Misadventures in the Land of Fables #19

Aesop’s ‘The Sleeping Dog and the Wolf‘ is a simple, straightforward tale arguing you should seize what’s in front of you, not wait on the promise of something better.

A sleeping dog is attacked by a wolf. It saves itself by its wits, convincing the wolf it would get a better meal in a few days after the dog has enjoyed the abundant scraps from an upcoming wedding. When the wolf returns, it finds the dog sleeping on the roof. The dog refuses to submit and tells the wolf not to spurn the opportunity should it come again.

THE WRONG LESSON

So far so good. And yet, curiously, the epimythium (the moral) offered in many versions ignores this obvious lesson in favour of one concerning the sleeping dog. This is what Laura Gibbs‘ offers (I think, based on a Greek source):

The same is true of intelligent people: when they escape from some threatening situation, they are on guard in the future.

Okay. Well. Yes. That is something that can be inferred from the action, but the dog’s decision is an event that goes undramatised. It happens outside the narrative. We are excluded from it, whereas we return with the wolf and with it we discover the dog on the roof. We witness its foolish credulity and its frustration. And the dog makes the lesson plain, as happens in a number of tales.

I wonder if the authors regarded a wolf too unsympathetic to be a protagonist. As a type it is a predator and thus an antagonist, a creature to be feared or overcome, outwitted, who unlike the lion does not have regal associations. (I can think of only one fable in which a wolf is protagonist, but the conflict is with other wolves and it becomes the object of ridicule for its delusions of grandeur.)

So the lesson instead concerns how to overcome the predator, escape adversity, look after yourself.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Aside from the puzzle of the wrong moral, every time I read this fable I think of what might happen next. The action it seems to me is far from over. The dog’s future is insecure. It will have to come down from the roof sooner or later, where it will be vulnerable, but it chooses to taunt the wolf and indeed to tell it what to do when this happens. This seems unwise. Does it imagine the wolf will shy away out of shame at being tricked?

I start to imagine how the dog’s life might change after this encounter. Rather than a episode in which it outwitted death, it is a trauma that will trouble the animal perhaps for the rest of its life. It will no longer be a sleeping dog, with the comfort and security that implies.

This is how I arrived at my version, whose moral might be a warning not to talk the good life for granted. Or not to overestimate your success. Or an observation that survivors carry the memory of an attack with them for the remainder of their lives. See what you think.

Read here: ‘The Wolf and the Sleeping Dog‘