A fable is a short narrative that can be written in prose or rhyme and conveys a straightforward moral or lesson. Examples of animal characters that are humorous, clever, or foolish creatures who reflect human flaws and vices abound in tales. The moral lesson of a fable may occasionally have to be deduced, while it is briefly stated at the tale’s conclusion. A tale sometimes has a “twist” or a shocking conclusion.
Fables, fairy tales, and parables all share the trait of being passed down orally and occasionally written down much later than when they were created. One can discover historical remnants of earlier customs, beliefs, and rituals in such instances. Fables often lack the fantastical aspects seen in fairy tales (Slowik, 2018). Contrary to fables, tales do not use anthropomorphism; rather, they portray people as they are.
The fox and the Grapes tale is an illustration of a fable. “One hot summer’s day, a Fox was roaming through an orchard until he came to a group of Grapes just blossoming on a vine that had been stretched over a towering limb,” goes. He said, “Just what I need to satisfy my thirst.” He missed the group a few steps after pulling back, running, and jumping. He turned around and leaped up again, but this time without any more success. He kept trying to get the tempting treat, but eventually, he gave up and went aside with his nose inside the sky while stating, “I’m sure they’re sour.”
The word “sour grapes,” a widespread idiomatic expression that most English speakers understand, sums up the moral of the narrative, which is that you cannot always get what you desire. The moral of the tale is universally applicable, and most readers understand that the fox’s mentality is a typical human flaw (Slowik, 2018). Fables are an instructional literary form, meaning their main goal is to educate or guide rather than only amuse(Slowik, 2018). Fables also allow the reader to laugh at human foolishness, especially when they serve as models for actions that should be resisted rather than imitated.
Fables frequently have as their central characters animals given anthropomorphic characteristics such as the ability to reason and speak. In antiquity, Aesop’s fables presented a wide range of animals as protagonists, including The Tortoise and the Hare, which engage in a race against each other; and, in another classic fable, The Ants and the Grasshopper, the ants chide the grasshopper for not preparing for the winter
Adult writing has recently adapted the tale as a literary genre. For example, James Thurber employed the approach in The Monster in her and Other Animals and Fables for Our Time. His stories are renowned for their incisive depictions of contemporary worries. George Orwell’s Animal Farm mocks “tyranny in overall and Stalinist Communist rule in particular” in the guise of an animal tale. The Irish author has woven the stories “The Fox and the Grapes” and “The Ant and the Grasshopper” into James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The stories contribute to the fantastic atmosphere that permeates this book.
Reference
Slowik, M. (2018). The animal fable, Chuck Jones, and the narratology of the looney tune. Narrative, 26(2), 146–162. Web.