Anthropomorphism Of Animals In The Wolf And The Lamb

Justice always wins in the end. This is the motto that has ended many children’s books and movies. The idea that doing good deeds and having wisdom can defeat evil and stronger opponents brings satisfaction to the reader, thus becoming a quintessential central moral for tales and stories told to this day. Fables similarly serve a purpose of delivering a moral. However, animals are typically used while displaying human behavior. Jean de LaFontaine utilizes he use anthropomorphism of animals in his fable, The Wolf and the Lamb, in order to reveal a moral that is still relevant and true in modern society. From a first glance LaFontaine’s fable seems simply about an innocent lamb drinking at a brook when a wolf comes along and unrightfully devours
Fables are supposed to represent human behaviorism and LaFontaine’s The Wolf and the Lamb makes this very evident. In true nature, the wolf would have no hesitation in eating the lamb. There would be no need for the wolf to justify his animals or for the lamb to defend himself. The anthropomorphism of both animals draws the reader’s attention toward the behaviors of the animals and the significance of their behavior. This also signals the fact that these behaviors set us apart from animals. The lamb in the story represents logic and reasonable thinking I humans. The wolf on the other hand represents overwhelming desire and want. Yet the wolf is portrayed as stronger and forceful, yet irrational, just as human desire tends to be. The lamb is portrayed is sensible but weak and inevitably gets engulfed by the wolf. The fable exposes the innate behavior of the human mind to succumb to desire despite having reason. The wolf shows that inherent in all of us is the unconscious tendency of making our want the same as universal justice. The greater the desire becomes, the more ethical and just it seems. The way LaFontaine uses animals to represent this notion unique to humans indicates how complex the human mind is. LaFontaine’s anthropomorphism in the fable reveals that there is a wolf in all of us. There is this ugly possibility in everyone to have our desires become stronger than reason and true justice becomes flat and interrupting. And again, the straightforward last sentence of the fable indicates that this attitude of thinking is a fact of human nature that we cannot wholly