The Ant and the Grasshopper (Aesop’s Fables)
The Ant & the Grasshopper is one of Aesop’s most enduring fables. It’s about working hard and setting aside savings, but the moral lesson is controversial. You’ll see why. I’ll explain it at the end.
The version we know today is a combination of two slightly different fables: The Ant and the Dung Beetle and The Ant and the Cricket. Since they’re almost the same, I’ve combined them.
As is tradition, this is a retelling in my own words.
The Fable
A long time ago, a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing. An ant passed by, carrying an ear of corn to his nest.
The grasshopper thought the ant was a wretched thing, labouring away in the heat, never taking a moment’s rest. We only have so much time alive. What a miserable way to spend it.
“Why not come and dance with me,” asked the grasshopper, “instead of toiling your days away?”
“I am collecting food for the winter,” said the ant, “and I recommend you do the same.”
“Why bother about winter?” said the grasshopper; “It is summer, and we have plenty of food.” But the ant went on its way, continuing his work.
When winter came, the ground was covered with snow. The grasshopper was hungry, and there was no food to be found. So he went to the ant and asked, “What shall I do? I have no food!”
The ant replied, “You spent the summer frolicking about without a thought for the future, while I toiled to store up this food. You sang and danced while I worked. I’m afraid you’ll have to go hungry.”
The Moral
The moral of The Ant and the Grasshopper is that we ought to work instead of indulging in foolish pastimes. Said another way, we shouldn’t neglect tasks that will become important in the future.
This moral lesson is controversial. It seems perfectly sensible at first glance, but the ant’s greed and lack of compassion also makes it somewhat like the billionaire or public corporation that relentlessly accumulates needless amounts of wealth while others starve. Or you could say that the ant represents a work culture of slaving our days away, with never a moment for joy or relaxation, in a world where the costs of living are constantly inflating.
It can also seem insensitive and out of touch. “Poor?” asks the smart, healthy, competent, and well-educated millionaire. “Well then you should have worked harder.”
Lest this seem like a condemnation of capitalism, you could argue against the ant from a capitalist perspective, too. Imagine someone slaves all their days away, setting aside their savings, and then someone with more power (such as the government) comes along and redistributes their wealth. That’s what happened to my grandmother during the communist revolution in Cuba.
So, as you can imagine, there are fables rebutting this one:
- In Zeus and the Ant, recorded by the 19th-century French fabulist Émile Chambry, a farmer becomes obsessed with accumulating wealth, doing everything he can to gain as much as possible. Zeus punishes him by turning him into an ant, but he continues.
- In The Ants and the Pigs, by the medieval Christian monk Odo of Cheriton, a pig comes along to eat all the grains the ant has collected, leaving the ant to starve.
- In Solomon’s Ghost, by the German fabulist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a farmer takes inspiration from the ant and works hard all his life. When he is old, a ghost comes to him, reminding him that the ant rested during the winter. The farmer has enough. He doesn’t need to keep accumulating more.
- In A Tale of Two Orangs, a modern Mexican fable, one orang spends his days trying to gain power while the other collects resources. When famine comes, the powerful orang takes the resources of the wealthy one.
I love this, by the way. I love how there are fables written thousands of years apart, in different languages, on different continents, forever arguing with each other.
Similar Fables
If you like these controversial fables, there are a few more that come to mind. The first is The Donkey and the Onager, a set of two fables about freedom, one arguing for it, the other against. There’s also The Mongoose and the Farmer’s Wife which argues against older fables like The Wolf and the Lamb.
Or, for something rather different, you could try The Eagle and the Fox.
Juan Artola Miranda
I am Juan Artola Miranda, a fabulist living in the Mexican Caribbean. My friends know me by the name of my father's father, but that name grew into something bigger, my writing reaching tens of millions of readers. It was too strong for me to control. Artola Miranda is the name of my mother's mother. It's a better name for a fabulist.
THAT is NOT the tale. It’s a French fable and ends with “Eh bien, chantez maintenant!” (Well, now you can sing!) How do you even know this fable? Also it’s not a grasshopper, it’s a cicada: “La cigale et la fourmi” is the French title.
Fables are retold over many generations, spreading from culture to culture, changing however the storytellers want to change them. Jean de la Fontaine is part of that tradition. He re
The Ant and the Grasshopper was recorded by Babrius in 200 AD. He might not have been the first fabulist to tell the story, either. That’s just the first version scholars could find.
Some versions have a cicada instead of a grasshopper. Some versions have many ants instead of one ant. Some praise the ants for working hard, planning ahead, and saving up. Others liken the ants to greedy industrialists and capitalists. That’s part of the fun of fables.
(As requested, I deleted your other comment. Too bad, though, because it had a nice sense of passion to it.)