Bibliography: Babbitt Jataka Tales. Story: The Ox Who Envied the Pig
Notes: Hmmmmm. I don't know what to make of this story. At first glance, it seems that the story is trying to tell us not to envy the people who have more than we do, because they are destined for failure (or, in the case of the story, food). Yet I think that the meaning of the story might be more sinister than that. If you think about it, the oxen don't actually have some wonderful life. Sure, they are actually alive at the end of the story, but they only reason they are is because they have use as beasts of burden. In return for their labor, they are fed rather poorly. Not that the pig's life is much better. He gets to live high and mighty, but only for a while...
Looking at it this way, the moral of the story seems more to be that you can't really win. There is no way, at least in the setting that has been established in the story, to live both well and for a long time. That is, unless you are the farmer. It must all seem rather dystopian to the animals, this way of life.
I think that this might be an interesting way to approach a story- a dystopian setting for a dystopian moral. Perhaps there could be tidbits of a revolution thrown in there as well as the characters realize that what is needed in order for them to escape this caged existence is for them to revolt against the farmer character. The real moral could be, essentially, that rampant capitalism is bad. The farmer represents the 1% who literally feasts on and exploits the other 99%. Very Animal Farm.....
I just also think that it would be more fun to write this story in a dystopian setting than in the "real world".
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