Pinocchio Before Disney: Collodi's Hanged Puppet, a Turquoise-Haired Fairy and a Much Harder Lesson

Yes, the original Pinocchio is much darker than the cartoon most people remember. In Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, published as a book in 1883, the wooden puppet kills the Talking Cricket with a hammer, burns his own feet off, is hanged from a tree by two thieves, is jailed for being robbed, and is turned into a donkey that is nearly skinned for a drum. In the first version of the serial, the story actually stopped at the hanging, with the puppet left for dead as punishment for his many faults. Yet the book is not simply grim. It is funny, fast and strange, and it ends with one of the most famous transformations in children's literature: a selfish puppet who learns to work and care for others wakes up as a real boy.

Who wrote Pinocchio, and when?

"Carlo Collodi" was the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini, a Florentine writer, humourist and journalist born in 1826 and died in 1890. He took the name from the small Tuscan town of Collodi, where his mother came from and where he spent much of his childhood. As a young man he studied at a seminary but did not want to become a priest; he turned instead to journalism and political satire, and he volunteered as a soldier in the Italian wars of independence.

After Italy was unified, Collodi began writing books for children, including stories about an unruly boy travelling the new country. In 1881 he sent a short episode about a wooden puppet to a friend who edited a children's paper in Rome, calling it a "bit of foolishness". The editor printed it, and young readers loved it. That small experiment became one of the most translated books in the world, available in some 240 to 260 languages.

A serial that almost ended with a death

The story first ran as The Story of a Puppet in the Giornale per i bambini, one of Italy's earliest weekly magazines for children, starting on 7 July 1881. After eight instalments it stopped at Chapter 15, where Pinocchio is hanged. Readers wanted more, and the editor asked Collodi to continue. He resumed in February 1882 under a new title, The Adventures of Pinocchio, and in these later chapters the Fairy with Turquoise Hair saves the puppet and guides him toward becoming a real boy. The complete book of 36 chapters appeared in Florence in February 1883, with illustrations by Enrico Mazzanti.

This history explains a lot about the book's mood. The first half reads like a cautionary tale that does not hesitate to punish its hero. The second half is softer and more hopeful. Critics have noticed that the father figure, Geppetto, dominates the first part, while the motherly Fairy dominates the second.

The story in brief

In Tuscany, a carpenter finds a log that cries out when he tries to carve it, so he gives it to his poor neighbour Geppetto, who carves a puppet and names him Pinocchio. The puppet immediately runs away, and Geppetto ends up in jail. Alone at home, Pinocchio meets a talking cricket who warns him about disobedience; annoyed, he throws a hammer and kills it. Geppetto comes home, makes him new feet, and sells his only coat to buy him a spelling book. Pinocchio promptly sells the book to see a puppet show.

From there the adventures come one after another. The puppet master Mangiafuoco nearly burns Pinocchio as firewood but then gives him five gold coins. A Fox and a Cat, pretending to be lame and blind, persuade him that coins planted in the Field of Miracles will grow into a money tree. They rob him, hang him, and later steal the coins anyway. A gorilla judge sends him to prison for the crime of being foolish. When he lies to the Fairy, his nose grows, and she calls woodpeckers to cut it back to size.

Later Pinocchio does well at school, but his friend Candlewick tempts him to Toyland, where children play all day. After five months they both wake up with donkey ears and soon become real donkeys. Pinocchio is sold to a circus, thrown into the sea, becomes a puppet again and is swallowed by a giant dogfish, inside which he finds Geppetto. After their escape he works for months to support his sick father and gives his savings to help the ailing Fairy. That night he dreams that she kisses him, and in the morning he is a real boy, with his old wooden body lying lifeless on a chair.

The main characters

Pinocchio himself is not a sweet innocent. He is impulsive, greedy for fun and quick to lie, but he also has real feelings and is capable of shame. Geppetto is an old, poor woodcarver who sacrifices what little he has; neighbourhood children tease him as "Polendina" because his yellow wig looks like cornmeal mush. The Talking Cricket is the voice of good advice, and after his death he returns as a ghost. The Fairy with Turquoise Hair adopts Pinocchio first as a brother and then as a son.

The villains are memorable too. The Fox and the Cat are swindlers who lead the puppet astray, and Candlewick is a cheerful bad influence. Mangiafuoco looks terrifying, with a black beard down to the floor, but he is not actually evil. The Terrible Dogfish, a fish a mile long, is often remembered as a whale because of the Disney film; in Italian pescecane usually means "shark".

What the book is really about

The lessons Pinocchio keeps hearing are simple: work, study and be good. In the end it is his willingness to provide for his father that transforms him. Collodi wrote for a young nation that needed reliable workers, and scholars connect the story's structure to folk tales about naive country people who go out into the world unprepared. That was a real social problem in a period when many Italian peasants moved to cities or emigrated abroad.

Some critics read the book as a kind of epic. The puppet's trip into the belly of the dogfish resembles the journeys to the underworld of heroes like Odysseus and Aeneas, and his final change from wood into flesh is a rebirth. That reading also explains the darkness: injury, pain and death are present in this comedy, stylised but never removed, because the danger is what gives the final reward its meaning.

How the original differs from Disney's Pinocchio

Walt Disney's animated Pinocchio came out in 1940 and is loosely based on the novel. In the film, a Blue Fairy brings the puppet to life, and he must prove himself "brave, truthful, and unselfish" to become real. Disney's version is the best-known adaptation, and it introduced changes that many later versions copied: Pinocchio is more innocent and good-natured, the Talking Cricket becomes a friend and sidekick, Mangiafuoco becomes a straightforward villain, the Fox and the Cat drive most of the plot, and the Terrible Dogfish is replaced by a whale.

In the film the cricket is named Jiminy and acts as the puppet's conscience, and the Toyland episode becomes "Pleasure Island". The movie also won the first competitive Academy Awards for an animated feature, for its score and for the song "When You Wish Upon a Star". If you know only the film, the novel will surprise you: the cricket is dead by Chapter 4, the puppet is much ruder, and the moral is closer to hard work and responsibility than to wishing on a star.

Legacy around the world

Philosopher Benedetto Croce counted the book among the greatest works of Italian literature, and the image of a liar's growing nose is now understood almost everywhere. The first English translation, by Mary Alice Murray, appeared in London in 1892. In the Soviet Union, Aleksey Tolstoy reworked the story in 1936 as The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino, which became a classic of Russian children's literature in its own right.

Filmmakers keep returning to the puppet. There was a hand-coloured Italian silent film as early as 1911, a darker Japanese anime series in the 1970s, and in 2022 Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, a stop-motion film set in Fascist Italy, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Each version chooses how much of Collodi's roughness to keep. Reading the original is the best way to see what they all started from.

Learn with Pinocchio: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to tell a whopper	to tell a big lie	If I said I loved Mondays, I'd be telling a whopper.
your nose is growing	(joking) I think you are lying	"I finished all my homework." "Your nose is growing!"
to play hooky	to skip school without permission	Pinocchio played hooky to see the puppet show.
a wooden head	a stubborn or foolish person	Don't be such a wooden head; listen to her.
to fall for a trick	to be fooled by a scam	He fell for the Fox's trick about the money tree.

Try this: Write three sentences about a time you or a friend fell for a trick, using "to play hooky" or "to tell a whopper".