The Little Match Girl recap

On a freezing New Year's Eve, an impoverished girl walks the streets trying unsuccessfully to sell matches. She is barefoot, hungry, and afraid to return home without earnings. Sheltering between houses, she lights the matches one at a time. Each flame brings a vision of something she lacks: a warm stove, a rich meal, a Christmas tree, and finally her loving grandmother, who is dead. Desperate not to lose her, the girl burns the whole bundle and imagines her grandmother carrying her to a place beyond cold and hunger. In the morning, passersby find the child frozen to death, smiling beside the spent matches. They assume she merely tried to keep warm and remain unaware of the consoling visions that accompanied her death.

On the last evening of the year, a poor young girl tries to sell matches in streets filled with light and the smell of holiday food. She has lost the loose slippers she wore from home and walks barefoot through the snow. No one buys from her, and she is afraid to return without money because her father will be angry; home itself is scarcely warmer. She crouches in a corner and lights a match. Its brief flame seems to become a stove, but the warmth disappears when the match dies. Successive matches produce visions of a festive meal and a brilliant Christmas tree. When she sees a falling star, she remembers her grandmother's belief that it marks a soul going to God. Another flame reveals the grandmother herself, the one person who loved the child tenderly. To keep her from vanishing, the girl ignites every remaining match. She imagines her grandmother lifting her away to a place without cold, hunger, or fear. At dawn, the child is found frozen to death, smiling beside the burned matches. The passersby think she was only trying to warm herself and do not know what she believed she had seen.

On the final vision, the girl sees her beloved grandmother and fears that she too will vanish when the match goes out. She lights all the matches she has left, surrounding the figure with brightness, and asks her grandmother to take her along. In the child's vision, the two rise together beyond hunger and cold. The next morning, people find the girl dead in the corner, her matches burned and a smile on her face. They conclude only that she tried to warm herself. None of them knows about the warmth, food, celebration, and loving reunion she imagined during her last night, or that she experienced her death as an escape from suffering into her grandmother's care.