Donkey

Donkey, called an Ass in the fables, is a recurring animal figure whose stories turn ordinary misunderstandings into lessons about judgment, desire, and social place. One story warns against mistaking another creature’s habits for a suitable model; another shows the cost of envying a favored pet and imitating its behavior. Elsewhere, the Donkey’s pride rises from a mistaken reading of public respect, while in the preface it appears among the animals whose familiar traits help make fable characters legible.

The Donkey as a Fable Character

The preface describes the fable as a short narrative that uses fictitious characters to convey instruction about human motives and conduct. Its animal figures are expected to retain recognizable qualities associated with their kind. In the account of these conventions, the Donkey is characterized as patient, alongside the cunning Fox, timid Hare, bold Lion, cruel Wolf, strong Bull, and proud Horse. The point is not merely to assign animals labels: their familiar attributes help readers follow the action and draw a moral from it.

The preface also cautions that not every story in the collection fully achieves the ideal of unity between narrative, character, and lesson. The Donkey’s episodes nevertheless make clear how the animal can serve different moral purposes: it may be an imitator, a laborer dissatisfied with its lot, or a bearer of borrowed prestige. Its repeated appearance links distinct, compact plots without turning it into a single developing protagonist.

Appetite and Limits

In “The Ass and the Grasshopper,” the Donkey hears Grasshoppers chirping and becomes enchanted by their sound. Wanting the same musical charm, it asks what food gives them such beautiful voices. They answer that they live on dew. The Donkey takes this literally, resolves to live on dew alone, and soon dies of hunger. The chain of cause and consequence is deliberately simple: admiration becomes a question, the answer becomes an imprudent rule, and the attempt to acquire another creature’s quality by copying its diet proves fatal.

The episode makes the Donkey’s limitation practical rather than abstract. It does not test whether the Grasshoppers’ way of life suits it; it treats their reported food as a recipe for transforming its own voice. The result exposes the danger of imitation without judgment. The fable’s brevity leaves no counterargument or recovery: the Donkey’s mistaken inference carries the story directly to its ending.

Labor, Envy, and Imitation

“The Ass and the Lapdog” places the Donkey within a household divided by work and favor. The man’s Donkey has oats and hay, but must grind corn and carry wood from the forest and burdens from the farm. The Maltese Lapdog, by contrast, knows tricks, is fondled by its master, and receives tidbits when the master returns from dining. The Donkey laments its hard fate and compares its labor with the Lapdog’s comfort and idleness.

One day the Donkey breaks its cords and halter, runs into the master’s house, and tries to reproduce the Lapdog’s playful welcome. It breaks a table and smashes the dishes; then it attempts to lick the master and jumps on his back. The servants intervene when they hear the commotion and see the danger to their master, and drive the Donkey back to its stable with kicks, clubs, and cuffs. Returning beaten nearly to death, the Donkey recognizes that it has brought the punishment on itself by wishing to be idle like the Lapdog instead of accepting its work alongside its companions. The episode makes imitation a social as well as bodily misjudgment: behavior welcomed from one animal becomes destructive when copied by another.

Borrowed Honor and Fable's Reach

In “The Ass Carrying the Image,” the Donkey carries a famous wooden Image through a city on its way to a temple. As the crowd bows before the Image, the Donkey mistakes the gesture for respect directed at itself. It grows proud, gives itself airs, and refuses to move. The driver corrects the error with a whip and reminds it that people are not worshipping a Donkey. The closing maxim generalizes the scene: credit belonging to another should not be claimed as one’s own. The wooden Image, the crowd’s prostrations, and the Donkey’s refusal to proceed make the mistaken attribution visible before the driver names it.

The preface places this sort of animal storytelling within a broader account of fable’s social purpose. A fable can disguise instruction in an entertaining narrative, letting readers respond to the actions of fictional characters before confronting the human conduct those actions represent. It also notes that some fables began as responses to particular wrongs or political circumstances but acquired lessons of wider application. In these terms, the Donkey is not a continuous individual with a biography; it is a flexible recurring figure through whom the collection tests the consequences of appetite without foresight, envy, imitation, and self-importance.