A Jeanne Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: July 17, 2000
jeanne
Susan
The purpose of this interactive project is to compare world views. Aesop's fable represents one world view. In these interactive projects we are going to imagine other world views that could have shaped other tales, with other morals. With them, we hope to create a whole gallery and library of world views, that we may come to hear and see each other more fully.
This interactive project is based on the Aesop's Fable: The Farmer and the Snake and our visual interpretation of that fable.
As you go through each of the project steps, you may see how jeanne did that step. But we will have a richer collection of Fables de la Paix if you shape your own values and ideas into these tales. There is no "right" way to rewrite a fable; there are just many different fables from many different world views and life experiences.
Please mark this file as "Prepared" when you have gone through it.
Send your own revisions as "Comments" or comment on jeanne's revisions.Step 1. What was Aesop's moral for "The Farmer and the Snake?" and What will your moral be?
Aesop's moral and jeanne's moral
- The Aesop moral that John Long gives: "The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.
- At least for starters I want my moral to be: "Know your enemy if you wish to make of him a friend."
Explanation for change :
You need to look at my visual interpretations to see why I want to change the moral. I was primarily affected by the farmer's changing his normative patterns (of killing a posionous snake, as appropriate self defense, if it was within striking distance of him). Of course, the snake when dying of cold, was in no position to strike. To that extent, the farmer's lack of fear of the snake at that moment was rational. But the farmer's actions, taken in compassion, which were generous and in the interest of all living things, changed the whole picture. Warmed up, the snake would now be capable of striking, and thus again become a danger to the farmer.
For me, the focus of the story should be on the extent to which the farmer misunderstood that his actions completely altered the factors he needed to consider for his own safety as well as the snake's. I am trying to reflect that point in my moral.
Step 2. Will you need to adapt your story to fit your moral?
jeanne's adaptations
Yes, I will need to adapt some of the story.
"ONE WINTER a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. 'Oh,'cried the Farmer with his last breath, 'I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.' "
- Don't need to change the original scene.
- But I will need to stop the farmer from putting the snake in his bosom.
- I don't want to change the snake's revival. That is the original compassionate act of the farmer: respect for all living things
- But I do want to have the farmer and the snake beyond striking distance when the snake revives.
- If each has the safety of distance when the snake revives, each can honor the compassion of the farmer's actions. within his respective capacities.
Step 3. Make those changes in the story.
jeanne's version of the fable
"ONE WINTER a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and took it up, wondering how he could warm it. "I could place it here in my bosom," he said to himself. "But it could be posionous, and might bite when it revived. No, that would never do. My children need their father. But I don't want it to die here in the cold. The earth needs her snakes, too."Off, a little in the distance, the farmer spied a crevice in a large rock. And there were some dried leaves near by. He built a bed of leaves in the rock crevice, placed the near-frozen snake on the bed, and made him a blanket of leaves. He left the snake there, wishing it well, and went home to tell his children a story by the fire.
The Snake slowly revived, sheltered from the cold, and resuming its natural instincts, crawled off to whatever it is that poisonous snakes normally do. And the farmer smiled as he ended the story: 'And so the snake lived happily ever after, at peace with humans, like all creatures, so long as we give them the respect and space they need, and are careful not to step on them or coddle them unawares.'
Know your enemy if you wish to make of him a friend.
Explanation for change :
When the farmer considers what might happen if the snake is poisonous, he is dealing with contingencies. This is what we often fail to do when we privilege our own subjective perspective of the world.
When the farmer tells the story of the snake to his children, he is teaching compassion, interpreted within the realm of the uniqueness of all creatures.
Know your enemy if you wish to make of him a friend.
Step 4. With your rewrite, would you like to change your moral?
jeanne's new version of the moral
Respect the uniqueness of all creatures that we may all live in peace.Explanation for change :
Once the story was rewritten I could see that my focus on enemies was too narrow. Part of my original reaction to the fable was that we don't have to be stupid to be compassionate. Then, my peacemaking orientation made me reconsider that "stupid." The farmer wasn't "stupid." It's pretty high level critical thinking that leads us to understand the contingencies on which our own perspective hangs. Perhaps "uneducated" would have been a better choice of terms. Or would it? Just where did I think that a farmer in Aesop's time would have found an education in critical thinking?
But when I wrote the first version of my moral, at least I had sense enough to say it was just for starters. As we write, we develop our thoughts. That's another good reason for editing our work.
I hope that you are beginning to see that tasks like rewriting fables are not empty exercsises. By taking an active role in the fable, in our interpretation of it, we are questioning our whole perspective on what goes wrong in situations like this. In our world today the snake would probably go to prison for life, or even more realistically, receive the death penalty for killing the poor farmer. But if the infrastructure failed to educate the farmer to contingency thinking, is the infrastructure not partly at fault? If we can so alter the fable in our fantasy, why can we not alter the infrastructure in reality?
Step 5. Isn't there another fable about a lion and a small creature, like a mouse, that removes a thorn from its paw?
jeanne's answer
I'm sure there is. The lion is forever grateful, and does not eat the little creature. Maybe that's LaFontaine, or is it Aesop? I'll hunt for it. Now, that one's nearer to a peacemaking perspective, but as I recall the non-violence of the lion is dependent on the lion's gratitude. I don't think I'd want to anthropomorphize the lion. Gratitude is a socially constructed human emotion. There have to be better ways to respect the lion's uniqueness. If I had to, in my version of the fable, I'd find a way for the small creature to get someone with a tranquilizer gun on the spot. Probably too science fiction for the days of Fables. But I bet that poor hurt lion would be willing to move over close to a fissure the little creature could readily escape through when the thorn came out. Peace needs imagination!
Imagining the Fable de la Paix version as a painting. Because I know that not all of you will have Corel Photo House, which is the little program that comes with WordPerfect, I wanted to try doing some of this in Paint, which comes with Windows. I haven't used Paint. But I managed to do this much to illustrate the new Fable de la Paix. It's large because I couldn't get it to look right in the smaller version, and I didn't want to take the time to play with it. You play with it.
Fable de la Paix
Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, June 2000. "Fair Use" encouraged.
