Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Little Red Hen

In the tale, The Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat, and asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it. However, no animal will volunteer to help her.

At each further stage (harvest, threshing, milling the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread), the hen again asks for help from the other animals, but again she gets no assistance.

Finally, the hen has completed her task, and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous non-participants eagerly volunteer. However, she declines their help, stating that no one aided her in the preparation work, and eats it with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else.

The moral of this story is that those who show no willingness to contribute to an end product do not deserve to enjoy the end product: "if any man will not work, neither let him eat."[1]

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