The Flying Turtle

Herman the Turtle is so adorable and endearing and has such a sweet voice, we just want to hold and protect him. Herman the Turtle seems quite vulnerable because of how he looks and how he speaks. Herman also has a lot of determination in him. I think the ending is a happy ending, because Herman the Turtle has not died, Herman has just left one place to go somewhere else Herman has left Earth where he was not happy to go to heaven, where he is happy. Herman the Turtle seems very much alive in heaven. A great story. I am surprised a film has not been made out of this. I give it five stars. Long Live Herman the Turtle. There is nothing I dislike about this cartoon.

One of my most vivid memories of early childhood, prior to being able to speak with any understandable language skills, was viewing this cartoon with my older sisters. I remember identifying with the turtle and his wish to fly and somehow knowing when he plucked the eagles one feather and attempted to fly but only succeeding in plunging to his death, even at that early age I knew that this was wrong, very wrong. So when the turtle’s spirit rose with wings to go to ‘turtle heaven” after smacking the ground I just flipped out, bawled like mad, and ran around the house shrieking because I knew he was dead, and dead by his own means. My sisters tried to consul me by telling me that now he could fly as a spirit and was happy in his state but I was not buying it and only cried harder. I just felt loss through death as portrayed by a cartoon as a child, thinking about it now I still remember that real sense of loss. I grew up with lots of animals as pets, from real turtles to goats and experienced pet animal death quite regularly. So I do not feel like it traumatized me, rather I knew that death should be avoided and was not a state of happiness so the cartoon still holds a rather strange attraction because the reaction as a child still strikes a chord when seeing it again as a adult. I have since learned that there are similar stories from ancient India and further East of a turtle gripping a stick while being flown by two birds on either side and either he opens his mouth to exclaim on the view from the air, or to reply with an insult from a slight from animals from below, it ends much the same way. A long fall to his death. Cheers