The Hare Who was Afraid of his Ears
After the Lion cracks down on horns right across his kingdom, a nervous Hare gets to wondering exactly what counts as a horn.
After the Lion cracks down on horns right across his kingdom, a nervous Hare gets to wondering exactly what counts as a horn.
The following fable was applied by Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, to the danger posed by Governments that police what we are allowed to say. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you actually do say: what matters is what those in authority decide you have said.
THE Lion being once badly hurt by the horns of a Goat, went into a great rage, and swore that every animal with horns should be banished from his kingdom. Goats, Bulls, Rams, Deer, and every living thing with horns had quickly to be off on pain of death.
A Hare, seeing from his shadow how long his ears were, was in great fear lest they should be taken for horns. “Good-bye, my friend,” said he to a Cricket who, for many a long summer evening, had chirped to him where he lay dozing. “I must be off from here. My ears are too much like horns to allow me to be comfortable.”
“Horns!” exclaimed the Cricket, “do you take me for a fool? You no more have horns than I have.”
“Say what you please,” replied the Hare, “were my ears only half as long as they are, they would be quite long enough for any one to lay hold of who wished to make them out to be horns.”
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.