story points that the importance of the right choices in life and distinguisher the short-lived, pleasure, and long-lived values.
Conclusion:
The gifts which fairy bought along with her were temporary, except death. They lasted as long as fate allowed them to, while death and life are everlasting.
English Study Material 