From "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Anderson

This story is about a little girl who lives under the sea with her five sisters, her father and her grandmother. She has big dreams and wanted to live on the shore with the humans. She one day rescues a prince who had fallen into the water during a storm. He had no idea that the girl had saved him but she dreamed that one day he would know. She loved him and watched him everyday for years. One day when she spoke to her grandmother about this world above she said "I would give the whole three hundred years I have to live to become for one day a human being and then share in that heavenly world"(224). This line really stood out to me because I thought there are few people that would truly give up everything they had just for one day of something else. We all wish sometimes that our lives were a little different or that we could be someone else but this girl truly would do anything to just live on the shore for one day. She loved the Prince with all of her heart and yet he had no idea she even existed. I think this story is so sweet and loving that the girl truly did watch the boy and watched over him for days.