The Oak & The Reeds - Summary and Analysis | Aesop Fables

This Aesop' s Fable has a giant oak tree and some reeds disputing over their strength.

I narrated the fable and you can listen to it by clicking on the link The Oak & The Reeds. 

The Oak is feeling mighty and invincible because of her size and strength. Thus she pities the slender reeds that "bow their heads" with the slightest breeze, while she stands firm and upright.

But the reeds keep their dancing with the wind and do not worry. According to them, they do not bow their heads but they merely bend before the winds so as not to break. And so the reeds manage to survive the strongest blows of the wind. They are left bent but unharmed. Alive. In contrast the giant oak is torn up by her roots and ends up destroyed.

The moral lesson of  this fable is that  "Those who adapt to the times will emerge unscathed".

It is meant to show that often it is not just the physical power that helps people survive but also their ability to adjust and adapt according to the situations.

This particular fable, though, is found in "Bewick's Select Fables of Æsop and others" given in a different way that results in a totally different and contrary moral lesson to the latter.

The story goes like that:

"A conceited Willow had once the vanity to challenge his mighty neighbour the Oak to a trial of strength. It was to be determined by the next storm; and Æolus was addressed by both parties to exert his most powerful efforts. This was no sooner asked than granted; and a violent hurricane arose, when the pliant Willow, bending from the blast, or shrinking under her, evaded all its force, while the generous Oak, disdaining to give way, opposed its fury, and was torn up by the roots. Immediately the Willow began to exult, and to claim the victory, when thus the fallen Oak interrupted his exultation: Callest thou this a trial of strength? Poor wretch! not to thy strength, but weakness; not to thy boldly facing danger, but meanly skulking from it, thou owest thy present safety. I am an Oak, though fallen; thou still a Willow, though unhurt: but who, except so mean a wretch as thyself, would prefer an ignominious life, preserved by craft or cowardice, to the glory of meeting death in an honourable cause?"

The moral lesson of this fable in Bewick is "The courage of meeting death in an honourable cause is more commendable, than any address or artifice we can make use of to evade it."

So we see how changing the fable a bit can lead to a different interpretation. And this is something that has happened with the fables through the ages. People narrated them and the fables passed from generation to generation many times altered, as the narrator would add or subtract a word or a phrase. That's the beauty of the fables and the verbal tradition.

Æolus (Αίολος) in Greek Mythology was a person, appointed by the Gods, in charge of the winds. Æolus kept the winds in a bag and left them free according to Zeus's commands.