Page 3 "The Lion, the Chamois, and the Fox"

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Point of View Spectrum

An objective point of view is where the narrator tries to remain neutral or invisible.  He or she does not intrude on the story.  The following story is told from an objective point of view.

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Fables

"The Lion, the Chamois, and the Fox" is a fable, a short and deceptively simple story, whose characters are usually animals.  It contains a wise saying, a moral, or lesson.

Example

• Birds of a feather flock together.  ("The Farmer and the Crane", Aesop's Fables)
• Look before you leap. ("The Fox and the Goat", Aesop's Fables)

The above morals are idioms, a type of figurative language which cannot be taken literally. 

They are similar to clichés (see Unit 3-4 page 5), or colloquialisms (see Unit 4-3 page 6) in that the reader or listener must have background knowledge to understand them.

• "Birds of a feather flock together" means people who have something in common associate with one another. 
• "Look before you leap" means think about the consequences before doing something.

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Most cultures have an oral story-telling tradition which personifies animals. There is one exception. Hebrew literature has always been written and does not personify animals (anthropomorphism), highlighting a fundamental distinction in the way humans can see the world.