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Chapter Four Part 2
I’m going to give you a quick exercise I use in class to teach this. It involves reading a short fable, and then telling me what the moral of the story is. (In fact, if you grew up on the stereotypical western fable diet, you don’t even need to read it: it’s just the hare and the tortoise, after all.) Below is my own retelling of ‘The Hare and The Tortoise’. Have a read, and then think about what the moral is.
Once upon a time, there was a hare, and there was a tortoise. The hare liked to run very fast. He ran to the hill. He ran to the tree. He ran home again.
But running by himself wasn’t entirely satisfying. He wanted a partner to run with—someone to race. So one day, the hare challenged the tortoise to a race (all the other animals were currently avoiding him, as they were annoyed at him for constantly running at them, near them, or over them).
The tortoise, being a genial sort of fellow, agreed, and the time and date were set for the race.
On the day of the race, all the animals turned out to watch: the raccoon was there, and the badger, and even the bilby who was visiting internationally. They waved their little flags and cheered as the sun beamed down on the starting line.
Behind the starting line, the hare jumped and skipped and stretched, warming up in preparation for his amazing racing debut.
The tortoise watched quietly for a moment, turned around so he was facing a nice shrub, and closed his eyes.
The hare paused to stare in wonder. “Aren’t you going to get ready?” he said.
“I am,” said the tortoise.
The hare shrugged, bewildered, and went back to his acrobatics.
Before long, the crowd had gathered and it was time to start the race. The deer held the starter’s acorn in her mouth, high above the heads of the hare and the tortoise. The hare tensed on the starting line, muscles taught, gathering for the leap.
The tortoise shuffled absently.
The deer let the acorn drop.
Eyes watched it fall intently—the crowd’s, the deer’s, the hare’s.
The acorn dropped in the dust.
The hare exploded from the start line in a flurry of fur, and was gone around the first corner before the crowd had time to blink.
The tortoise gave a little sigh, and began plodding down the track, tuning out the scoffing of the other animals. (Bet you regret this now, don’t you, Tortoise! I told old Jonny you were an idiot for trying this. Yah, is that the fastest you can go? My fleas run faster than you do!)
The sun beat down, as the sun is wont to do, and the air grew uncomfortably hot and steamy. Nine-tenths of the way down the track, the hare panted to a halt, gasping and clutching at the stitch in his side. Where the flying flea circus is that tortoise? he thought to himself (it being rather difficult to think to other people). Never mind, I’ll have a rest.
The finish line was in sight, after all, and the tortoise was decidedly not in sight, and the sun was hot, and the air was thick and heavy, and oh look, right here was a tiny trickle of a stream, and if the hare stretched just right, he could wet the tips of his ears and oh, it was so refreshing. He sprawled in the grass and watched as a bee buzzed around the cloud-coloured blossoms on the bush above him.
Bzzzzzzz went the bee.
Zzzzzzzz went the hare.
Meanwhile, the tortoise was still plodding away, one slow, careful, laborious step after the other. He also was hot and thirsty, and it looked as though he was crying, but that is only because that’s how tortoises sweat, and not because he was feeling particularly disheartened. In fact, as he crested a small rise, he felt quite heartened, because there ahead was the finish line, and there to his left, asleep beneath a bramble bush by a little soak, was the hare, twitching and mumbling in his sleep. A small smile tugged on the tortoise’s mouth, and he headed through the last, dusty stretch of path toward the line drawn on the ground in the dirt.
As his feet scuffed the line and the animals broke out in cheers, a grey squirrel came bounding up. He lay a small wreath of flowers over the tortoise’s neck, and danced in the dirt, clasping his hands before him. “But the hare is so much faster than you!” the squirrel cried. “However did you win?”
“Ah,” said the tortoise in a voice that would have been annoyingly smug if it weren’t for the fact that the hare was even more annoying, “the hare may be fast, but he is arrogant. He thought he was guaranteed to win, and so he didn’t try his best. I, on the other hand, am slow, but I am persistent, and you’ll find that in the end, the slow and steady win the race.”
(That’s the end of the story, but the chapter is continued next time!)