“The Ant and the Grasshopper”

By: Joseph Jacobs

What a Reader Is Asked to Know

About Life

• What a grasshopper is, what an ant is, what winter is, what summer is, what corn is, what it means to store food, what it means to prepare ahead of time, what “toiling and moiling” means, why food is necessary
• How unlikely it is for a grasshopper and an ant to talk like humans

About Language

• Why words such as “Ant” and “Grasshopper” might be capitalized
• How to determine who is speaking in a text
• How to read in terms of understanding the punctuation and grammar

About Literature

• Reading about the actions of two different insects can teach a lesson that applies to everyday life in an entertaining way
• What a fable teaches readers at the end of a story

What a Reader Is Asked to Do

• Understand that this is a short story
• Understand that this is a fable where at the end the characters and the readers learn a lesson

Who is the implied reader of the text? What reader might know these things? What reader might be moved to do what is asked of them to do?

The implied readers of this text are children. The language used in “The Ant and The Grasshopper” is written in a story format that is short and simple. By using insects instead of humans in the fable this story becomes a more entertaining story for children. In the story the Ant works hard to store away food in the summer to prepare for the winter while the Grasshopper passes its time leisurely because there is plenty of food at the time. While fables are written in such a way for children to understand, this fable can easily have adults as the implied readers. If fables are written for children, then it is the adults that create this lesson that “it is best to prepare for the days of necessity” (Jacobs). This lesson is a universal idea that children and adults can learn from. Adults input this idea through a story to teach children.
Jacobs, Joseph. “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” The Ant and the Grasshopper. Aesop. 1909-14. Fables. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14, 27 Mar. 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2015. <http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/36.html>.