Thumbelina - Characters

   Thumbelina, the story of a girl who is kidnapped, saved, kidnapped again, rejected by her kidnapper's friends, almost freezes to death, saved again, saves a dying bird, flies away with the healthy bird, gets married, changes her name, and never sees her mom again. Oh, and if you have never read the story, I just spoiled it for you. Thanks to my one sentence summary, you now know Thumbelina is a story about a damsel in a lot of distress. Aside from the protagonist, I want to go into the characters she encounters.
   Thumbelina encounters her mother, a woman who is desperate for a child and goes to a fairy for answers on getting one. So far, the mother is the most reasonable character in the story. She only wishes to have a child to love and spend her life raising in peace. However the other characters Thumbelina encounters are shallow, self-centered, and selfish. The toad who kidnapped her chooses Thumbelina to be her son's wife based on her looks. That's shallow. The fishes that supposedly rescue her get her stranded on a plant in the middle of the stream, making it impossible for her to reach out for help. Their intentions were good, but they didn't think of the situation she would be in, so they committed a selfish act. This repeats over and over again throughout the story. The only selfless character that Thumbelina encounters in her adventure is the swallow. Swallow takes her away from her soon-to-be mole husband and allows her to travel with him across the land, throughout the seasons. However, he selflessly gives her up to the prince since she was beyond happy to marry the prince. All the swallow wanted was for the girl he fell in love with to be happy. That's not a shallow character.