I have a vivid and peculiar childhood memory of coming across a fable of Aesop, out of context, in a child's magazine. I found the quality of the story so different from the rest of the magazine that I read it several times, until I became convinced that I understood what was going on, and marveled at the wit of the unnamed author.
Here follows, first, the text of the fable:
The Belly and the Members
One fine day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work and the Belly was having all the food. So they held a meeting, and after a long discussion, decided to strike work till the Belly consented to take its proper share of the work. So for a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do. But after a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were not in a very active condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was all parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest. So thus they found that even the Belly in its dull quiet way was doing necessary work for the Body, and that all must work together or the Body will go to pieces.
I had never read Aesop before, nor was I familiar with the allegorical form. So you might think I would have read this literally, as just a story about a body. But for some reason, the archaic language, and the capitalization of the body parts, made me realize that I was reading some kind of "elevated text". I was unfamiliar with the word Members as used for parts of the body, but recognized its use for members of a club or organization. And I had no trouble then, assuming that the Body was some kind of mysterious board of directors.
It followed, then, that they must be serving refreshments at the meetings, and that one bossy fellow was getting all the food, and got the nickname Belly because of it. Following that logic, the other members of the body must have been given nicknames as well; perhaps Hands had big hands, or was "handy" around the meeting room; Mouth maybe talked a lot, and so on.
So I read the paragraph through and managed to make my sense out of it, though I don't suppose anyone had ever read it that way before. At the end, the moral caught me by surprise, and I thought, "You know, he's right, this is also sort of like a human body that needs its parts to cooperate!" so I think I'd gotten the whole allegory form turned inside out.
While this is, I suppose, a perverse sort of achievement, I'm glad I was never given a set of Rorschach cards to explain to anyone!
Last revised on 10 January 2003.