Reading Notes: Aesop's Fables (B)

Title: Frogs and Fish
Author: Joseph Jacobs (1894)
Link: Story link.

Plot:

• A pond of frogs lives happily without structure or order. One day they tire of this and request a king. A large log is sent to become king, and he does very little to interfere with the lives of the frogs. Still dissatisfied, the frogs request another king. A stork is sent down, and he rules cruelly and eats the frogs.
• A young frog tells his father about a large bull that he saw. The father, trying to imitate the bull, puffs himself up larger and larger until he bursts.
• A fisherman tries to make the fish in a river dance, but they refuse. He then catches them in a net and they dance, unable to refuse the man who has power over them.
• A fisherman catches a little fish. The fish asks to be let go -- after all, he's small right now and will grow larger. If the fisherman catches him later, he will have more to eat. The fisherman refuses, taking the small certainty over the great chance.

King Stork rules with an iron beak. Illustration: Walter Crane.

Setting:

• Swamps, lakes, etc. Just like the other Aesop material we've read, it's set in a generic locale that is widely applicable to a slew of readers.

Characters:

• Frogs: Blundering, ignorant, prideful, and nearly incapable of foresight. These aren't your typical protagonists -- they are perennially doomed to failure. Only through their misfortune do we learn Aesop's morals.
• Stork: A tyrant king who eats the frogs he rules.
• Last time around, stork one-upped fox with the long glass bottle. He's always doing something that makes others unhappy, but it's always after they've asked for it.
• Fish: More pragmatic than the frogs, and realists. They're unlucky, often being caught, but it is less through their own design and more by their misfortune at being prey.
• They seem to be resigned to their lot in life, even when they can't convince the fishermen to let them live.

Writing Style:

• I think I find this set of tales interesting because the protagonists (namely the frogs) are so fallible. It's rare to find tales where the main characters fail outright, or are made to look foolish -- normally they possess at least some amount of redeeming value. However, Aesop has no qualms about what the reader thinks about his frogs; rather, he makes cruel examples of them so as to dissuade the reader from following in their footsteps.
• We still see some limericks here, as well as the traditional third person omniscient style that has dominated most of the works.