Collodi’s book was directly meant to influence Italian thought and build the nation as a whole. A major concept that Pinocchio conveys through both the lenses of universal and national views ins the idea of hedonism versus that of work ethic. In the novel, small nuances such as “when poverty shows itself, even mischievous boys understand what it means” are associated with moral lessons that make the entire novel viewed through a more universal lens (Collodi 20). Another phrase that is very poignant is whenever Pinocchio is traveling to the Land of Toys, a unique instance of foreshadowing occurs whenever …show more content…
Pinocchio is at first rewarded for this decision by getting to play all day and hanging around other lazy members of society, but subsequently transforms into a donkey, or an ass, exposing the consequences of a hedonistic society. In the latter part of the story Pinocchio learns his moral lesson on a hedonistic societal repercussions and only when he begins to have a proper work ethic does the Fairy even consider his wish to become a boy (Collodi 70).
Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg defines a term called “the Pinocchio Effect” that elaborates how the fact that Pinocchio as a puppet rather than an adult/child or human for that matter investigates the profound influence of social bonds in a society where values have not even been determined by race or gender, but rather through a lens specific to the Italian culture, where he is a governing metaphor that goes beyond that of age, gender, sex, and race and ascends to that of a kind of “free agent” that defines a national mindset. Pinocchio is a social ideology that has ingrained into national representation of Italy and has “made him able to bring into focus those mechanisms that pertain to the making of the modern, postliberal Italian subject” (Stewart-Steinberg). His ability to display seemingly staut insubordination towards authority and how Pinocchio as a character weaves in and out of ideologies (Marxism,