Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Literature

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Family-Unfriendly Aesops in Literature include:

A Series of Unfortunate Events

  • A Series of Unfortunate Events can be seen as having the Aesop that adults are either useless or evil, and so there's no use trying to tell them when you're in a bad situation.
    • Much children's fantasy has similar themes, and it makes sense because if the adults could help, the teenaged protagonist wouldn't have a chance to become the hero. As it turns out, in real life the chances are that children can't solve everything on their own.
    • More likely A Series of Unfortunate Events was meant to satirize the Adults Are Useless themes in most children's literature.
  • Another Aesop seems to be, "There aren't always happy endings." Which is totally true, but not something you'd expect from a children's book.
  • Plus, the theme of useless adults was mostly a plot element that simply allowed the series (and the villains) to continue, rather than an Aesop. Most of the books, in fact, ended with much friendlier Aesops about how, if you're resourceful, you can make it through any awful situations. The final book, however, did have the fairly disappointing and widely-disliked Aesop of "some mysteries will never be solved."
  • The movie offers a much more hopeful moral.

I know that at times, the world can seem like a cold and dangerous place, but please believe us when we tell you that there's more good in it than bad. And what may seem to be a series of unfortunate events may just be the start of a journey.

Twilight

  • If your boyfriend knows better, he should be allowed to do whatever he believes is necessary for your protection.
  • Sometimes, you just have to take matters into your own hands when the object of your affections refuses to realize that you're better for her than her significant other is.
  • Self-destructive behavior is a reasonable way to express grief.
  • True love knows no barriers. Twelve days is all the time in the world to decide that you can throw away everything else in the world to be with your significant other, since it's true love.
  • It's all right if a stranger stalks you and climbs into your bedroom without your knowledge or consent while you're asleep. It just means that he's trying to protect you. The same for if he sabotages your car, constantly spies on you, and has you essentially kidnapped by his family while he's away and unable to continue to spy on you. After all, it's just for your own protection.
  • If your boyfriend dumps you, it's completely fine to engage in dangerous activity that could potentially kill you. In fact, engaging in said activity will bring your boyfriend back for good.
  • Only those in your personal inner circle matter. The deaths of people you don't know - even if they are completely innocent, and even if the inner circle's actions directly contributed to the person's demise - are unremarkable and need not distract you from endlessly pondering your relationship, and of course there is no expectation that you might make any actual effort to save them. And yes, this is the "good" guys. (Examples: human tourists killed by the Volturi in New Moon whom Edward and Bella don't even try to warn, poor Bree Tanner who no one even tries to save after promising to help her in Eclipse, Irina, and the humans who are killed off-screen by the vampire allies who are given permission to borrow Cullen cars so they can go people-hunting in Breaking Dawn.)
  • Possibly one of the biggest - finding and being with your soul mate completely justifies any shitty behavior you engage in in the process.
  • The main point of the Twilight series is either just sit there and two of the best looking boys in school will suddenly pine after the new girl no one else likes or HOW GREAT IT IS TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND but what do you expect from a book where the main character is a Mary Sue of a girl who dreamed of having a boyfriend in high school.
  • If your boyfriend breaks up with you, don't decide that it was for the best and get over it in a healthy, mature way. Threaten to kill yourself so that he'll be forced back into a relationship with you, because your true love justifies it! It's also okay if you manipulate well-meaning people along the way, because true love justifies everything!
    • And it's OK to hunt and drink the blood of endangered wildlife, because it's immoral to hunt humans.
  • Also, most children's or YA books and movies about Fish Out of Water moving to rustic locales show those characters learning to overcome their snobbery and to value the local citizens they initially misjudged (Lightning McQueen in Cars, Mary in The Secret Garden, etc., etc.). Twilight essentially says, "You're right, Bella. Those people who have been falling all over themselves to be kind and welcoming to you as a new student in Forks ARE total losers. I mean, they try and include you? They ask you to PROM? You are too special for this, and only need to be considerate of equally special people. Like vampires."

Other works

  • If you give anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged the definition above, they will most likely reply, "oh, you mean like in Atlas Shrugged". Few works, if any, have espoused Family Unfriendly Aesops so completely, audaciously and influentially as this Doorstopper Philosophical Novel has. It teaches that altruism is evil, you do not owe anyone anything and capitalism holds the universe together. Can you be a good person if you believe all that? Well, good by what standard?
  • Almost every children's fantasy book is about learning to Be Yourself and how special you are. It's a Family Unfriendly Aesop when they don't:
    • The main character of Panda Ray is a young boy with amazing powers. After escaping from his overbearing mother, who threatens to "scoop him out," he enters a dreamlike parallel dimension, where he has all his secret fantasies made true; this makes him decide that he's "no better than" his mother, which, in turn, makes decide him go home, forsake his powers, and act like he's scooped out for the rest of his life. The moral: being special and different is bad, and the people who are trying to force you to be like everyone else know what's right.
    • There is some debate, particularly on the book's Amazon.com page, as to exactly what lesson we're supposed to get out of The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey.
      • For some, it's "Be proud of what you are," which is fine.
      • For some, it's "Be Careful What You Wish For," which is okay.
      • For others, however, the message seems to be, "Don't try to be anything you're not," which seems workable until you realize that this is like telling children Status Quo Really IS God and you shouldn't aspire to be anything better than you are.
      • And finally, several people have detected the truly Family Unfriendly "It's better to Just Be Normal, because if there is anything that makes you different or special, your family and friends will shun and abandon you." Scary-Crayon is an example of this one.
  • Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham has a perfectly nice Aesop about not deciding you don't like something until you've tried it. However, it delivers said Aesop in the form of a little creature named "Sam I Am," who stalks and harasses the protagonist until he finally breaks down and agrees to try the eponymous meal. An additional Aesop seems to be "Peer pressure can be good for you, as long as it teaches you something positive." This is in fact Truth in Television, as there is a thing called positive peer pressure.
  • In the famous science fiction short story "The Cold Equations," the moral is "life is fundamentally unfair." This moral was a very deliberate Family Unfriendly Aesop, serving as a Deconstruction of stories where the day is always saved somehow, all too often by Contrived Coincidences or Applied Phlebotinum. However, some people were not impressed, feeling that the writer created a very contrived situation riddled with logic holes to justify the Aesop.
    • The problem with "The Cold Equations" is that the execution was so botched that it voided its own Aesop in the process. While an Aesop of 'Stupdity can get you killed, and the laws of physics will make no allowances for good intentions' is entirely valid, when the story in question has the death landing on the least stupid person in the entire story the audience goes 'Seriously'? And before you mind-boggle at that "least stupid person" statement, the reasoning is as follows: the situation in the story cannot exist unless every person involved in the entire chain of decisions, from the original designer of the rocket ship to the crew of the mother ship in charge of preflight checks, hangar security, and overall SOP, to the pilot of the vessel to the stowaway herself makes at least one serious unforced error -- but the only person who dies is the untrained civilian, i.e., the only person who was making their error out of ignorance as opposed to not properly doing their job.
  • In Harriet the Spy, young writer Harriet learns that sometimes you have to lie to people to help them feel better about themselves so they won't hate you.
    • There's also the fact that her mother forces her to "admit" she feels guilty about her friends' hurt feelings after they read her private journal. Harriet makes a good point that it was her journal, she clearly forbade people from reading it, and that they had no right to do so. Mom seems to think that Harriet should feel guilty for writing the stuff down as well as for her friends' negative reactions. Eventually, Harriet agrees with what her mom wants her to say, basically so Mom will stop with the badgering.
  • A particularly jaw-dropping one appears in a Ray Bradbury story. The narrator's sedate, tranquil, lazy (and Irish) chauffeur picks him up one night and drives like a bat out of hell before revealing that every other enjoyable night, he was driving completely drunk. The narrator forces money on him and demands he get blotto before picking him up next, browbeating him into breaking Lent in the process.
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum (pun only partially intended), Rainbow Fish at best teaches children the joys of communism by showing how personal property and individualism are bad and that everyone should be equally poor and bland and at worst shows that the only way to have friends is to mutilate yourself and give away all your body parts.
    • The intended moral is to share one's gifts with others but yes, it can be easily seen as the above.
    • Not to mention the idea of simply being able to buy friendship.
    • Or perhaps the concept that if you are superior in any way, nobody will like you. Or that everyone's shallow enough that they will like you if you give each of them a single entirely useless item.
  • Perelandra, the second book of the Space trilogy by C. S. Lewis. The plot of the book is that the planet Venus is in the "Adam and Eve" phase and the devil has sent his agent—a man named Professor Weston—to corrupt "Eve." The angels send a man named Elwin Ransom to make sure that Tinidril chooses wisely. In the end, good triumphs over evil, but in an unexpected way: Ransom kills Weston and drops his body into a volcano.
    • This is actually lampshaded by the protagonist, who assumed that the fight would be purely intellectual, that he would win by the sheer force of his argument; and was initially horrified at the idea that he'd have to make the fight a physical one. It was very much a Take That at the pacifists who opposed Great Britain's military opposition to the evils of Nazi Germany and promoted Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy; and against the anti-confrontational passivity that was popular in much of the liberal Christian community.
  • A character in Slaughterhouse-Five suggests that The Bible's Aesop is that you should make sure someone doesn't have connections before you kill them.
  • The Sword of Truth series has some pretty screwy morals, especially in the eighth book, Naked Empire: Killing and torture are evil if the Bad Guys do them, but they're okay if the Good Guys do them -- because, by being Bad Guys, they brought it upon themselves.
    • Over the course of the series, Goodkind slowly works his way from formula fantasy to Objectivist philosophizing. This culminates with Faith of the Fallen, which is, in large part, a re-writing of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. From that book onward, the characters' morals take on a distinctly Objectivist tone, with the good guys becoming Objectivist heroes bordering on Knights Templar and the bad guys being collectivists and/or pacifists.
  • In book 2 of Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles, Laurie explains that she lies because "lying works," and nothing in the story contradicts this claim. This, from a book aimed at 6-12 year olds.
  • Pick a Robert Silverberg story at random, and it's got a 50% chance of belonging on this list. As an example, How It Was When The Past Went Away begins with a fellow giving Easy Amnesia to an entire city through a drug in the water supply. A religion forms around the mantra "drink and forget," and life becomes Utopian, as people can erase their memories of all the bad deeds they've done.
  • Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers: Veterans know what's best for you simply because they've served.
    • It's actually a lot more complicated than that, and boils down to the not-really-unfriendly "People who have already proven they're willing to put the best interests of their country ahead of their own will probably make better decisions for the country than people who are not willing to do so."
  • The original version of The Little Mermaid had this delightful message to children: "Obey your parents and behave, or an innocent girl will lose her soul." Is it any wonder most people prefer the Disney version?
    • On the other hand, the message can be construed as: Kill yourself/Abandon your entire species (depending on the version) for your man. Definitely a pre-feminism tale. It should be noted that Hans Christian Andersen had a lot of problems in his life, though.
      • Possibly also an example of Values Dissonance in the story. The mermaid could be seen as symbolic of paganism and desires to better herself via converting to Christianity.
      • The fable stated that mermaids don't have souls, but that she could do good deeds after her death to earn a soul and go on to Heaven, which supports this idea.
  • The children's book Tootle is about a young (and sentient) locomotive who is learning to become a real train. However, he also enjoys going off of the rails and playing in the meadow, though this is considered taboo in his society. In the end, the townsfolk decide to teach him a lesson by waving red flags everywhere he goes when he leaves the rails. Eventually he stays on the track and never leaves it again. The main message of the book seems to be "It's not okay to do what you enjoy, unless it is approved by authority figures." (Well...considering that if a train is derailed IRL, it results in death and destruction, I'm not quite sure this example's all THAT bad to stay on track!)
  • Gor, quite infamously, has the moral that "all women secretly want to be sex slaves."
  • Some people argue that the moral of Joe Abercrombie's The First Law is "people never change, they only delude themselves into thinking they've changed or trick others into thinking they've changed."
  • On the surface, the motivational book Who Moved My Cheese encourages being adaptive to changing situations in both your job and every day life. In actuality, it has several more prominent Family Unfriendly Aesops, including but not limited to: It's OK to let your friends starve to death while you fulfill your needs; if you're promised something and you don't get it, saying anything about it makes you an unsympathetic whiner; and you'll never escape the rat race, so be content with being shuffled around by your shadowy, greedy overlords. It's unsurprising that most office workers that receive it as a gift from upper management immediately start updating their resumes. (Or giggle and make "cut the cheese" jokes, as this troper did for days!)
  • In The Worm Ouroboros, nobody matters but princes. In a battle, superior position, troop numbers, bravery, equipment and training count for nothing, the result will be determined by which prince/general thinks up more clever strategems. After four years of bitter war in which many are maimed and killed, the 'good guy' princes triumph. They then wish for - and are granted - a magical reset back to the beginning of the war so they can put their subjects through all that suffering again. Why? Because otherwise they'd be bored.
    • That's hardly a moral, it's just how they are.
  • Bedlam Boyz: Some people deserve to die. Let them. Don't dirty your hands making it fast or painless, either.
  • Babette Cole's Winni Allfours: Apparently, when your parents won't give you a pony and would rather have you eat your vegetables, not only is it sound to trick them by eating your veggies to turn into a horse (It Makes Sense in Context) but when they actually promise to grant your earlier wishes, you can refuses because you're having too much fun! Never mind the fact you may not live long and certainly won't have much family or social life.
  • Mimì Fiore di Cactus e il suo porcospino [dead link] (Cacti Flower Mimi And Her Hedgehog)'s Aesop is, basically, "every stranger is a pedophile".
  • The Chronicles of Narnia contain the lesson that the real world is a harsh and violent place that sometimes takes a fair amount of violence to survive in. CS Lewis was even quoted once as saying that pretending otherwise would do a great disservice to children. Once again, an example of a very true and important Aesop, but one that many parents would rather their children didn't know.
  • One of the Stock Aesops is that cowardice doesn't pay. In extreme cases, the brave survives where the coward dies (sometimes Driven to Suicide), or alternatively they both both survive/die, but the coward is marked forever. So it comes as a tragic surprise that in Bridge to Terabithia, Leslie, who had no fear from the creek, drowns, whereas Jess, who feared the water (and couldn't swim) survives - and while he does suffer, it's not because of cowardice.
  • The Roger McGough poem Badgers and Goodgers, in which badgers are portrayed as an Exclusively Evil species, while their cousins, the goodgers, are Always Lawful Good. When a series of natural disasters hits the forest (culminating in a 'Great Jazz Revival'), the greedy, selfish baders are able to survive through their scheming and hoarding, while the compassionate goodgers feel compelled to help the other forest denizens and starve themselves to extinction because they're unable to care for themselves. In a Bittersweet Ending, Pan the animal spirit anoints the black fur of the badgers with white, in memory of their cousins, and gets them to renounce their selfish ways.
  • Another classical Moral is that having imagination is good. So When The Windman Comes by Antonia Michaelis is a HUGE subversion, with the Moral "imagination, when not strictly separated from reality, is potentially very dangerous - it can isolate you and make you live in fear of imaginary horrors - all the while making you more vulnerable to Real Life. Sometimes, being a sceptic is favorable, even for a child." This is particularly jarring since many other books by the same author actually promote imagination and/or openness to seemeingly impossible things.
    • A lesser "strange" Aesop is "You shouldn't be that afraid of strangers. Even though you are a child, that scary old man actually means you no harm".
  • Aesop's Fables sometimes encounter this trope. For example, The Fox and The Stork leads you to believe it's fine and dandy to do payback at someone who pulled a fast one on you, because "One bad turn deserves another."
    • Interestingly, Game Theory says that that's a quite reasonable (and, indeed, quite EFFECTIVE) strategy for some types of situations (the 'Tit-For-Tat' strategy). There is research that indicates humans may even be hard wired to accept this practice.
  • Several of the Serendipity Books from the 70s have massively Family Unfriendly Aesops. Specific and Egregious examples:
    • Squeakers, a leg-crossingly uncomfortable book about a little squirrel with alarmingly fluttery-lashed eyes , teaches little boys the admittedly important lesson that they have to tell their parents about being molested. The (male) squirrel goes through days on end of hiding the shameful and hideous bald patches on his tail where a neighbor is tearing out fistfuls of his fur on the way home from school every day in exchange for, yes, nuts. Ahem. Well:
      • Firstly, it warps the message into "Every adult male who ever tries to talk to you socially wants to force you to trade your body for meaningless tokens,"
      • and secondly, that also turns into "By the way, if you find any adult male even vaguely discomfiting or weird, it's probably because you can subconsciously tell he wants your little squirrely ass and is about to do things involving nuts to you,"
      • and thirdly, it actually makes reporting abuse sound like a terrifying ordeal, partly because the physical evidence is ugly and obvious and muchly-needing-to-be-hidden, and partly because the simple text captures the sickening sense of shame and fear so very accurately that this troper actually was nauseated when reading it as an adult.

"I don't want to trade today, Mr. Mole ..."
"That's okay, I'm just going to take what I want!"

    • Even more fun is Morgan Morning, which features a cute little brown foal who disobeys his mother and consequently falls down a cliff. His mother and the rest of the herd can't help him, so they sadly go graze somewhere else—explicitly leaving him there to die alone. The little pony lies weeping at the bottom of the cliff when a disembodied voice tells him that if he'll agree never ever to see his (also brown) mother again, he can live (why does this need to be mentioned? He was already never going to see her again). He makes the bargain and "is reborn/to live -- maybe die -- a unicorn!" Leaving the reader with three questions:
      • Is this book supposed to tell me that Mommy will leave me alone to die if I'm disobedient even one time? Because that's what I'm getting.
      • Wait—verbally eschewing or recanting his brown pony family allows him to pass for a magical white pony as long as he doesn't try to have contact with brown ponies, even though he can totally go see them now, because he's better than them and they might revert him to his old inferior ways? Are you kidding me?
      • This thing was sold with a pretty unicorn smiling amongst butterflies on the cover? ON A LOW SHELF?
  • The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo is pretty obviously intended to be didactic ... somehow. Some people read the titular china bunny rabbit doll as a sort of naively-selfish Fool who learns that he's a Jesus figure whose true value lies in helping people. Other readers can't help but notice that Edward inevitably and uncontrollably leaves everyone he "helps" broken, grieving, more alone than when he arrived, at the mercy of crueler people, with their relationship with Edward Tulane (or Susannah, whatever) having stopped just agonizingly short of being fulfilling, and tending to end in deception or violence or emotional brutality or all three. Don't make friends, kids. The world will take them away and they'll be more hurt because you can't get back to them. Ever. Because life? It's so not under your control. Don't try.
  • The Princess Bride has one in-universe - the narrator notes how much horrified as a kid he was, because some events of the story just didn't worked out as in usual fairy tales and adventure stories and found relief only when he realized what the aesop was - "life is not fair".
  • Hush, Hush contains a number of these, along the same lines as the ones in Twilight. The biggest offenders:
    • Sexual harassment and stalking are appropriate ways to express love.
    • If someone is making you uncomfortable or worried about your safety, there's no point in going to your teacher, parent, or friend for help. They won't take you seriously or try to take care of the problem.
    • If someone is concerned that a guy is acting inappropriately towards you, you should be suspicious of this advice because the person is probably just jealous and trying to get the guy for herself. Even if the guy is acting inappropriately towards you.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Family-Unfriendly_Aesop/Literature?oldid=2045540"