英文读后感 Being a Little Princess

A Little Princess is a touching novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett—a famous novelist and dramatist. It obviously contains lots of fancied plots, but the parts of creating miracles the book talks about, can really reach the bottom of my heart. The book can bring me into a world that is more than reality when I read it. I can feel the power of goodness from the heroine—Sara Crewe.

　　The book A Little Princess is the story of a girl named Sara Crewe, who is given everything she could ever want, but she is not spoiled. She immediately becomes a favorite of other students when they find that she is clever and can tell good stories by using her vivid imagination. On Sara's 11th birthday, Miss Minchin is told that Sara's father has died, leaving Sara penniless, and nowhere to go. So Miss Minchin sends her to an attic where she is going to work as a servant. Sara's trial is to remember that a Princess is the princess all the time, even when she acts as others, and even in rags and tatters. At last she gets helps from the friends of her father and become rich again, and become a princess forever.

　　We can feel goodness all through the book. Sara is kind to everyone, even to the mice and her dolls! She always is ready to help others not matter what situation she herself is in. She encourages her friends when they have problems; she helps her friends to study; she tells wonderful stories to the poor little servant, and buys delicious food for her; she forgives the students who hate her and gives them a warm hand when they have problems; and even when she becomes poor she still gives most of her bread to a beggar; she and the mice become friends. Though she is starving she won’t forget to give some food to them. You might think this is hard for other people, but Sara did it very well. Her goodness and her headmaster’s villainy become an obvious contrast. The book has great influence on me. When I have difficulties, I always think of Sara and I will have courage to solve the difficulties and sometimes some ideas will come to my mind as if Sara had helped me.

　　What does the word “goodness” mean? The explanation in the dictionary is: the state or quality of being good. What Sara has done not only represents goodness, but also shows that the author upholds good things and hopes that the world will be full of goodness and love. And then what about the real life in the world? Of course there is goodness and villainy. Goodness? Good things are done by historic persons and great people; as a negligible person, it has nothing to do with me! If you have this kind of opinion of doing goodness, you are totally wrong. We can see goodness from very tiny things, such as: giving a sweet smile to your friends when you meet them; being kind and considerate while you do things; trying to find it’s a pleasure to help others; being kind to all creatures…well, as there are so many, it sounds difficult; but if you really have a warm heart in daily life, you will find it is easy enough to do goodness.

　　Sara sets us a good example. She not only herself does it perfectly, but also spreads the idea of goodness to her friends and impresses many people deeply. Through the book we can find that actually, the author describes Sara and Miss Minchin as two extremely pole, one is extremely good; the other is extremely bad. Though people in real life are not that extremely different. However, we still can find that, nowadays, fewer people want to do goodness and can do it very well. Why?

　　There are a number of reasons accounting for the significant phenomenon. First of all, nowadays, our society carries out the so-called one- child- policy, in the consideration of their children, many parents always teach the children that protect yourself first, consequently, day after day, children become somewhat selfish that leads to the fact that fewer people can do goodness as Sara does.

　　Urbanization also plays an important part. As the country approaches urbanization, and living standard improves, more people who live in big cities and have more living pressure, are busy for their own work and study, and then correspondingly care less about public society, they just care more about the things related to their life, such as incomes and holidays, etc. They are not in the lack of sympathy but have no concept of doing goodness. In their minds doing goodness is worth nothing.

　　As we have mentioned above, people have sympathy but have no awareness. If they concerned about more things except those related to themselves, they will notice doing goodness is also good for them, and for the society they live in. As we know, the world is complicate, and full of sensation, which we cannot accept at once, that makes us difficult to make people be aware of this point. And this can explain why people in the past with less living pressure, are likely to show their goodness.

　　The popularity of A Little Princess not only attributes to Sara’s goodness but also to the awareness of goodness we have while we read the book. Wish Sara will be the princess in our heart forever; Wish more and more people to be the little princess Sara in reality.（949words）