Week 4, Reading Notes A: Aesop's Fables (Jacobs)

The Fox and the Crane on Wikimedia

For this week, I decided to read more of Aesop’s fables. There are so many of them, and each one comes with a valuable lesson or a critique of society. There are fables compiled by both Jacobs and Crane, and they are interesting to read back to back. They keep the same plot overall, but where Jacobs’ fables are usually a few paragraphs long and have a good amount of context and dialogue, Crane’s version of the tales are short poems. In Crane’s edition, he often places two of these short poems side by side on the same page of his book if they have similar morals, and there are illustrations to go along. It was informative to see how two authors could take the same basic plot and moral of a story, yet write on them completely differently. Also, occasionally I found that Crane’s morals, which he always states explicitly at the end of his poems, are sometimes clearer.

We all read some of the Lion fables earlier in this course. The Lion and the Statue was one of them, in which a Man brings his Lion friend to see a statue of a Man defeating a Lion. The moral expressed at the end of Jacobs’ version is “We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.” Crane’s moral is “The story depends on the teller.” These morals are almost the same.

For the Fox and the Lion, I was a bit confused by Jacobs’ moral. In the story, a Fox sees a Lion and hides in the woods. The next time the Fox sees the beast, he watches him pass from afar. The third time, the Fox is able to comfortably chat with the Lion in passing. Jacobs’ moral was “Familiarity breeds contempt”. This surprised me, as I find “contempt” to be a negative word, but the story did not seem to be one of negativity, In this case, reading Crane’s version after Jacobs’ helped me to understand the meaning better. His moral is “Familiarity destroys fear”, which I found to be more fitting to Aesop’s true meaning. However, the difference between Jacobs’ and Crane’s take on the same story illustrates that readers might very well read the same material and take something different away from it.

I also found the reading notes that are available for these tales to be informative. They give a better understanding of common characters in Aesop’s fables. For instance, it is noted that although many animals are capable of being tricky, the Fox is by far the trickiest. Also, where the Lion is a dangerous beast, the Wolf is capable of being even more dangerous.

Lastly, I think that it is interesting that Aesop used these tales to not only give life lessons, but also to critique the society of his day, One example is The Fox and the Mosquitoes. A Fox has his tail trapped in a bush, and Mosquitoes begin feeding on him. When a Hedgehog offers to drive the Mosquitoes away, the Fox states that since they have had their fill, driving them away would only attract more hungry Mosquitoes. This fable was meant to be a critique on the politicians of Aesop’s day. You can access these fables here: link. The image included above is from a fable in the Reading Notes A section on Foxes.


Crane, Walter. “The Baby’s Own Aesop (1908).” The Public Domain Review, Web.

Jacobs, Joseph, et al. Aesop's Fables. Rizzoli, 1991. Web.