The Devoted Friend

The Devoted Friend is a story written by Oscar Wilde.One morning Water-rat, mother Duck with her children and Linnet met near the pond. They started discussing about love , friendship and the value of a devoted friend. Water-rat thought that a true friend should be devoted without him doing anything in return. However, Linnet had a different view so he told a story about a Devoted Friend Hans.
He was a hard working and kind-hearted man who used to sell flowers that he grew in his garden for a living.
Hans had a friend named the Miller who used to come to his garden every day and ask for flowers and take other goods from his garden. However, he never gave anything to Hans in return.
Even during the winter when Hans was in trouble he did not even come to visit his friend.
However, Hans loved his friend anyway because of his noble ideas on friendship.
Once Miller promised to give Hans his wheelbarrow which in his opinion was a truly generous thing of him to do.
As the Miller thought that Hans own him a lot for this he started to ask Hans various things to do for him.
As Hans felt really grateful he never refused to do anything even though he did not have any time left for himself.
The Miller did not feel ashamed at all and once asked Hans to get a doctor for his son. Hans had to walk through a terrible storm and eventually drowned.
However even after Hans death the Miller did not feel bad because he thought that what the true friendship should be.
When Linnet finished the story Water-rat was very confused and angry because he did not understand the moral of it and had the same opinion on friendship as the Miller from the story.
On the other hand, the Duck understood it and felt really sorry for the water rat whilst the Linnet started to feel really sad that his little story did not help Water-rat to understand the real meaning of true friendship.


Answers:
1. In the beginning animals are discussing the importance of love and friendship. They are talking about the value and duties of the true friend.
2. Author wanted to reveal the issue of friendship that people face every day. He wanted to show how sometimes it could mean so much to one side and so little to the other. Thus everyone should think before devoting completely to a friend because true friendship is really rear.
3. In the end animals are discussing about the moral of the story. The water rat was very confused and angry because he did not understand it. The duck felt sorry for the rat and the linnet was sad because his story did not help the rat to understand the real meaning of true friendship.
4. I liked the story, it had a great ending and made me think more about my own friends and people selfishness.