Misadventures in the Land of Fables #81

A slug claims its disorderly trail is in fact a considered, purposeful path to getting where it is today. It was always travelling straight ahead, it says. This was my starting point. But was it enough for a fable?

It doesn’t have a message. There is no dramatic action, let along action that (appears to) prove a point by means of punishment for folly or reward for virtue and good judgement. But there are fables which are resolved by dialogue, in which the moral is to be found in a concluding statement by one of the characters. The Slug and its disorderly trail could be one of those perhaps.

Trouble is, these fables aren’t interesting. Or memorable. I am aware of having read them, but cannot name a single one. (There is, for example, ‘The Blind Man and the Cub,’ in which a blind man can identify any animal by touch, when a wolf cub is placed in his hands, he concedes he cannot name the species, but he does know it should not be left alone with sheep. This means, I’m told, that you can discern evil without being able to identify it exactly.)

‘The Fox and the Grapes’ ends with dialogue. “The grapes are sour, and not as ripe as I thought.” The fox does not get what I wanted, and in response declares it undesirable. But this statement doesn’t deliver the moral. Aesop is not recommending that we imitate the fox—though a case could be made for it (see Misadventures in the Land of Fables #13). The fox’s claim is part of the action, because the action here is the change of attitude. The fox changes what it believes about the grapes according to its material relation to them—when it finds they’re out of reach, not from new knowledge about them. Once they were ripe and juicy, now they are sour. We see its motivation, even if the fox may not.

The moral is to be found in this transparent irony. But what is it exactly? What is the lesson? By presenting it, by laying it out before us, does Aesop mean for us to recognise this behaviour, to acknowledge it as flawed and therefore avoid it ourselves? Yes, probably. Why bother to avoid it, you might ask? Are we supposed to fear criticism? The fox suffers no such concerns.

Anyway, yes, the slug scenario could be a fable, just as much as the fox and its grapes, a fable where the moral is tacit.

I retreated into these reflections because the first draft produced something too subtle. The slug claims it always travels straight ahead, while the slug following finds the path chaotic and circuitous. This ironic gap seemed  to represent no more than a misunderstanding and a pun on the meaning of something leading straight. This was not enough.

A second draft conjured up a mystical insight, what you might call the slug trail of unknowing. But it was too easy. The slugs’ relationship had become one of guru and follower and the humour had been lost. It was neat, and trite. So I carried on and, eventually, circled back until I had found something that looked the similar, but was different.

And funnily enough, the fable could be a description of the process of writing, its doubts, digressions, and unexpected outcomes.

You can read it here: ‘The Slug and its Trail’