The Tortoise and the Hare

This article is about Aesop's fable. For other uses, see The Tortoise and the Hare (disambiguation).

"The Tortoise and the Hare", from an edition of Aesop's Fables illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1912

The Tortoise and the Hare is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index. The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. It is itself a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery (rather than doggedness) are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.

An ambiguous story

The story concerns a Hare who ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise. Tired of the Hare's boastful behaviour, the Tortoise challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him. The later version of the story in La Fontaine's Fables (VI.10), while more long-winded, differs hardly at all from Aesop's.

As in several other fables by Aesop, there is a moral ambiguity about the lesson it is teaching. Later interpreters have asserted that it is the proverbial 'the more haste, the worse speed' (Samuel Croxall) or have applied to it the Biblical observation that 'the race is not to the swift' (Ecclesiastes 9.11). In Classical times it was not the Tortoise’s plucky conduct in taking on a bully that was emphasised but the Hare’s foolish over-confidence. An old Greek source comments that 'many people have good natural abilities which are ruined by idleness; on the other hand, sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence.

In the 19th century and after the fable was given satirical interpretations. In the social commentary of Charles H. Bennett's The Fables of Aesop translated into Human Nature (1857), the hare is changed to a thoughtful craftsman prostrate under the foot of a capitalist entrepreneur. Lord Dunsany brings out another view in his "The True History of the Tortoise and the Hare" (1915). There the hare realises the stupidity of the challenge and refuses to proceed any further. The obstinate tortoise continues to the finishing line and is proclaimed the swiftest by his backers. But, continues Dunsany, the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is that very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after. It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest. They sent the Tortoise.

Applications

In Classical times the story was annexed to a philosophical problem by Zeno of Elea in one of many demonstrations that movement is impossible to define satisfactorily. The second of Zeno's paradoxes is that of Achilles and the Tortoise, in which the hero gives the Tortoise a head start in a race. The argument attempts to show that even though Achilles runs faster than the Tortoise, he will never catch up with her because, when Achilles reaches the point at which the Tortoise started, the Tortoise has advanced some distance beyond; when Achilles arrives at the point where the Tortoise was when Achilles arrived at the point where the Tortoise started, the Tortoise has again moved forward. Hence Achilles can never catch the Tortoise, no matter how fast he runs, since the Tortoise will always be moving ahead.

The only satisfactory refutation has been mathematical and since then the name of the fable has been applied to the function described in Zeno's paradox. In mathematics and computer science, the tortoise and the hare algorithm is an alternate name for Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm.

Illustrations of the fable

A 19th-century illustration of La Fontaine's Fables by Jean Grandville

There is a Greek version of the fable but no early Latin version. For this reason it did not begin to appear in printed editions of Aesop's fables until the 16th century, one of the earliest being Bernard Salomon's Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien, mises en Ryme Francoise (1547). Versions followed from the Netherlands (in Dutch, 1567) and Flanders (in French, 1578) but none in English before Francis Barlow's edition of 1667.

Among the many illustrations of the fable, that by the French caricaturist Jean Grandville is novel in portraying the tortoise as running upright. This is also how he is shown in the Walt Disney cartoon version of "The Tortoise and the Hare" (1935). Another departure from the ordinary in Grandville's etching is the choice of a mole (complete with dark glasses) rather than, as usual, a fox as the judge at the finishing line. Auguste Delierre makes the judge a monkey in the 1883 edition of La Fontaine's fables that he illustrated. La Fontaine says in his rhyme that it does not matter who the judge is; his interpreters have taken him at his word.

Outside of book production, there is an early 17th-century oil painting of the fable by the Flemish landscape artist Jan Wildens. The hare enters on the left, racing over an upland road as dawn breaks; the tortoise is nowhere in sight. In the mid-19th century, the French animal painter Philibert Léon Couturier also devoted an oil painting to the fable in which, as in Grandville's illustration, the tortoise is shown racing upright. In modern times there have been two pieces of popular sculpture aimed at children. Nancy Schön's was made to commemorate the centenary of the Boston Marathon in 1996 and is sited in Copley Square, the finishing line for the race. The tortoise is shown determinedly stumping forward while the hare has paused to scratch behind its ear. In the following year a painted steel sculpture by Michael Browne and Stuart Smith was set up near the cross-country finish line at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The hare is mounted on the tortoise's shell and appears to be trying to leap over him.

The fable has also been illustrated on stamps from several countries. These include:

• Cyprus, in which cartoon characters are depicted on a set of five €0.34 stamps (2011)
• Dahomey, on a set commemorating the third centenary of La Fontaine's death in which it figures on the 10 franc stamp.
• Dominica, on a 2 cent stamp for Easter 1984, picturing a Disney tortoise carrying Easter eggs as it overtakes the sleeping hare
• France issued surcharged Red Cross stamps in 1978 on which the fable appeared on the 1 franc + 0.25 denomination. It was also included in the 1995 strip of six 2.80 franc stamps commemorating the third centenary of the author's death.
• Greece issued a 1987 set illustrating Aesop's fables, including the tortoise and the hare on the 130 drachma stamp
• Hungary issued a set in 1980 with this fable on the 4 forint stamp
• The Maldives issued a 1990 set in which Disney characters act out the fables; the tortoise and the hare appear on the 15 laree stamp
• Monaco issued a composite 50 centime stamp on the 350th anniversary of La Fontaine's birth in 1971, on which this fable appears
• Sri Lanka issued a 5 rupee stamp for Child’s broadcasting day 2007 showing the contestants at the starting line

Musical versions

Many allusions to the fable in musical titles are of limited or no relevance, but two instrumental versions may be noted. The one by Yellow Jackets jazz quartet was recorded on their Politics album in 1988 The Anglo-Irish band Flook's title is on their Haven album (2005)

There have also been several musical settings of Aesop's fable:

• In Mabel Wood Hill's Aesop's Fables Interpreted Through Music (New York, 1920)
• Vincent Persichetti included it as the third piece in his Fables for narrator and orchestra (Op. 23, 1943)
• A poetic version set for children's voices and piano by Edward Hughes in his Songs from Aesop's Fables (1965)
• The cellist Evalyn Steinbock's setting for violin, cello and narrator in 1979
• As the first of Anthony Plog's Aesop’s Fables for narrator, piano and horn (1989/93)
• Among Scott Watson's Aesop's Fables for narrator and orchestral accompaniment (1999)
• A setting for solo voice by Lucian Cristofor Tugui (2006)
• As one of the five pieces in Bob Chilcott's Aesop's Fables for piano and choir (2008)
• A setting for a cappella choir by Darmon Meader (2009)
• As one of David Edgar Walther's ‘short operatic dramas’, composed in 2009

Later adaptations

There have been a number of film versions of the fable, although some have taken liberties with the original story line.

In Alexander Sumarokov's Russian version (loosely based on La Fontaine's), the tortoise and the hare race on the road from Saint Petersburg to Moscow; the hare is "three months or more" late with his departure, and upon reaching Moscow finds that the tortoise has bested him by three days.

There were early animated cartoons in France (1920) and the US (1921). The fable was adapted into a Silly Symphonies cartoon also titled The Tortoise and the Hare by Walt Disney Productions in 1934/1935 which was followed in 1941 by the Merrie Melodies sequel Tortoise Beats Hare and two others of decreasingly relevant significance. Encyclopædia Britannica Films followed with a dramatized version of Aesop's fable starring live animals, including an owl, a fox, a goose, a rooster, a raccoon, and a hare. This was a 1947 production in black and white with narrated voice-over.

In 1952 the model animator Ray Harryhausen began a version of the fable before moving over to more lucrative work on monster movies. Young enthusiasts Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero later helped Harryhausen complete "The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare", having refurbished the original puppets and, under Harryhausen's guidance, completed the film in 2002. A feature in this is that the hare drops off to sleep as a result of taking a big meal near the end of the race, so allowing the tortoise to win. The same situation had appeared in Georges de la Grandière's 1960s cartoon version of the fable, Le Lièvre et la tortue.

Folk variants

The many other variants of the story in oral folk tradition appear worldwide and are classed as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 275. In most of these there is a race between unequal partners but most often brain is matched against brawn and the race is won by means of trickery. Broadly this is of two types: either the slower animal jumps on the other's back or tail and hops off at the end when the creature turns round to see where his challenger has got to, or else he is deceived by lookalikes substituting themselves along the course.

Tales with a similar theme emphasizing doggedness have been recorded in Native American culture. Hummingbird and Crane agree to race from one ocean to the other. Though Hummingbird flies faster, he stops at night to sleep. Crane, however, flies overnight and is overtaken by Hummingbird later and later during the day, at length coming in first. The ultimate prize differs between versions and includes choice of habitat, the love of a girl, or the right to cut the other down to size.

See also

• Achilles and the Tortoise
• Festina lente
• Law of the handicap of a head start
• The Tortoise and the Monkey

External links

• 15th-20th century book illustrations online