Essay - The Helpless & Foolish

I found one reoccurring theme in the four stories I highlighted in my Aesop's Fables (Jacobs) Reading Diary posts... and that was the theme of the 'helpless and foolish'. I am quite surprised and proud I found this re occurrence as I had to ponder, compare, and contrast these stories for a bit and then take a step back and connect the dots. At first I thought they all had death, but that wasn't a certainty, as some stories ended rather open ended. Another quick connection I thought I might have was that in most Aesop fables there are animals. So all must have animals. But nope two of mine did not so that connection quickly came and went in a dash. I then came to the universal them of the helpless and foolish and this is how.

In the story The Wolf and the Kid, you guessed it, a wolf and a kid come across paths. The kid talks mad shit to the wolf while atop a roof, safe and sound, and the wolf simply walks by and says anyone can be brave from a safe distance and shuts the kid up and keeps on strolling by. I re-wrote this story in poem form and titled it the boy who stuck his chest out too far, but in my version the boy falls and has to pay for his foolish confidence. You can guess what happens to the helpless boy after that.

The Lion in Love is about a lion falling in love with a beautiful human lady. Her parents don't want to anger the lion by saying they can't be together so instead they tell him to declaw and de-teeth himself so he will be safe and not accidentally hurt their precious daughter. The lion, blindly in love, with cloudy logic, removes his teeth and claws. After this foolish act he is helpless, and will never be the lion he was. Causing insult to injury he is also tricked by the humans and is still not granted the daughter. So sad.

In The Man and the Wood a man walks into a forest begging for branches from the forests trees. The trees in their good-nature helped the man out but this was a foolish mistake as the man came back to the helpless trees and cut them down one by one with the new axe he had made from their branches. Quote from the original story: "Then the Trees saw how foolish they had been in giving their enemy the means of destroying themselves."

The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner is a story in which a battlefield trumpeter is captured by the opposition. The helpless trumpeter begged his life be spared as he had no weapon and was of no threat. He was foolish because he was still apart of the war, still the enemy, and in some opinions was more dangerous than a man with a gun as patriotic music sparks inspiration into the heart of his fellow soldiers.

These are stories of the helpless and foolish...
Learn from them :)

Mr. T thoooo