In the fairy tale ‘’The Steadfast Tin Soldier’’ by Hans Christian Andersen, the central figures are a tin soldier – the last of a batch of 25 and made one-legged because the tin ran out – and a paper ballerina formed executing a pirouette, with one leg drawn up. She wears a dress and sash with a huge spangle. The tin soldier assumes she is also one-legged and falls in love with her. The tin soldier is warned by a jack-in-the-box goblin not to look at the ballerina or he would regret it. He persists and soon undergoes a series of hardships. At the end, the tin soldier is carelessly tossed into a fireplace and as fate would have it, the paper ballerina is blown into the same fire by a gust of wind. However, while the tin soldier melts into a tin heart, the ballerina becomes ashes except for the spangle which simply turns black.
First published in 1838, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” has been dubbed macabre and dark because there is no ‘and they lived happily ever after’ at the end. In the over 180 years since it was written, it has been analysed umpteen times. Scholars have alluded to a hidden meaning behind the tin soldier remaining resolutely in love despite the utmost adversity – he melted into a tin heart, while on the other hand, that which he loved dissipated leaving behind a blackened piece of artifice. Surely there is a lesson there for everyone.
There is no doubt that tin soldiers abound in today’s world and not just in a romantic sense. In the modern analogy, the tin soldier is the human being who is also missing a vital part of his or her make-up. That missing part is not physically discernable – they seem whole enough – but with a closer look one can easily detect those who are bereft of conscience, empathy, or any sort of moral code.
Like the original tin soldier, they too have fixations that can include but are not limited to: men of straw, profits, and political creed. Tin soldiers are known for sticking to their guns even after they are warned, or made aware that what they are defending is immoral or horrific. They tend to dominate news cycles as there is a surfeit of them in political and corporate life the world over.
Among the more blatant examples are the men and women supporting and endorsing former US president Donald Trump to run again in the elections due later this year. These tin soldiers are not the ordinary, deluded Americans who belong to Mr Trump’s so-called ‘MAGA tribe’ and seem ready to follow him over a cliff. No. They are the supposedly intelligent men and women who sit in America’s Congress and Senate and choose to gloss over Mr Trump’s lies and shenanigans, and to overlook his various illegalities because they believe him to be the ‘popular’ figure who might regain the presidency for the Republican party.
Appallingly, they have chosen to forget his posturing in 2020 that the election was “stolen”, and his rants that spurred an insurrection causing damage to the Capitol, as well as the psyche of many Americans. Although the entire world watched that terrible event unfold in real time, there are those who now claim that the rioters were mere tourists and that it was blown out of proportion by the Democrats. In fact, that lawless attack on democracy could only be termed a near miss because of how much worse it would have been had the insurrectionists found the people they were targeting.
The inadequacies, real or imagined, of Mr Trump’s tin soldiers make it hard for them to see and admit how detrimental he has already been to America – nearly nullifying the ‘United States’ part of its name – and how much worse the eventual fallout will be should he hold the reins of power again.
That said, being a tin soldier is not just an American failing. There are tin soldiers who uphold and agree with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and bolster him in his posturing. We also see them blindly supporting Israel in spite of the atrocities in Gaza. To put a point on it, wherever there is an unjust war, or any type of injustice perpetrated against innocents, one is bound to find tin soldiers.
In our own country, tin soldiers have also displayed their idolatry by pushing various false narratives. The list is long as one will find that neither wannabe idols nor men of straw are in short supply among Guyana’s small population. A few of the more recent examples include the 2020 elections fiasco; the practice of placing party loyalty over the interest of the people; and the current holding of the brief for ExxonMobil.
When overrun by tin soldiers, one can almost forget that there is balance in life; everything that begins must end and usually good will eventually triumph over evil. The modern depictions of the tin soldier in the fairy tale might not meet their destiny in the same fashion, but perhaps their comeuppance will arrive through a process of self-realisation that proves to be just as painful. One can only hope.
