Allegory, You are Woman

Abstract

It is our intention to start our study by presenting a modern fable which was written by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a contemporaneous Cuban writer. Named “The Fox and the Grapes”, this is his text:

A fox was hungry and as she was unusually vegetarian (there is nothing a fox wouldn’t make to be up to date), she looked at some grapes which were near her, but above her. She jumped once, twice, and one more time, but she couldn’t reach them. The fox looked at the grapes for the last time and looking carefully (it’s astonishing how things are carefully seen when for the last time) exclaimed: “It doesn’t matter: I don’t want them: they are green.” A crow, which was near by on the way to another fable, looked at the fox and then to the grapes and said: “It isn’t strange: the grapes look green because they are green grapes.” The fox didn’t answer, perhaps she didn’t listen, perhaps she was proud, but undoubtedly because foxes cannot talk to crows. Moral: A fox is an animal which hasn’t the gift of speech, but on the other hand, may suffer from daltonism.