THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different... Two Different Versions!
Two Different Morals!
OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and
plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and
plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while
others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home
with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and
everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant 's house
where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.' Jesse
then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.
Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King
that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call
for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of
green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home
is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits
of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to
be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the
house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the
once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
I actually saw a different version of this, written and illustrated for children. It starts out the same, but then the grasshopper earns his living through the winter by singing and dancing to entertain the frugal ant-types through the boring winter. I'm not sure if the author was TRYING to destroy the moral of the story. There is such a thing as division of labor, and entertainment is a valid item of trade, as long as society is rich enough to buy it.
ReplyDeleteP.S. - This and the comment above are from Tessa. Because Larken was the last one to check his Gmail account, Google thinks I'm Larken.
ReplyDeleteHi Tessa Welcome...I am honored to have you...I am so new at this still learning
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