Misadventures in the Land of Fables #64
You do not always get to where you intended to go. You discover the road you’re travelling does not lead where you thought it would. You watch uneasily as your path veers away and the twinkling lights of the settlement at the head of the valley disappear behind the brow of the hill. What then? Stop, turn back, pick a different road; or change destination. In writing, it is often better to carry on, follow the road to the end: that will be your destination.
All this to say, the latest fable, a version of Aesop’s ‘The Fox who Lost its Tail,’ did not come out quite as I intended. The meaning was not what I had in mind, nor one I necessarily endorse, but it was, I think, the one that lived at the end of the road I had taken.
‘The Fox Who Lost Its Tail’
The original fable concerns a creature who wants to bring everyone else down to its level to make itself feel better. A fox loses its tail in a hunter’s trap then tries to persuade everyone else to get rid of their tails as well but, suspicious of his motives, the others prove hard to convince. The english versions are remarkably uniform. Jacobs, Townsend, L’Estrange, Golding: all essentially agree in action and meaning. If the fox had not lost its tail, it would not advocate for others to be similarly deprived. There is variation in the degree of censure, but the guidance is unequivocal: “distrust interested advice.”
Respect Yourself
Something that puzzled me about this simple story. In no version does the unfortunate amputee inform the other foxes of the circumstances in which it lost the tail and yet the others seems to know, or guess, the truth. (Do they ‘know’ because we the reader knows?) It also seems the foxes consider their tails a precious if not useful appendage. The lad doesn’t stand a chance.
So I started with the assumption that the foxes do not know how the tail was lost. They turn out more inclined towards the unfortunate fox’s argument as a result. They are receptive to the idea of getting rid of their tails, a twist which creates its own problems for our protagonist, who merely wanted to regain its self-respect. If the foxes were persuaded, they would have to confront the reality, the enormity of the amputation: the pain. Thus, to preserve his secret, the fox has to discourage them, after having persuaded them.
This was amusing but didn’t lead to a satisfactory conclusion. I was reminded of ‘The Fox and the Grapes,’ a story of coping with disappointment by means of self-deception, or ‘re-framing’ as the self-help industry would describe it. The tactic the fox who lost its tail employs is precisely this re-framing: to assert that an unintended negative outcome was in fact a choice and therefore desirable. I pushed further along this line and arrived at the conclusion that this self-deception may actually work.
The fox regains self-respect.
You can read the fable here: https://richardparkin.co.uk/fables-2/?tb-page=7
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