PB1A- Fables and their Conventions

            Fables are legends or myths that are meant to teach a moral lesson, such as The Boy who Cried Wolf by Aesop, with the moral being that if a person is overly dishonest it can result in the people around them never being able to trust them again, even when they are genuinely being honest.

Fables, for the most part, are directed toward children, teaching them simple life lessons that will make them good people now and in the future. With that, fables try to appeal to children so that the lessons stay with them long after the story is over. Fables are able to accomplish this goal with certain elements such as having the characters be animals, simple vocabulary and sentence structure, and have a didactic tone. Furthermore, fables have somewhat of a pattern to have slightly tragic endings, so that children won’t forget.

Each of these elements plays a critical role when it comes to impacting its intended audience. Having the characters be animals adds a very whimsical and even dreamy mood to fables, because children are very imaginative they also like to see others imagination at use. Because these stories range from children of all ages, the vocabulary and sentence structure will most likely be simple and playful. Simple so they are able to fully comprehend and playful so that they can stay interested, this includes sentences of different lengths and also plenty of dialogue, to not have the children assume or infer, but rather to clearly know each characters intentions.

            Because fables are meant to give lessons they take on a very didactic tone, in other words the tone seems like it is coming from a narrator with a lot of wisdom and experience. This type of tone allows the reader to be under the impression they are being given advice or being shown a lesson. It also allows for the end to have an affect of having something truly valuable. Furthermore, the convention of their usual tragic endings really furthers the point the story is trying to make. Additionally, a sorrowful ending is much more memorable because it is unexpected, and the intent is for the lesson to be everlasting. 

            Fables are fables for the way the characters are whimsical and imaginative, have simple yet playful sentence structure, didactic and wise tones, and dramatic endings. A popular occurance in fables is they tend to have characters that- much like the narrator- are wise, but are ignored by a more reckless character who, because they didn’t listen to the warnings, will end up in a disastrous situation.

These patterns are not always the case for every fable, but they are common, because they want a certain effect from the audience, to teach a lesson and to make that lesson last, and because the audience tends to be children these conventions amplify the effect, because it keeps their interest. Fables are meant to be the foundation of children’s morals therefore; they should be straightforward, but not overly mature either. The conventions of fables have allowed these whimsical tales to live on for many generations.