Trying to please everyone, p. 25 Yellow Short Classics
The parable : based on Aesop’s fable
What are the various moral lessons in this fable?
Don’t try to please everybody; because everyone has a different opinion and people often tell you to do different things
The different people are forming their own opinion based on their situation:
The farmer; he derives his experience from his professional experience; occupation as a farmer which involves working with farm animals.
Old Man and Old Woman use an accusatory tone to typecast the boy as a “rascal”. They firmly believe that the son is disrespectful and should let the father ride the farm animal.
The Young Woman is incensed (infuriated). She believes that the young boy should be granted favourable treatment because he is “footsore”; she assumes that the old man is stronger than the young boy.
The schoolboys sympathise with the donkey. They believe that it is abusive to make the donkey carry a load. But they are ignorant of the farmer’s experience and have only a limited, narrow-minded, parochial view of the world. However, the incident descends into a farce as the father and son try to carry the donkey.
The newsboy sees the whole experience as something that is newsworthy and believes that they should turn it into a “story”.
The crowd inflames the situation and their “mob” response — their hilarity and hysteria — create the toxic conditions leading to the donkey’s fearful and fateful escape.
Task
There are four different ways of walking with the donkey. Which way do you support? What is your solution to this scenario? Give reasons.
Which perspective do you approve of? What do you think is one of the main purposes? Explain with quotes.
Key ideas
Each one tends to sympathise more with something that is relatable and within their own experience.
We need to resist peer pressure; we need to resist unfavourable or biased opinions – but which ones. Some are more favourable than others.
We must use our common sense and show compassion. We must also follow our own instincts and intuitive sense of what is right. The son concludes that “I’ll do what I think is right”. But what does this involve? How is he to know what is “right”?
One lesson for the “old man” is that we are never too old to learn; that we should always keep an open-mind no matter how old we are.
Drawing upon this key idea, write your own parable . You may use the script format or do a story with animals.
Scenario:
Message: We see things through our own personal lens and this often causes tension and problems.
Conversation
Scenario: Sue (Mum) wants Josh to hurry up. They are going to see Pa and Grandma. They go once a week on a Tuesday night. She likes to get there around 6.30 pm which is dinner time; she wants to make sure they eat their dinner. (She likes to please her parents as they are getting old and find it hard to do the cleaning up.)
Sue is annoyed because Josh is dragging his feet. He wants to finish his project and really wants to please his teacher. He wants to draw the perfect graph/image. He often gets “best in class” for his graphs.
Josh is angry that his Mum is rushing him because he is making some mistakes which he needs to fix up.
Mum knows that Grandpa won’t be happy if they don’t get there on time for dinner because sometimes Ma mucks up the dinner.
Imagine the conversation between a fed-up and anxious mother, and an equally defensive boy.
What do they say?
Give descriptions of their body language and tone/mannerisms.
- See Vocab Builder: use new words
- See pp 36-37; note how Dickens uses punctuation (Scrooge/Christmas Carol)
- See pp 55 and 57; tone words (how a person talks)
- See pp 52-53: describing people
Other examples
The experience with the tooth fairy – the tooth fairy has never come so I get rid of the tooth – and I don’t like all these magical suggestions
My brother makes a big deal and the tooth fairy leaves him a nice present.
My parents have different views about it.
Two or three animals and the cat and dog believe that the other is getting favourable treatment.
Please see: The English Works Short Classics Anthology