Fables tell a tale while conveying a hidden meaning such as a moral, a duty or political truth through the use of fictitious characters.

For example, in The Ant and the Grasshopper, the grasshopper is chirping and singing the summer day away while the ant gathers food. When the grasshopper questions the ant, he recommends the grasshopper get busy, too. The grasshopper says he has plenty of food now, but when winter arrives the grasshopper finds himself dying of hunger while the ants live off their stores. It is only then that the grasshopper realizes he should have prepared for those days of want.

In The Dancing Monkeys, a prince trains a group of monkeys to dance. They become very adept and even dress up in clothes and masks to perform before the court. During one performance, a courtier throws nuts on the stage. The monkeys forget their dancing, pull off their masks and clothes and fight for the nuts. The performance ends with the laughter and ridicule of the audience. The moral of the story: Not everything you see is what it appears to be.

The lesson of The Hart and the Hunter comes at a dear price. A hart (or male deer) admires himself in a pond especially taken by his horns and despairing of his slim legs. Just then a hunter’s arrow whistles by him. The hart bounds away, but gets caught by his antlers in the trees allowing the hunter to catch him and learning too late that we often despise what is most useful to us.

The Grimms also added their own changes deleting sexual themes with which they were uncomfortable, increasing the violence and adding Christian values. Fairy tales basicially help us recognize good versus evil, kindness versus cruelty and ambition versus despair. We also see good triumph over evil giving us hope for a better world.