Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi (1883)

Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi

Reviewed by Matt Petch : 5/5 Stars

Summary

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi follows a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy but keeps getting into trouble through lies and poor choices; after many lessons and hardships, he proves his goodness and is finally transformed into a real boy

Review

As a child, I was shocked and fascinated by the chaos, warped humour and mistreatment of Pinocchio on film (1940) *. He is taken into puppet slavery, eaten by a whale**, turned into a donkey and robbed by pickpockets. To add to these calamities, in the original Collodi book, Pinocchio accidentally burns his own feet off trying to get warm, goes to jail for a time as a vagrant and is left for dead by two con artists posing as his friends.

As a rite of passage story, Pinocchio is a fascinating document of nascent youth coming to terms with responsibility. Truth vs lies, temptation vs consequences, justice vs morality.

These are serious themes for a children’s book and like all the best fairytales, Collodi does not view the darker side of consequence through rose tinted glasses. There are no rules as to where Pinocchio’s adventure will take him and we follow him down a terrible path that we, as readers, hope leads to his salvation.

Pinocchio is a moral journey about learning to be honest, responsible, and compassionate so we can become truly “human.” To make the point clear, Collodi takes his protagonist through hell and back, but Pinocchio survives and is finally reunited with Geppeto, his father. Geppetto’s love for his wooden son is unquestionable and he would search the world for Pinocchio if needed. Without this love, Pinocchio would fail and his adventure would end in abject tragedy.

As is well known, Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies. At one point, his lies become so untenable that a bird builds a nest on the end of it. As a visual manifestation this suggests that through dishonesty, you are physically and morally distorted as an individual.

And so, throughout the book, Pinocchio is dogmatic in his obsession with becoming a ‘real boy’. But what does that take…? What are the qualities you need to become a real boy…?

When I find out, I will tell you.

*The film version of Pinocchio that most faithfully follows Collodi’s text is the 2002 version directed by Roberto Benigni

**In the book Pinocchio is eaten by a shark not a whale