![]() The puppet is, in the end, transformed into a real boy of flesh and blood the metamorphosis is complete. It is at this point in the narrative that we encounter the shark (Italian: Il terribile Pescecane, a mile-long, five-storey-high fish), in whose belly Geppetto and Pinocchio are reunited. ![]() Collodi took up the character again, and over the course of new ordeals we find Pinocchio once more on the trail of his father Geppetto, who, for his part despairing at the idea of never seeing Pinocchio again, has departed across the ocean toward America. In fact, Collodi’s editor and his young readers demanded that Pinocchio’s death not signal the end of the puppet’s adventures. Pinocchio’s death is, however, symbolic it constitutes a prelude to a rebirth, in an initiatory journey that has at its end the search for knowledge and human attributes. This conclusion inserts itself into the vein of ordinary cruelty in children’s fables (ogres devouring small children, unworthy parents, wicked stepmothers …). The bandits hang him from an oak tree Pinocchio turns back into the block of wood he was at the beginning of the story. Originally, the story was to have ended at Chapter XV: Pinocchio, chased by the bandits, seeks refuge in a cabin in the woods where the blue-haired fairy tells him that everyone is dead and no one can help him. ![]() Thus begins the series of misadventures that will carry Pinocchio from one encounter to the next, until he meets a young girl with turquoise hair: a magical figure, part fairy, part mother or sister, who sometimes takes care of him and protects him and sometimes punishes him. Marvelling at the extraordinary abilities of his Pinocchio to speak and walk, Geppetto decides to send him to school, making sacrifices on his behalf as if for his own child. But the moment it is finished, the puppet begins to misbehave, stealing Geppetto’s wig and sticking out his tongue at him. Master Geppetto begins to fashion his piece of wood, giving it the appearance of a child. Indeed, this block of wood presents strange characteristics from the start. From his colleague Mastro Antonio (called Cherry because of his red nose) he receives a wood log that the latter was unable to work. A poor woodworker, Mastro (Master) Geppetto (a diminutive of Joseph, carpenter and celibate father par excellence), has the idea to sculpt a moving marionette puppet and to take it along his routes to make his fortune. The tale was recounted in 1881 in a pamphlet published in Il Giornale per i bambini (The Children’s Newspaper) by Carlo Lorenzini, called Collodi, a playwright and journalist who was also responsible for some censorship within this publication for children. In fact, this character has become emblematic, embodying better than any other the metamorphosis of a puppet into a human being. There are characters from children’s literature that have become universal because they exemplify worth and meaning that go beyond the youthful context for which they were created among these Pinocchio deserves a special place.
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