The Black Sheep and other fables (1969)
(La Oveja Negra y demás fábulas)
Augusto Monterroso (1921-2003)
79 pages
Exploring human foibles and frailties through stories with animal protagonists has a long history in literature, with perhaps the most famous example being Aesop’s fables, believed to have originated some six centuries BCE. By having characters based on animals, writers can assume that readers will readily visualize the animal characters with a minimum of description, but, more importantly, their animals characters can take on human traits without implying to readers a particular nationality or race.
With his book The Black Sheep and other fables (La Oveja Negra y demás fábulas), Honduran author Augusto Monterroso has followed in this tradition, introducing his intent already in his choice of epigraph:
“Animals appear to be so similar to humans that at times it is impossible to distinguish them.”
(“Los animales se parecen tanto al hombre que a veces es imposible distinguuirlos de éste.”)
And in fact this collection of stories, each from a few paragraphs to a few pages long, mostly feature animals acting out human behaviors, though a few deviate from that motif by, for example, invoking incarnations of good and evil in human form, or involving humans observing animal behavior.That said, these are most assuredly not the morality tales of Aesop. Instead, Monterroso has written deeply satirical stories that poke fun at human habits and behaviors, exploring the weaknesses and blind spots in our thinking and actions that we generally try to pretend aren’t present. He hints at the tone he takes already in the epigraph quoted above: it is attributed to one K’nyo Mobutu, listed in the Index of Names and Places (Ídice onomástico and geográfico) at the back of the book, as an anthropophagus (antropófago); one can find the word anthropophagus described in Merriam-Webster as “man-eater, cannibal.” Thus this evidently fictional character and his ‘profession’ give another level of meaning to Monterroso’s epigraph – the English expression ‘it tastes like chicken’ works in Spanish too...
In the story The Monkey Who Wanted to be a Writer of Satires (El Mono que quiso ser escritor satirico), Monterroso perhaps self-references his choice of using fables of animals as a basis to satirize humans. The titular monkey spends a long time studying human behavior, eventually becoming an expert at the many and varied aspects of it that he observes. But once he decides he has learned enough to begin writing, he struggles to select particular animal species to represent the behavior he wishes to satirize in each story, loathe to insult his friends among whichever species he might choose – certainly an abiding challenge of the satirist.
Several of the more trenchant fables address idiosyncrasies of religious belief. One such story, Faith and Mountains, plays off the ancient conviction that faith can move mountains; in it, Montrorroso takes a literal view of the metaphor, writing that “in the beginning Faith would move mountains only when it was absolutely necessary” (“al principio la Fe movía montañas sólo cuandao era absolutamente necesario”), and so for many millennia the countryside remained stable:
but when Faith began to become more widespread and people found the idea of moving mountains entertaining, they wouldn’t do it without changing the location of the mountains, and it became more and more difficult to find mountains in the place where one had left them the night before…
For that reason, good people abandoned Faith and now the mountains generally stay permanently in their place.
When on a road there is a cave-in from which several travelers die, it’s because someone …has had an ever so brief flickering of faith.
(Pero cuando la Fe comenzó a propargarse y a la gente le pareció divertida la idea de mover montañas, éstas no hacían sino cambiar de sitio, y cada vez era más difícil enconrarlas en el lugar en que uno las había dejado la noche anterior…
La Buena gente prefirió entonces abandoner la Fe y ahora las montañas permanecen por lo general en su sitio.
Cuando en la carretera se produce un derrumbe bajo el cual mueren verios viajeros, es que alguien … tuvo un ligerísimo atisbo de Fe.) (16)
In a similar vein, The Repentant Apostate (El apóstata arrepentido) makes a pointed distinction sure to offend many:
It is said that there was once a catholic (according to some), or a protestant (according to others), who in far off times and assailed by doubts, began to seriously consider becoming again a Christian; but out of fear that his neighbors would believe that he had done it only to appear witty, or to call attention to himself, he renounced his outrageous feebleness and intention.His stories on Good and Evil also take up this theme of people creating enormous distinctions – with often violent implications – out of differences that a dispassionate observe finds minor or even inconsequential.
(Se dice que habiá una vez un católico, según unos, o un protestante, según otros, que en tiempos muy lejanos y asaltado por las dudas comenzó a pensar seriamente en volverse cristiano; pero el temor de que sus vecinos imaginaran que lo hacía para pasar por gracioso, o por llamar la atención, lo hizo renunciar a su extravagante debilidad y propósito.) (29)
Ultimately, however, Monterroso is an equal opportunity satirist, with also scientists being fair game for his focus. In Rabbit and Lion (El Conejo y el León), “a celebrated psychoanalyst” finds himself lost in a jungle and, climbing a tree to find his way out, happens to observe a lion and a rabbit approach one another, unaware of each other’s presence. When the two animals finally cross paths, the lion roars and the rabbit freezes for a moment, looking it in the eye, before running off, and
Upon returning to the city the celebrated psychoanalyst made public … his famous treatise in which he demonstrated that the lion is the most childish and cowardly animal of the jungle, and the rabbit the most valiant and mature: the lion roars and gestures and threatens the universe out of fear; the rabbit notices this, recognizes his own strength and withdraws before it might lose its patience and finish off that outrageous and out of control being, which it understands and which after all it hadn’t done anything to.
De regreso a la ciudad el célebre Psicoanalista publicó … su famoso tratado en que demuestra que el León es el animal más infantile y cobarde de la Selva, y el Conejo el más valiente y maduro: el León ruge y hace gestos y amenaza al Universo movido por el miedo; el Conejo advierte esto, conoce su propia fuerza y se retira antes de perder la paciencia y acabar con aquel ser extravagante y fuera de sí, al que comprende y que después de todo no le ha hecho nada. (10)
Taken together the stories of this collection form a bit of an uneven mix, with some being mere trifles – cute and good for a chuckle, but little more. In many of them, however, Monterroso provides readers with biting commentaries on the human condition; these engaging tales both entertain us and, at the same time, give us pause for thought about the unspoken assumptions and expertly concealed contradictions of our natures and our beliefs.
(Dedicated to Jesús)
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