Esteva - Stick Boy and Match Girl In Love

  In Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love Tim Burton gives life to two inanimate objects in order to symbolize a relationship. In the first stanza Burton talks about how attracted Stick Boy is to Match Girl's figure and appearance. In the second one he wrote how their love, literally, burned them up.

      In my opinion, in this poem you can see how men can be very attracted to a woman and can get to think they are perfect. Nevertheless, when they actually make the effort to get to know her they realize she is nothing like they thought, resulting in a shallow relationship that ends up doing nothing but wore out each person involved in it.

     This poem can relate very easily to Tim Burton in a biographical point of view.  Burton left his wife, Lena Gieseke, to live with model and actress, Lisa Marie. After some time Burton also ended his relationship with Lisa Marie, and it did not end in the best terms. Hence, one could say that in the poem the author talks about how physically attracted he was to the actress and model, but at the end, the physical attraction was not enough and it left him completely burnt.

       Match Girl and Stick Boy also show how Tim Burton is somewhat scared of intimacy because he practically states that any close relationship ends up badly. Furthermore, he also implies people can wore out each other. Stick Boy burns almost instantly when the fire starts, but Match Girl, at the end, is also reduced to dust when the fire finally stops.

        Accordingly to Carl Jung’s archetype the situation that this poem illustrates is a part of Tim Burton’s path to wholeness through individuation because it represents change in his life. He portrays Stick Boy as the courageous man who is capable of anything to get the girl. The poem also shows Freud Young’s shadow when Match Girl burns completely Stick Boy instead of just giving him her love.