To the tortured Fishes
Short Story:
In the small village where I was born, far, far away from here, there was a beautiful serene pond with cool, crystal-clear water, and the village pond was always full of fish. Each and every villager would go to the pond every day to take a fish, and it had been this way for centuries and centuries. There was always enough fish for everyone to have a fish, and no villager ever thought to take more than one, for that was beyond their needs. Furthermore, every villager always took his or her daily fish, as it was commonly known in the village that a fish a day invited no surprise visits from the benevolent and wise village medicine man. Life in the village stayed in balance, and no one ever thought to disrupt the balance by taking more or less than his or her share of fish. One day, a man from a distant land, a traveler, wandered through the village and was welcomed as a friend by the villagers. He was invited to eat and drink and rejoice with them, and it was so.
He was given the finest and most luxurious tent for the night, for it was custom to offer the best tent to the guests in the village, so that all peoples, far and wide, would know of the villagers’ wonderful and kind treatment of travelers and passers-by. However, this particular traveler took a great, secret, and uncontrollable liking to the fish in the cool village pond, and soon, greed and discontent began to bubble and brew in his spirit. The traveler quickly conceived a wicked plan to steal all the fish from the pond under the cover of the night and run away with them. Indeed, that night, he emptied the pond of all its fish and stuffed them into many baskets, and he fled into the darkness, with all the baskets and the fish stuffed into them.
The basket-laden traveler ran away from the village as fast as he could. But, he soon found that all the fish he was carrying were very heavy, and he grew weary, and he started to slow in his pace. So, the man started to drop the fish baskets one by one as he ran, and as he dropped each one, he began to run a little faster. Also, whenever each fish basket fell to the ground, the fish inside that basket spilled out and started to flip and flop back to the cool pond in the village. Despite his increasing weariness, the fish-thieving traveler still kept running and running, because he falsely believed that the villagers were chasing him and he did not want to be caught.
But the villagers had been alerted to the missing fish by the very first fish that had already flopped its way back to the pond. Thus, they were much too busy catching the other fish that were flopping back to the pond and returning them to the cool, clear water. The weary traveler ran on and on and on throughout the night until he eventually realized that no one was chasing him at all. He paused his run to take a short rest.
He had run a very long way, and though no one was chasing him, he was also very, very hungry. Unfortunately for him, he had dropped his last fish basket a long while back on the trail. And, the fish from that basket had long since begun their flippy-floppy journey back to the village pond. So, the man sighed and he cursed his hunger—then cursed himself, and he died from his hunger.
The end.
Appendix
I chose to write a short story that explores the philosophical themes of balance and moderation, along with the destructive consequences of greed—often blinding individuals to their own downfall. We see in the story that the traveler, driven by this irresistible want and already well-treated by the villagers, disrupts the natural balance they share and later pays for it with his life. And, alright sure, readers might initially see this as a happy ending, where those who exploit another culture are always dealt with or punished, but that is neither the story’s intent nor the reality. However, this point does discourage one from pursuing such actions, as, by doing so, it leads to negative consequences. One might also say that truth eventually reveals itself as the burden of falsehood becomes too heavy to bear, and I believe there are elements in the story that reflect this, specifically the idea that greed may lead to sacrificing all else. What I really mean is that, while a similar argument could be made through “philosophical straight talk” (e.g., Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics – where greed directly contrasts with moderation in virtue), literature allows for a more personal and subjective interpretation, making it both more relevant and memorable to the reader. Jacques Derrida, a postmodernist French philosopher, often emphasizes this with his ‘Deconstructionist argument,’ where texts never have fixed meanings, and rather the interplay of interpretation is what creates it. But, this presents an issue, as interpretation can sometimes overshadow what was originally meant by the text, whereas philosophy tends to lay out its ideas more explicitly and clearly. For instance, take Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, many believe the message is about choosing the unconventional or differing path, but it’s actually mocking the indecision we impose on ourselves. Both roads are essentially the same, yet we try to justify or reason one choice over the other for our own comfort. Therefore, while the same idea can be expressed through philosophy, I believe it holds greater values when internalized, the author’s perspective is considered, and it is explored through literature.