The Duckling
protagonist · swan · the one who endures
A large grey bird who is told what he is by everybody he meets, and believes all of them.
How we meet them
As an egg that is bigger than the others and has not moved, which somebody is already advising should be abandoned.
Personality
Quiet, patient, and far braver than he ever gets credit for.
What they want
At first to be left alone. By the end, to stop.
How they change
From an egg that takes too long, through a duckyard, a marsh, a cottage and a winter, to a bird who decides he would rather be killed by something beautiful than survive another year as he is.
How they speak
Almost nothing for most of the story, and then one enormous decision said out loud to nobody.
How the story treats them
Everybody has an opinion and every opinion is about his appearance. Not one character in the story asks him a question about himself.
One surprising thing
He swims beautifully the very first time he touches water, and his mother notices and says so. It is the only compliment he receives in the entire tale.
If they were real today
He would be the new child at school who is quietly good at something nobody has thought to ask about.
Key moments
Straight-necked and steady
The first time he touches water he swims better than any of them, and his mother says he is hers and is really rather handsome. Nobody else ever agrees.
He shut his eyes and kept going
He gets over the fence and the little birds go up in a cloud, and he decides that is because he is ugly, which is the story's clearest picture of what shame does to reasoning.
A cry that frightened him
He sees the white birds go south and turns in the water like a wheel and makes a sound he has never made, and does not know their name or where they are going.
Better to be killed by them
He decides to fly at the swans and be killed for daring, because it is better than another winter. This is the actual turning point, and it happens before he knows anything.
Who they know
The Mother Duckfamily
The only creature who ever defends him, and the one whose giving up sends him away.
The Henrival
She decides what counts as an ability, and then measures him against it.
The Catrival
A short conversation in which the cat establishes that the duckling's opinions do not count.
The Old Womanguardian
She takes him in and feeds him, entirely because she has misidentified him.
Characters like The Duckling
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