Misadventures in the Land of Fables #13
Aesop’s ‘The Fox and the Grapes’ cannot be improved. One of the rare fables to feature a single protagonist, it is concise, complete, and memorable, etched into our culture with the phrase ‘sour grapes.’
Fable as dialogue
Typically, the substance of a fable is a dialogue—a negotiation, a trick, a contest, sometimes little more than a complaint or comment; these latter tend to be the least satisfying, as the moral of the fable is delivered without any semblance of proof or demonstration. Take ‘The Oxen and the Axle-tree.’ The oxen responds to the creaking of the axle as if it were moaning about its labour, delivering a moralistic rebuke on the theme of stoicism, which effectively stands as the meaning of the fable. Similarly, in ‘The Fox and the Grapes,’ there is no one to challenge the fox, but we are not invited to agree with its assertions either.
The Fox and the Grapes
If you aren’t familiar with the fable you can find it here. To summarise, a fox spots some grapes, tries and fails to get them and, upon giving up, dismisses them as not worthwhile—they must be ‘sour’ or ‘unripe.’
We know what the fox is up to, we can see what she’s is doing, and we respond critically rather than approvingly. The moral supplied by most authors tends to support that reading: ’it is easy to despise what you cannot get’ (Jacobs) or ‘what cannot be had, you speak of badly’ (Bensarade, the French poet who composed the lines to accompany the sculptures at the Palace of Versailles).
Roger L’Estrange offers a different angle and combines this fable with another on the same theme (’A Wolf and a Lion’). “Tis Matter of Skill and Address, when a Man cannot honestly compass what he would be at, to appear easy and indifferent upon all Repulses and Disappointments.” He stresses the pragmatic, strategic aspect of the behaviour. In other words, a way of dealing with failure, moving on, ‘adaptive preference formation’ [Jon Elster].
The Fox The Mouse and The Grapes
In my fable ‘The Fox The Mouse and The Grapes’ I have not attempted to rewrite Aesop. I was thinking about the theme of getting told to lower your expectations, of receiving advice which does not honour your request, which changes its goal. And I was trying to find an action which could illustrate it. The fox’s problem seemed to suit my purpose, but its adaptive solution was the opposite of what I wanted. I quickly realised I had to introduce another character, the adviser—a mouse—and the action developed from there.*
*while researching this article, I discovered another version of the fable (Perry index 15) which introduces a mouse as second character: the mouse doesn’t alter the meaning, or even extend the action, but functions as prompt the fox’s dismissive remark, funny though