Free Muse Courses: Aesop’s Fables: Part One of 25: The Tortoise and The Eagle

Aesop (620-564 B.C.) wrote hundreds of fables for children and adults.  They all have a moral, meaning, or reason to the story.  Each lesson in this series strives to get the student familar with Aesop and what he wrote.  The questions are straight forward, and although the fables are short, I recommend only one lesson per day for the student.  Twenty-five days at 5-10 minutes a day of Aesop will leave a more lasting impression then one day of a few hours.  I recommend that the student take either a notebook or a word processor and record their answers.  In the future, a free ebook may be available of the entire course for download.

Text:  “The Tortoise and the Eagle”

A TORTOISE, lazily basking in the sun, complained to the sea-birds of her hard fate, that no one would teach her to fly. An Eagle, hovering near, heard her lamentation and demanded what reward she would give him if he would take her aloft and float her in the air. “I will give you,” she said, “all the riches of the Red Sea.” “I will teach you to fly then,” said the Eagle; and taking her up in his talons he carried her almost to the clouds suddenly he let her go, and she fell on a lofty mountain, dashing her shell to pieces. The Tortoise exclaimed in the moment of death: “I have deserved my present fate; for what had I to do with wings and clouds, who can with difficulty move about on the earth?’ If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined.

Questions:

1.  What was the tortoise’s attitude at the beginning of the fable?

2.  What was she upset about?

3.  What did the tortoise say she would give the Eagle for teaching her to fly?

4.  What happened to the tortoises shell when she fell?

5.  What lesson did the tortoise learn?

6.  What did you learn from the fable?