YMMV / Aesop's Fables

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • During the fable "The Wolf and the Lamb", a wolf lures a lamb in by distracting it with false accusations, until the wolf eats the lamb. The original moral was that lies destroy the innocent or that a tyrant will use any excuse, truth be damned, but to modern readers getting lured in and eaten by false accusations rather than ignoring them may sound familiar.
  • The Man and the Satyr: Don't befriend satyrs; they overreact.
    • Refusing to understand things will leave you lonely.
  • The Boy Who Cried Wolf:
    • Never tell the same lie twice.
    • Don't trust something valuable to a liar.
  • The Tortoise and the Hare:
    • The original moral was Slow and Steady Wins the Race, but since the hare was well ahead until he decided to stop and take a nap in the middle of it, many readers take the moral as "don't get cocky when you're competing and give it your full effort until the event is over".
  • Different versions of "The Fox and the Lion" have applied different morals to it, from "Acquaintance overcomes fear" to "Familiarity with evil can blind us to its dangers."
  • The Wolf and The Crane has either character having Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Villainy dependent on the storyteller. The primary lesson of all versions should be "Your life is more important than any reward, think twice before you do something you'll regret". Alternatively, the lesson could be interpreted as "It's better to be ashamed of your mistakes than to be killed by them".
  • Zeus and The Bee:
    • Be careful what you wish for.
    • If you have more than what you need, you should be considerate of the less fortunate and share.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Fox and the Crow is memetic in Russia, to the point of spawning two cartoons, a monument, countless jokes...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2016, someone actually held a race between a tortoise and, um, a rabbit (well, close enough...) The outcome was pretty much exactly as Aesop predicted, with the rabbit losing interest halfway through (or it may have been scared by the crowd) and the tortoise just plodding along steadily to the end.
• Values Dissonance: Some of Aesop's morals have not really survived the transitioning of centuries in cultural mores and standards. For example, in "The Fox and the Hyena", the fox rejecting the hyena's love simply because she will spend some time as a male, something she can't help undergoing as it's just her nature, was a lot more acceptable then than it generally is now.
• Values Resonance: That said, there is a good reason these tales have been handed down as morality lessons over thousands of years; most of them still are good lessons to pass on.

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