Characters Discussed
Gluck
Gluck, a good youth who, with his two brothers, owns and farms Treasure Valley in the ancient kingdom of Stiria. His brothers make Gluck work hard at the worst tasks but give him nothing. After his brothers fail to change the Golden River into gold, he tries. He succeeds because he is kind; he earns the help of the King of the Golden River, who had in turn tested each brother’s mercy toward a thirsty child, an old man, and a dog. Only Gluck shared his water. All of his life, Gluck proves that he is charitable and thoughtful, even after he becomes a rich man.
Schwartz
Schwartz and
Hans
Hans, nicknamed the Black Brothers. They are stingy and mean, mistreating Gluck, killing anything that brings in no money, cheating their servants, and giving nothing to charity although they are very rich. Both the brothers, because they are evil men, fail to turn the Golden River into gold and are themselves metamorphosed into black stones.
The South-West Wind
The South-West Wind, a strange little old man befriended by Gluck when he appears at the brothers’ house. Gluck gives the man shelter and offers him his own meager portion of food. When Hans and Schwartz try to throw the little man out of the house, he causes a storm to ruin the entire valley and permits no more rain to fall, so that the valley becomes a wasteland.
The King of the Golden River
The King of the Golden River, who is imprisoned in a gold mug until released by Gluck. He tells Gluck how to turn the Golden River into gold by dropping holy water into it. When Gluck succeeds, the river irrigates Treasure Valley for him, making it fertile and a source of wealth.
Themes and Characters
The moral of the story is that goodness, specifically a kind of Christian charity and love of God's creation, will triumph over arrogance and selfishness. In fact, Ruskin singles out the sin of avarice, or greed for money, as the root of the evil in the Black brothers' characters. All of their cruelty and exploitation of others, their abuse of Gluck, their refusal to share anything they own with anyone else, their cheating, lying, and stealing stems from their insatiable love of money. Their own obsession with gold drives them to their inevitable destruction.
Ruskin carefully connects the theme of avarice with the idea that a spiritual bond exists between man and nature. One of the first things we learn about the evil Black brothers is that they "farm" the beautiful Treasure Valley by killing "everything that did not pay for its eating." So fearful are they that their profits will be diminished by sharing what they grow with the animals that they "shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime trees." The reason for their abuse of nature is, of course, their greed, which makes them so selfish that they have sympathy for no other beings in God's creation.
Ruskin reinforces this link between man and nature in a negative way in his vivid descriptions of the evil Black brothers' journeys to the source of the Golden River. They must travel through a wilderness in which lofty cliffs gradually ascended till
they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy colour, along the angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like...
(This entire section contains 798 words.)
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pine. Far above shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightening.
In such descriptions, the reader senses that nature is actually some sort of living power. As the evil Hans crosses a glacier, he hears "wild sounds of gushing water" that resemble "melancholy tones," or the "sudden shrieks" of "human voices in distress or pain." In this passage, the landscape becomes a mirror of the violence of Hans's own cruel nature. It is as if his cruelty and greed are so "unnatural" in the great scheme of things that the spirit of nature is horrified by his presence. By linking these natural landscapes so forcefully with human emotion, Ruskin vividly shows the evil embodied in the Black brothers. Nature can actually be considered a character in the story because it seems to embody powers that control the destiny of the characters.
South-West Wind, Esquire, and the King of the Golden River both seem to be spirits of Nature. They are powerful, supernatural beings who can magically transform the natural environment, thus bewildering and challenging the merely human characters. However, Ruskin gives them enough human peculiarities and distinctive traits to make them fascinating characters. When South-West Wind, Esquire, comes to visit him in the form of an "old gentleman," Gluck is puzzled by his guest's behavior which is "a strange mixture of coolness and humility." His diminutive size and great age suggest that Gluck's wicked brothers will have no trouble driving him from their hearth when they return. However, the little, old man shocks them all by unleashing his terrible powers to punish the brothers for their lack of hospitality. After hurling Hans and Schwarz into a heap by the fireside, he summons a horrible storm which destroys their home and devastates Treasure Valley.
Similarly, the King of the Golden River is depicted as a golden dwarf whose brilliantly colored dress and delicately curled hair contrast with the coarse features of his face. Gluck feels that the dwarfs expression indicates that he is both stubborn and quick-tempered, which turns out to be true. However, like South-West Wind, Esquire, the King of the Golden River uses his vast supernatural powers for noble purposes. To reward Gluck for freeing him from the power of a stronger king, who had imprisoned him in Gluck's prized golden mug, The King of the Golden River tells Gluck how to turn the Golden River into real gold. Then, of course, after his evil brothers have failed in their attempts to do so, the King rewards him for his goodness and his devotion. South-West Wind, Esquire, and the King are both simultaneously comical and menacing, which contributes to an atmosphere of unpredictability throughout much of the story. These two characters are strange enough to ensure that the reader shares poor Gluck's awe of their magical power.