Response Aesop's Fables and "Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals: The Role of Fables in Human Life"

Aesop’s fables were very wonderful to read, as a child growing up my parents would also relay numerous amounts of morals to me. It is safe to say that without these morals, the way I’d act and think would not be the same today. Without a doubt, Aesop’s fables truly teaches people lessons that they will never forget.

Edward Clayton’s “Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals: The Role of Fables in Human Life” was a very well-coordinated piece describing how fables correlate to the way humans act in society. Clayton argues that within fables, lies the similarities between humans and animals. Clayton provided readers with an excerpt of a fable, and then proceeded to remind us how the fables would directly relate to the reasoning behind human logic today. In addition, Clayton provided readers with an immaculate amount credibility. Clayton consistently provided descriptions of how fables affected ancient Greece and Athenian culture in order to back up his argument. The way he structured his writing allowed me to understand that Clayton truly knew what he was talking about.

For example, Clayton uses the fable of Hesiod’s “Work and Days”, where the moral is that “the weak suffer at the whim of the stronger”. This explains how dominance in the animal world correlates to the power hierarchy in the world of humans, which furthers the argument that Clayton is trying to make. As a reader, I always believed that the motive behind fables was to teach readers of morals. However, Clayton has brought to me a new perspective of how fables can also relate to “democracy, equality, and justice”.

I also very much agree with Clayton that human beings can live differently than animals because of our “unique capability of reason”. Clayton backs this up using Aristotle and how he states that “It allows them to redefine their environments and themselves, which animals cannot do, and in doing so they can create a city and citizens that are compatible with principles of equality and justice”. This had been nothing less of a revelation to me, to learn that fables can be so much more complex and sophisticated than just a story and a lesson. Clayton really did a well rounded observation on how fables play a contributing factor to the human world and changed how I will perceive the next fable I read.