Fable- United States
A hare was making fun of a tortoise one day for being so slow. Do you ever get anywhere? the hare asked with a mocking laugh.
Yes, replied the tortoise, and I get there sooner than you think. Run a race against me and I’ll prove it.
The hare was very amused at the thought of running a race with the tortoise, and just for fun he decided to do it. So the fox, who agreed to act as judge marked the distance for the race on a path through the woods, and started the runners off. The hare was soon far out of sight. To let the tortoise know how silly it was for him to challenge a speedy hare, the hare decided to lie down beside the road to take a nap until the tortoise could catch up.
The tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily. After a time, the tortoise passed the place where the hare was sleeping. The hare slept on very peacefully. When at last he did wake up, the tortoise was already very near the finish line. The hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the tortoise in time.
Yvonne told me that her mother told her this story when she was about 5 to 6 years old. She said that she was really lazy when she was a child and never wanted to clean her room. Whenever her mother told her to do something or clean her room, she always postponed it until the last minute. She said she would always wait till her mother was mad and it would be too late. She said one day, her mother sat her down and told her this story. Her mother told her this story to teach her a lesson in life. Yvonne said the moral she learned was that lazy people dont succeed in life and hardworking, perseverant people succeed in life.
I think everyone has heard of at least one variation of the Hare and the Tortoise. I remember my father telling me this story in Korean when I was young. I think every child at one point in their life was lazy and had their parent tell them the story of the Hare and the Tortoise. In my story, I think the Hare went to get a meal first and then decided to take a nap after the meal. There are slight differences in the story but the overall moral of the story was the same. You have to be hard working and not lazy to succeed in life.
I know many books and stories have been published with the moral of the Hare and the Tortoise as the backbone of the story. I searched online for different variations of the story. The search came up with a never ending list of stories. Most of the stories that came up were very similar. One of the websites had a slightly different story than the one Yvonne sent me. In this story, the hare not only teases the tortoise but he also brags about his quickness to all the other animals. This story brings in the community surrounding the hare and tortoise; making the story more detailed and entertaining [1]. There are many other different variations of the story; some of the stories are more detailed than the others.
Sources
1) The Hare and the Tortoise. Childrens Story. <http://www.childrenstory.com/tales/indexhare.html> 29 April 2008