From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ant and the Grasshopper, also
known as The Grasshopper and the Ant or
The Grasshopper and the Ants, is a fable attributed to Aesop, providing a moral lesson
about hard work and preparation. In the numbering system
established for Aesopic fables by B. E. Perry, it is number
fable has been retold or adapted in a number of modern works.
In its Greek original, as well as in its Latin and Romance
translations, the grasshopper is in fact a cicada.
The story has sometimes been cited as an example of a Libertarian society.
The fable concerns a grasshopper who has spent the warm months
singing away while the ant (or ants
in some editions) worked to store up food for winter. When winter
arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon
asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness. The story
is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the
perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at
the end, along the lines of: "Idleness brings want",
"To work today is to eat tomorrow is best to prepare for the
days of necessity".
Versions of the fable are found in the verse collections of Babrius (140) and Avianus (34), and in several
prose collections including those attributed to Syntipas and Apthonius. In a variant prose
form of the fable (Perry 112), the lazy animal is a dung beetle, which
finds that the winter rains wash away the dung on which it
Consider also the Book of Proverbs 6:6-9, a book of the
Hebrew Bible (the
Testament), which admonishes, "Go to the ant, you sluggard!
Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or
ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in
the harvest. How long will you slumber, O sluggard!"
- La Fontaine retold the story in a well
known version of the 17th century.
- "Happier" versions of the fable show the ants taking pity and
giving the grasshopper some food, on the premise that turning the
grasshopper away in his time of need is also morally questionable.
A prime example is the 1934 animated short subject
produced by Walt
Disney. The Queen of the Ants decrees that the grasshopper may
stay in the ant colony, but he must play his fiddle in return for
his room and board. He agrees to this arrangement, and the ant
tunnels become a grand ballroom where all the ants happily dance to
the music of the grasshopper, who finally learns that he needs to
make himself useful. Notably, this short introduced the song "The
World Owes Me a Livin'", which would later become a signature tune
for Goofy (Pinto Colvig, the
original voice of Goofy, voices the grasshopper in this
- Disney also adapted the story, less directly, in the
Mickey's Young Readers Library segment Mickey and the
Big Storm; in this adaptation, Donald Duck and Goofy spend the first day
of a winter snowstorm playing out in the snow and don't bother to
stock up on supplies. Fortunately for them, Mickey has more than enough supplies for
himself and his friends.
- The Timon
and Pumbaa episode "Wide Awake in Wonderland" featured a
parody of the story with Timon in the role of the grasshopper and
Pumbaa as the ant.
- Friz Freleng
twice put a spin on the tale in his Warner Bros. cartoons. Porky's Bear
Facts depicts Porky
Pig working hard while his lazy neighbor refuses to do
anything, only to suffer during winter. Foney Fables shows
a brief version of the story, in which it turns out that the
grasshopper has a war ration card and thus doesn't need to
- Elements of the fable were loosely adapted as part of the
storyline of the Pixar film
Life. In this instance, though, there are multiple
grasshoppers, and they act as Mafia-like tyrants who demand a tribute of food from the ant
colony, even though the ants within far outnumber the
- The Ant and the Grasshopper was made into a song by Leon Rosselson in
the 1970s. Rosselson's version reverses the intent of Aesop, using
the story to rebuke the ant(and those humans with his mindset)for
heartless unwillingness in letting their fellow creatures die of
want and for not respecting the beauty the grasshopper brought to
life in the dances he created and the love of the world he
- Author Toni
Morrison's 2003 children's book Who's Got Game?: The Ant or
the Grasshopper? gives a new spin to the old fable, provoking
a discussion about the importance of art. The grasshopper
represents the artisan.
Alegre had a bilingual animated version of the fable, with
a Spanish speaking female ant and a swinging English speaking
- The Leo Lionni
book Frederick touches upon similar issues of art versus
pragmatic preparation for hard times.
- The song "Stalker" by the Japanese band The Pillows alludes briefly to the fable,
in a line that can be translated as "A rocker working like an ant/
Are you harvesting for the winter?".
- In the Futurama
episode My Three
Suns, Fry recounts the story of The Grasshopper and
the Octopus as a rationalization for laziness: "All year long
the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus
mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter
came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns.
And also, he got a racecar. Isn't any of this getting through to
- Lee and
Herring parodied the fable on their series Fist of Fun. Richard
Herring references the fable to illustrate his diligence in writing
the script while Stewart Lee lazily avoids work. Lee then recites
his amended fable, "The Ant and the Man", which demonstrates that
tales involving animals have no bearing on human behaviour since
humans are capable of rational thought and not just natural
- The 5 November 2006 episode of Jong-Cherl Yeon's comic-book
format diary, Marineblues, featured an alternate version of this
fable in which the price of the grasshopper's house rises by 300
million Won after three years of lazing about, and the ant only
earns 3 million Won despite working hard for three years.
- A modern satirical version of the story, in circulation since
at least 2002, has the grasshopper calling a press conference at
the beginning of the winter to complain about socio-economic
inequity, and being given the ant's house. This version was written
in 1994 by Pittsburgh talk show guru, Jim Quinn.
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin also updated the story
in connection with the proposed 2008 banking rescue package.
Somerset Maugham wrote a short story, published in 1960, titled
"The Ant and The Grasshopper". It concerns two brothers, one of
whom is a hard worker, and the other a dissolute moocher. At the
end of the story, the "grasshopper" brother marries a rich widow,
who promptly dies and leaves him a fortune.
- An episode of Super
Why! reworks the tale, having the Ant tell the Grasshopper that
there is food atop a tall mountain, and showing the grasshopper how
to get there. However, when the Grasshopper arrives, a cricket has
taken the last of the food. In keeping with the Super Why!
format, the "Super Readers" change the story, and the Grasshopper
is then given Winterberry seeds,
which grow into a holly bush resplendent with berries. The plot
serves to teach a central Super Why character the value of
- Satirist Dave
Barry has a version that ends with both the grasshopper and the
ants being killed by passing Boy Scouts.
- A strip of the webcomic
Apokalips by Mike Gioia features a parody of the Ant and
Ben Edwin Perry (1965). Babrius and
Phaedrus. Loeb Classical Library.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 487, no. 373. ISBN
Libertarian themed stories, Young Children 5-9