Aesop Collateral Damage: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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In mythological, religious and fantasy works, somebody does or says something that shows he's in need of an attitude adjustment. Either a being (often a deity or similarly powerful creature) or Fate itself will act overtly to [[Aesop|teach this lesson]]. Unfortunately, the direct victim of this tutelage isn't the person in need of the lesson, but rather one or more persons close to him who haven't been shown to have done anything wrong. Typical victims are children, spouses and colleagues of the culprit, and the suffering often involves their deaths. In light of this, the culprit expresses remorse and either changes his ways or gives way to grief. Either way, he won't be making ''that'' mistake again. It is rarely/never mentioned that the entirely innocent suffer the most.
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== Religion and Mythology ==
* This is quite common in many mythologies, where the gods teach someone a lesson by cursing his entire
** Possibly the most famous example is the biblical Job. He loses his health, sons, daughters, house, animals, ''everything.'' In the middle section, as Job sits on the ash heap and is "consoled" (if you could call it that) by his friends, Job begins questioning God's actions. God arrives and speaks from a whirlwind to scold Job for presuming to question His actions when he (Job) is not a deity. This whole thing is troubling in part because of the dialogue between God and the Adversary that explains that Job was tortured to [[Up to Eleven|grotesquely cruel levels]] and his family killed as part of an exercise to prove Job's faith. It is true that after Job repents of his questioning and prostrates himself before God, his prosperity is returned even better than before and he gets a new family, but that means his original family is STILL DEAD. What of the originals? Are people ''that'' interchangeable?
* A strong example to modern eyes is the story of the Minotaur. The gods sent King Minos of Crete a white bull intended as an offering to Poseidon, but he decided to keep it as the prize in his herd instead. Aphrodite retaliated by making his ''wife'' fall in lust with it and arrange to play the part of a cow. Sure, Minos was stuck with the result of that union, the [[I'm a Humanitarian|human-eating]] Minotaur, but that just inspired him to lock it away in a labyrinth and occasionally feed innocent Greeks to the beast until Theseus finally killed it. Minos's wife, the Minotaur, and the innocent Greeks suffered, but Minos himself, not so
** Niobe and her children is another example from Greek mythology. She boasted about them, compared herself to Leto and condemned people for worshiping Leto, and Leto's two children (the deities Apollo and Aretimis) slay all 14 of hers by shooting them with arrows. Niobe's husband Amphion either committed suicide or was also killed by Apollo for wanting to avenge his children's deaths; Niobe herself so grieved that she turned to stone with a stream flowing from it said to be caused by her tears.
** Also from Greek mythology is the story of King Midas, who accidentally turned his daughter to gold, as shown in the page image.
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