Fables

Fables - explanation

Purpose

A fable sets out to teach the reader or listener a lesson they should learn about life. The narrative drives towards the closing moral statement, the fable’s theme: the early bird gets the worm, where there’s a will there’s a way, work hard and always plan ahead for lean times, charity is a virtue.

Plot and Structure

Plot is overtly fictitious as the point of the story is its message, rather than an attempt to convince the reader of a real setting or characters. 

Fables do not carry any non-essential narrative baggage. There are usually few characters.

Narrative structure is short (sometimes just a few sentences) and simple and there is limited use of description.  

Action and dialogue are used to move the story on because the all-important moral is most clearly evident in what the main characters do and say.

Character

The main characters are often named in the title (the town mouse and the country mouse, the North wind and the sun) and they are also frequently animals, another subtle way of signalling the fictional, ‘fabulous’ nature of the story and its serious purpose. 

Animal characters speak and behave like human beings, allowing the storyteller to make cautionary points about human behaviour without pointing the finger at real people. 

Style

Many fables use the rich vocabulary, imagery and patterned language common in traditional tales but generally speaking, the shorter the fable, the more simple its use of language. In these short texts, use of vocabulary is often pared down and concise.

Fables tend to use:

• formulaic beginnings that establish setting and character very quickly (One day a farmer was going to market … A hungry fox was sitting by the roadside…In a field, one spring morning…)
• Connectives to explain or show cause and effect (If you will give me… so the wolf…)
• Temporal connectives that hold the narrative together and give it a chronological shape (One morning… as he was… first he saw… then he saw… When winter came… And then the grasshopper understood…)
• Simple dialogue between two main characters, often questions and answers (Why do you howl so loudly?) or statements that reflect on a situation (You seem to have a wonderful life here in the town. My feathers may not be beautiful but they keep me warm in winter.).