Renaissance Redneck: Fabulous fables

By DAVID KITTREDGE
By David Kittredge

In today’s fast-paced lifestyle in which our society is bombarded with images of the rich and famous or movies with superheroes obliterating cityscapes in an effort to overcome evil forces, the simplistic and time-enduring Aesop Fables are being overlooked. These moralistic vignettes should mesh well with the short attention spans of children, sparking their interest for reading with the anthropomorphic literary device of talking animals with clever plots often sprinkled with humor. These compact stories deal with complex moral issues while teaching common sense and justice in a simplistic manner.

Aesop was a freed Greek slave who lived between 620-564 B.C. More than 700 fables have been attributed to him. These fables were passed down from generation to generation in the oral tradition, until they were catalogued a couple of hundred years after Aesop’s death. A collection of his fables was one of the first books ever to be printed, and other than the New Testament, it is the most widespread Greek-language-based text in the world.

I recall a few years ago talking to a workmate about the preceding Sunday NASCAR race, and he made the comment that Dale Earnhardt Jr. had won the race in an underhanded manner by employing the tactic of fuel management by going slower than the rest of the field of cars, thus negating one fuel stop which gained him an advantage as he went on to win the race. I asked him if he had ever heard of the story of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” He admitted he hadn’t. I explained that the moral of that Aesop Fable was: “Slow but steady wins the race.”

Most of us boomers have also heard of “The Grasshopper and the Ants” with the industrious ants working all summer storing food for the winter while the playful grasshopper chooses to fiddle and dance all summer instead. When the grasshopper hungers in the dead of winter he comes crawling to the ants for nourishment and is then merely chastised by the ants who tell him, “If you were foolish enough to sing all summer, you must dance supperless to bed.” Apparently, the ants weren’t big on grasshopper welfare programs and on the other hand, the grasshopper chose not to indulge in insecticide, thankfully.

Another well known fable is the one where the shepherd boy continues to cry “Wolf!” for his own deranged amusement until the villagers no longer believe him and don’t respond when the wolf actually makes an appearance. The moral of this story is: “Nobody believes a liar even when he is telling the truth.” This fable, “The Shepard’s Boy and the Wolf,” should be spoken aloud by every politician as part of their swearing-in ceremony, and no fair using teleprompters in this case, they should be able to recite this fable by heart, while under oath.

I have chosen a few of the more obscure Aesop’s Fables which address some of the issues permeating our society today. I will condense these stories to quickly get my point across, but if you wish to read the fables in full, Google Aesop’s Fables, gutenberg.org, which is free of charge.

“THE FLIES AND THE HONEYPOT”

In this vignette, flies are attracted to an overturned honeypot. They land in the honey and start to gorge themselves, but soon realize they are stuck in the gooey mass and cannot fly away, and they are soon smothered. As the flies are expiring, they exclaim, “O foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.” As I picture the flies writhing in the puddle of honey, I am reminded of the college spring breakers on a southern beach jerking and twerking their way onto YouTube videos much to the chagrin of their parents and the student’s latter selves. This year could be an especially bad time for these hedonistic gatherings with the impending coronavirus epidemic.

“THE DOG IN THE MANGER”

A dog lay in a manger and because of his growling and snapping prevented the oxen from eating the hay placed before them. “What a foolish dog!” remarked an ox to his neighbor. “He cannot eat the hay himself, and yet refuses to allow those to eat who can.” This case reminds me of the classroom situation where smart and participatory students are often shunned or bullied by their classmates, for being uncool because they want to ingest knowledge being fed to them.

“THE OLD WOMAN AND THE DOCTOR”

An old woman asks a doctor to cure her of her impending blindness with the condition that he will not get paid unless she was cured. The doctor applies salve to her eyes and covers them with poultices. While her eyes are covered, he steals everything in her house that is not nailed down. Once the cure is completed, the woman refuses to pay him because she claims her sight is worse than ever since she can see none of her household furnishings. The moral of this story is that through evil doing one loses any reward for doing good.