Liesl von Trapp

Note: There are very minor spoilers for the 1965 film The Sound of Music in this entry.

When I was little, my favorite movie was The Sound of Music. (It’s still one of my all-time favorites.) When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered “Liesl von Trapp.”

I wanted to be just like her when I was sixteen. I wanted to receive telegrams from the boy of my dreams and twirl around inside a gazebo with him before he gave me my very first kiss. I wanted to sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” with a boy who would be able to sing the verses about being seventeen going on eighteen. I wanted to have her optimism, her poise, and her grace.

I’ve never had an attachment with any other fictional character; Liesl is the only one.

I didn’t realize there was so much about Liesl’s story that involves the loss of innocence and the onset of heartbreak. At sixteen, she’s right at the brink of adulthood. She’s “innocent as a rose” at the beginning but by the end, her innocence and naivety have faded and she has a much more realistic outlook about the ways of the world. Some of that has to do with her short-lived courtship with Rolf. But most of it has to do with the von Trapp family’s unfortunate circumstances thanks to the Nazi invasion of Austria and the onset of Hitler’s regime throughout Europe. Either way, the Liesl at the end of the film is very different to the one at the beginning, and her character development is something that I’ve always taken away from The Sound of Music.

There are so many things that I love about Liesl and a lot of what I love about her has changed over time. When I wanted to be Liesl at the age of six, it was Liesl’s fairytale princess quality that I loved most about her. Now, though, what I love about her is how her story carefully tells a tale of one girl’s transition from child to adult and her slight brush with heartbreak. A lot of my attachment to Liesl is for sentimental reasons, because whenever I watch The Sound of Music I’m transported to a time when I was younger, more innocent, and more naive. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but there’s a lot of Liesl’s initial trusting innocence that I think I, too, had when I was about fifteen or sixteen.

I wanted to grow up to be Liesl at the age of six, and now at the age of nineteen there are traces of her I can see in myself from three, four years ago. It’s funny how some things turn out.

I still want to be Liesl von Trapp when I grow up.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.