THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER
Classification. “You are right,” says Mr. O’Brien, “about ‘The Whale and the Grasshopper.’ It is a sort of fable and like the other sketches in my book it was written for the sake of the philosophy and humor. The starting point of the narrative was the remark of Padna Dan ‘As the Whale said to the Grasshopper,’ which I considered a good title, and accordingly wrote the phantasy.”
Read as a sort of parallel, Emerson’s “The Mountain and the Squirrel.” What is the difference in the mental attitude of the two authors?
Setting. Why is such a fable particularly well set near Castlegregory on a June morning? Note the intensifying of the setting by means of dialect. Would the place be realized without the Irish speech? Study the selective processes used to make the dialect easy to understand and yet distinctly characteristic of the Green Isle.
Characters. Standish McNeill and Felix O’Dowd seem to be real people,—at the very beginning, because of their names. The writer who is less careful would have endowed them with Mike or Pat. How are they kept up from start to finish as real? Why, for example, do you know they took that walk? What characteristic (at once Celtic and individual) of Standish enables him to “put across” so vividly a yarn which one knows all along can be only fable?
General Methods. Mr. O’Brien states that he does not know how much he believes in or practices technical distinctions. “Writing, I think, is the art that must evolve out of ourselves. I began life as an artist and specialized in sculpture, but finding there were things I could not express through such a medium I took to writing. When I am impressed by some important event, it fashions itself in story or drama form in my mind, without any conscious effort on my part, and when I feel intelligent—which is not often—I write.”