Dueling Metaphors: The Tortoise and the Hare

Creating battlegrounds out of metaphor.

Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and the Hare" is a classic demonstration of a lesson delivered through the comparison of two metaphors - a lesson of political proportions...

 

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Aesop’s popular fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” is a great example of the use of metaphor for purposes of comparison.  Here, two distinct personality types compete, with the winner living slow and stable over the loser’s fast and impetuous lifestyle. We’ll examine what makes these two figures work so well together, and find out why Aesop may have been quietly spreading political propaganda all these centuries. 

The hare has often been linked to youthful virility and physical vitality. Close cousin rabbit became spokesbunny for the Energizer battery company. Playboy magazine uses the rabbit as a playful sex symbol. Leporids are sprinters by nature, applying short bursts in unpredictable directions with the intent to thwart impatient predators. You just can’t catch that wascawy wabbit. 

The tortoise, on the other hand, is linked to age and tiredness. Heading to sunny spots in it’s mobile home, this creature never leaves its stubborn shell; a form of portable stagnation. We use the turtle image of lasting toughness in our marketing – Turtle Wax; as a symbol of aging in the credits for the show “One Foot in the Grave”; and in cartooning as the reliable coffee table in the cartoon The Flintstones. Would the wax have sold so well if it were named after eggshells? Would a grave really work as a symbol of aging? Could Dino do so well as a makeshift table? 

So we seem to agree with Aesop’s basic characterization of these two creatures. Even while the Chinese zodiac  refers to the rabbit as reserved and thoughtful, on closer inspection this only seems apt when the rabbit enjoys solitude, which doesn't apply to our race setting, where opponents vie for importance in a public spectacle. 

Like in a presidential race. 

The rabbit’s youthful impudence in this fable is matches Conservative critical rhetoric directed towards the Liberals. The Liberals are demographically youth-rich, and want social change, which is typically chastised for being short-sighted and naïve by Conservatives. The Conservatives are older, typically opposed to social progress, and are accused by Liberals of being “cold-blooded” and “old-fashioned”. The race between the tortoise and the hare, with the tortoise as victor, could have as easily been a piece of Conservative pre-election propaganda as it was a lesson in life from elder to junior. 

"If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." Winston Churchill 

This is eerily similar to the division we see in the essay “The Politics of Inertia”, with the Hare’s energetic, young-male playboy Yin versus the still, old, maternal homebody Tortoise’s Yang. Change versus stability. In this case, Aesop successfully bets the farm on the glue horse, proving that the long shot to the youthful mind is a sure thing among seniors.

The dichotomy created for the allegory “The Tortoise and the Hare” demonstrates the effective use of metaphor as a platform for comparison. Two anthropomorphized creatures compete for superiority, with the tortoise victor awarded a soupçon of fame, while the loser hare stews in his own disgrace, having failed to heed his elder's jurisprudence on matters of effective racing strategies. 

“Slow and steady wins the race”, concluded Aesop. A lesson served by dueling metaphors, and a would-be Conservative election platform, written some 2500 years ago. Perhaps this story could be aptly renamed “The Elephant and the Donkey”.

 

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