This month I read Aesop's fables which is essentially a book filled with short stories/ fables with a moral of the story written at the end of the fable. Aesop fables is an unconventional reading choice but I still feel like it's really fun if you wanted to just add a little bit of diversity in your reading selection.
One of my all time favorite fables was/is the ants and the grasshopper:
A Grasshopper that had merrily sung all summer was almost perishing with hunger in the winter. So she went to some Ants that lived near, and asked them to lend her a little food they had put by. "You shall certainly be paid before this time of year comes again," said she. "What did you do all the summer?" asked they. "Why, all day long and all night long I sang, if you please," answered the grasshopper. "Oh you sang, did you?" said the Ants. "Now, then you can dance."
Provide today for the future.
I really enjoyed this fable because I interpreted it as the hardworking ants who instead of relaxing in the present they decided to work hard so that they could prosper in the future. But the Grasshopper decided to relax and do whatever she wanted to do and when she needed something she had to leech off of someone else's hard work. Because the ants didn’t respect her lack of discipline and self control they didn’t help her. I feel like the ants thought process should be applied to the way people live their everyday life. Without a hard working and determined mentality you won’t be able to make it anywhere in life. The story can also say something about handouts, if the ants had given the grasshopper a hand with her food; would she learn something from that experience or would she just continue with her same thought process? There isn’t really a true answer to that question but I feel like it can be inferred that the grasshopper would never really learn how to work hard because she relies on other people to fix her problems.
This was my interpretation of one of the fables and just some food for thought, Have a good day!
- Nyla
I find it interesting that each fable has a moral at the end, like the story-teller is trying to influence the reader past what can reasonably be expected... I like your interpretation of the story, and I assume it fits with the moral offered at the end and what people are typically told the story means upon their first encounters with it in early elementary school. But what if, instead of telling about a lazy grasshopper, its telling about the charity of the ants? It seems like cheating that the story teller leads the reader with a moral at the end, rather than trusting the reader to come to their own conclusions.
ReplyDeleteGreat job!
I have read a bunch of different books like this, and I agree they are really fun to read. I think I prefer folktales, a similar genre but with a little more depth to the stories. A book I particularly like is called Yiddish folktales, which I would recommend reading if you also enjoy folktales.
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