Language

Style of language

The language used in the short story “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde is simple. The story is intended to be read to children, so the language is easy to understand. 

One of the features found in the narrative is the capitalization of some nouns. Through personification, seasons and natural phenomena become main characters, and their names are written in capital letters: “So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees” (p. 2, ll. 27-28). 

In dialogue, particularly at the end, when the Giant talks, the author inserts archaic forms, like “thou” (p. 4, l. 6), “hath” (p. 4, l. 3), “thee” (p. 4, l. 3), or “nay” (p. 4, l. 5). These archaic forms provide the s...