The Fox and the Crow and the Bread
A long time ago, in a fable written by Aesop, a sly fox wanted to take the bread from a crow for himself/herself. The fox complimented the crow’s voice and got it to want to show off. The crow opened its beak to sing, and the fox succeeded in fooling it out of its bread. This fable ended with the fox daintily walking away from the shocked crow with the bread in its paw.
In this fable, the fox symbolizes slyness, and the crow represents vanity. Aesop is famous for telling stories of animals in which each type of species personifies one of every characteristic of a human. As in all of Aesop’s fables, in this story, the fox is sly. Instead of openly fighting for the bread, it stole it by taking advantage of crow’s vanity. The crow has a pure mind. However, it is ignorant and a little bit insecure. The crow knew that the fox tapped into him/her because the fox wanted the bread. However, the compliments were so sweet that the crow forgot about the fox’s greedy mind. In the story, Aesop placed the fox on the ground and the crow on the branch. It created the appearance of the social hierarchy with the crow on top and in control. As in all of Aesop’s fables, the fox can exploit people as he likes by using cheap tricks. The fox wins the bread which represents power from the crow, the superior. This tells that if you aren’t smart enough, you can lose your high status and power easily even though you own it. People below have a bigger desire like the fox do.
Besides the tree in this story, Aesop chooses materials that are related to nature because nature is the most fundamental resource in the universe, and symbolizes the wisdom we have to know or should have known. Nature is a thing the humans didn’t create. Aesop tried to convey to his audience the wisdom which already existed in nature, but which humans fail to see. According to Greek-Roman mythology, God gave us wisdom as a weapon to fight through the world. Aesop worked as a messenger to give us true wisdom.
