The Tortoise and the Hare Redux: Storytelling Week 1

In the original Tortoise and the Hare, the hare and tortoise have a race. The tortoise, while slow, continues on during the whole race. The hare, while fast, stops many times because he's sure he will win the race. The tortoise wins, and the moral is "slow and steady wins the race."

In a magical land where animals somehow talk and devise competitions to determine superiority -- which are all admittedly very human characteristics -- a tortoise and a hare were in a battle of wits. The tortoise, wise from his many years, as tortoises are wont to live many years, had taken a commanding lead with his knowledge and experiences gained throughout his life.

The tortoise answered question after question (and usually added a personal anecdote to go along with his answer) and soon enough the hare had had enough. Determined to prove his superiority over the tortoise, the hare challenged the tortoise to a battle he was sure he could win -- a race.

Now the tortoise, while very wise, was incredibly stubborn. Old age tends to do that to people, and magical talking animals are no different. So he boldly agreed to the hare's challenge.

"Name a time and place," the tortoise proclaimed confidently. 

"In exactly one month," the hare explained, "We will race from one end of the meadow to the other. The loser must declare the winner his superior."

The tortoise began his training regimen immediately. He started walking further and further distances, willing his old limbs to carry him much farther than they had in many years. The hare, on the other hand, did not train at all, mostly because hares are usually on the run from predators, hunters, etc. 

Exactly one month later, the two were ready for their race. Before they began, the hare gave the tortoise a thirty minute head start in the hopes of embarrrassing him even more than he had planned already. The tortoise had lost some confidence during his training, so he agreed. 

                                     Accurate representation of the starting line.

The two lined up at the starting line, eager to prove their worth, and the race began. The tortoise, as the hare had allowed, trudged on for thirty minutes. The hare waited patiently until his time to start arrived. As soon as the thirty minutes had passed, the hare was off like a flash. He darted over rocks, under branches and logs, and in no time had finished the race, long before the tortoise. It wasn't until the sun had nearly crept below the horizon that the tortoise finally finished.

The hare gloated at the finish line, but the tortoise reminded him that he had lost the battle of wits as convincingly as he had won the race. So the two agreed that while one was superior in one facet, he lacked in the other. And they went about their business as friends and equals. 

The moral of this story is this: no one is the best at everything. And races are almost always won by the fastest competitor, mostly because races are based on finishing ahead of everyone else and being the fastest greatly helps in achieving victory in a speed-oriented competition.

Author's Note: The tortoise and the hare is one of the most well-known of Aesop's Fables. Be that as it may, I have always found it to be unrealistic in the sense that a tortoise would never beat a hare in a race. So I adapted what I consider to be a more realistic telling emphasizing the hypothetical strengths of the two animals. 

Bibliography

Title: The Æsop for Children
       With pictures by Milo Winter 

 Author: Æsop 

 Illustrator: Milo Winter 

 Release Date: December 2, 2006 [EBook #19994]

Picture from Walt Disney's The Tortoise and the Hare (1935)