The Red Shoes is a short story written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Most of Andersen's fairy tales have an underlying meaning to them and The Red Shoes is not an exception.

The story is about a little girl named Karen who gets a pair of red shiny shoes. She really wants to wear them all the time but she is not allowed to wear them to church since it is not concidered to be appropriate. However, Karen wears the shiny red shoes anyway and everyone at church is looking at her red shoes. Even Karen herself thinks of her church instead of paying attention to the mass. She even goes so far that she ignores her sick fosterparent to go and party in her red shoes. The story ends with Karen being cursed to dance forever in her shiny red shoes.

This story actually tells about vanity and how Karen cares more about her looks than what is appropriate. This subject is very important today since we are very vain today and care more about how we look to other people than caring about other people. It is more important to have the new iPhone or what ever it is than actually caring about that every one does not even have food on their table every eavning. 

The story also contains symbolism, which in this case one of them are the red shoes. By begging God for mercy and gives up her red shoes Karen is allowed to go back to church. The red shoes symbolises ones pride or vanity and not until we give them up we are allowed redemption and join God in heaven.

Most of H.C Andersen's fairy tales are available on google.

The novel Divergent is a story about a society based on a faction system. The factions are based on five virtues the human are believed to possess. The virtues are peace for Amity, selflessness for Abnegation, honesty for Candour, intelligence for Erudite and bravery for Dauntless. The people in the society are divided into these five factions when they are teenagers through an aptitude test. The test should tell which of the five factions a full fletched member of the society belongs to, but the test does not work for everyone and those are the divergent.

In the novel the reader follows a girl name Tris Prior who is born Abnegation but has always wanted to belong to the Dauntless. Tris believes the test should tell her who she is but everything does not go as it should and she has to make a decision and cannot rely on the results of the aptitude test. 

This novel is very interesting from a political point of view since the book has a very different view of society than the one we live in. The society in the novel is based on a system of five virtues divided into factions. In the beginning of the book the rulers of the society is Abnegation who are the selfless people in the society and are concidered to be fit to rule over the others. This does not go hand in hand with the Eruidite who wants to take over as rulers since they believe the virtue of intelligens makes them the perfekt rulers. A few of the questions that rises in my mind are, what virtues should a ruler possess? Are there virtues that are more important than others?

These questions may be important to discuss in todays society since there is differences and there is war and terrorism in motion. Discussing and getting an understanding about different societies than the one we live in may give us an understanding of how to help those who are in need of help.