Misadventures in the Land of Fables #16
A jackdaw features as protagonist in five or six of Aesop’s fables. He gets into the same sort of problems every time and I have become quite fond of him. He’s a comic everyman, afigure ruled by appetite and envy, wanting to be something he is not, and failing, an emblem of all-too-human flaws. As a bird, he’s neither indefinite or definite, but singular and capitalized: Jackdaw.
I have returned to this character for my latest Aesop adaptation, Jackdaw and the Pigeons. The action goes like this:
Jackdaw envies the easy life of domestic pigeons and attempts to live alongside them in disguise, after he is found out, by his voice, he finds his own kind also reject him. [aesopica]
In my version, the structure of the fable remains intact, so too its message, more or less, but some details have changed, the angles are different, and the tone is perhaps less fable than epic. When Jackdaw finds himself homeless, it feels less like and end than a beginning. The first of his adventures.
A STORY CHANGES IN THE WRITING
I’d like to share a note about the development of the adaptation. I started with the idea that Jackdaw was trading self-expression for comfort. To live with the pigeons, he has to curb his speech, keep his beak shut. And he finds it intolerable. There were allusions to ‘selling out’ and ‘fitting in’ and all forms of conformity of expression.
As I wrote, this idea fell away. In fact, I had to cut it away like excess fat. The emphasis of the action seemed to be falling somewhere else—on the consequences of rejecting one’s identity, pretending to be someone else, and the offence that causes, ultimately to you.
I wonder if you will read it the same way. (Let me know in the comments.)
