All About Aesop

If people had to choose only one literary work to send in a rocket ship out to distant galaxies and as representative of our lives on earth, that work might likely be Aesop’s Fables. These stories are among our oldest, and they are still among the most widely distributed on our planet. When printing was a new technology and when decisions had to be made about which were the most important works to appear in this new medium, Aesop’s Fables was often the first choice. And when, in the Eighteenth Century, John Newbery proposed that the young should have their own books and created the whole business of children’s publishing, one of his early offerings reflected what he believed should be in every child’s hands: Aesop’s Fables.

That is still the case today. Pamela Travers, the author of the “Mary Poppins” books, was once asked what stories she would recommend for contemporary children and she replied: “The nursery rhymes, the fairy tales, the Bible, and, of course, Aesop’s Fables.” Indeed, another measure of these fables’ importance is the way they have generated common expressions still in use today: “sour grapes,” “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,” and so on. Then, too, over the centuries, Aesop’s stories have inspired many others to do something similar: from the fables of La Fontaine and Tolstoy, to the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Aesop’s Fables is one book that should be on every child’s bookshelf.

Legend has it that Aesop was an African slave born in 620 B.C. and a hunchback cursed or blessed with a quick wit and tongue. Understanding that these stories were created in a situation where free speech was dangerous for the lowly, you will grasp the flavor of the fables. Take the story of the “Lion and the Mouse” where a lion frees a mouse he has captured because of the little creature’s laughable promise to perhaps someday help the larger one, and then that promise being fulfilled when the mouse gnaws through ropes after the lion is captured in a net. Here we can imagine a slave trying to subtly suggest to his master that sometimes the lowly should be listened to and can assist their betters, but we should note that this point is being made in a completely inoffensive and oblique way, by means of animals.

The boy who cried “Wolf!” (too often to be taken seriously when he encountered genuine danger), the reed that survives a windstorm (because it bends while that inflexible oak falls), the steady tortoise who wins the race (against the speedier but flighty hare)–these are fables meant to send a message to someone but “under their radar.” Try it. Pick a current political calamity and among Aesop’s some 500 fables, choose the one that best describes the situation; then when the subject comes up in controversy, tell that story. My own current favorite is “The Cat and the Rooster,” which makes the point that the strong will do what they want even when their invented justifications are shown to be baseless; and as the Irish say, “More’s the pity.”