‘The Drops of Water’
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #11
Foxes, lions, sheep, frogs, jackdaws, snakes, monkeys talking to each other or to themselves. This has been the substance of a fable from the beginning, from the oral traditions of the Indian Subcontinent to the translators of Aesop and beyond.
Why? Because the distance between us (as storyteller and listener) and them allows for a narrative unburdened by our ambivalence toward our fellow men and women. In short, animals make better symbols.
But sometimes people can feature as protagonists. Notably in ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf‘ (which I discuss here, with more than pinch of ambivalence) and also in the cautionary tales of Heinrich Hoffman, which are, arguably, fables or at least fabular.
The Elements
Fables also give voice to inanimate objects too. Aesop’s ‘The North Wind and the Sun‘, for example, sees the two elements contest each other’s abilities in a challenge to rid a man of his raincoat, presenting us with the most precise demonstration of the art of persuasion you could imagine.
Apart from talking, and having feelings, the behaviour of the wind and sun conforms to their nature as we understand it. It seems you can’t really depart from that template when using inanimate objects. You must take them as they come.
The Water Cycle
I observe this rule in my original fable about raindrops, ‘The Drops of Water‘. One of the few lessons I recall from my primary school days concerns the hydrologic cycle. It was known only as the ‘Water Cycle’ and really just explained where cloud and rain came from and where it ends up. Inspired by this elementary knowledge, I put the raindrops in the cycle and let them fall.
If raindrops could speak, I asked myself, what might they say? How might they see their destiny? What would their attitude be toward it? Would they realise how passive they are? That they take part in cycle far greater than themselves. It seemed to me that, unlike the great forces of the elements (the wind and sun), a tiny raindrop could only have a partial grasp of their nature.
This, I believe, corresponds to our own limitations, our inability to comprehend the bigger picture, and ultimately to control how things turn out, or rather to accept that we do not control it, ultimately. This is the insight that informs every beat of the narrative.
It is fanciful. Raindrops do not talk or have feelings and nor do they remain as individuals for longer than their brief journey to earth. But these raindrops aren’t really raindrops, are they?
