This story is hilarious! My favorite part was the last line, because I had never heard it before and it made me laugh out loud. I had heard the basic story before, but I had never heard the moral flipped on the savior as it is in this story.
The last line, "There's gratitude for you," is so funny because the reader thinks throughout the whole story that placing self-preservation over gratitude is wrong (or at least that's how I read the story). Two of the animals that come by to serve as judges say "There's gratitude for you" because they have been thrown out by someone who should have shown them gratitude. They side with the snake because they feel that since they have not been treated with gratitude, neither should the man. While I read this story, I wanted the man to get away, which I think is what the author wants the reader to feel. But then at the end, when the man has won (although it was by trickery, not moral reasoning), he and his wife kill the fox, clearly displaying ingratitude. What a twist! I guess the man should have been eaten by the snake after all. Also, this ending shows that while the man claimed to have upper moral ground by insisting that the snake act out of gratitude, the man was really acting out of self-preservation the whole time. He didn't believe in the moral he preached, but only attempted to use it as a self-preservation tool. I wonder if the creator of this story was a little bitter and believed that everyone only acts out of self-preservation. I suppose it's possible that that's true! This would be a fun topic to explore in a story.
Clever fox, who is mistreated out of ingratitude.
Source: Pixabay.
Bibliography: Europa's Fairy Book by Joseph Jacobs. Link to the reading online.
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