The Boy Who Cried Wolf has a long history. The story was originated in Greece and wasn’t translated into English until 1867 where it was apart of Aesop’s Fables. This is a classic story that teaches a wonderful lesson on responsibility and being truthful. In this story a boy was given the position to look after the villages sheep. Although, this boy was very immature and irresponsible. He would cry out down to the villagers alerting them that there was a wolf attacking the sheep. All the villagers then came out to his aid. They soon found out that there was actually no wolf and that he was lying to them. He would do this once again the next night. The villagers once again came to his rescue thinking there actually was a wolf attacking the sheep. Again they realize there is no wolf and that he was playing a joke on them. The last night the boy was watching the sheep he again called out that there was a wolf. This time though there actually was a wolf, but since the last two times there wasn’t the villagers didn’t show up to his aid. They thought that he was just joking around again. He wasn’t. This time there was a wolf and the wolf attacked the sheep. The villagers later found the boy weeping by himself due to the event he experienced. This lead to teach the boy not lie to people because eventually they will begin not to believe him and they will lose their trust in you to be a responsible and mature child person. This was the main message this story tries to get across to the readers.
This story tries to teach children to be responsible and truthful to others. The way the original tale has it is it uses the human emotion of fear to get this message across to the boy. It also portrays wolves to be a negative and fearful creature. When I started planning my adaptation I wanted to keep the idea of teaching lessons through fear, but not have that negative portrayal of the wolf. So I decided to tell the story from the wolf’s point of view. In addition to changing up the point of view from the original, I also made the wolf a positive and genuine character. Making the wolf a more positive and caring character added to one of the messages that I was trying to get across in this version of the tale. It helps shine light on the problems we are facing in this world today and how we could go about fixing them.
By adapting my tale and telling the story from the wolf’s perspective and having this wolf be a positive figure in the story seriously aided in bringing out the main message I wanted to get across. First off, by telling it from the perspective of the wolf, it helped with the plot of my tale. I was able to show the life of the boy and the cause of why he acted the way he did. By doing this, it gave a background to the boys character and helped shape an underlying message in the story. That message being how you raise and treat your child while parenting will have a major effect on the way they act throughout their life. To have the wolf observe the way the boy was parented and give us that background information helped portray the techniques in parenting. Parenting isn’t easy, but you should always be there for your child no matter what and show them immense love and care. That love and care ultimately was not given to the boy at first until he experienced the event with the wolf. This leads me to why have the wolf be a caring and loving character for the most part. This is because I wanted to portray the message of positivity. In this crazy world we live in there are so many negative events happening around us. When you turn on the news, the majority of the stories they are telling us are horrible and negative events. Whether it be a school shooting, police brutality, domestic violence, or whatever the case may be, it is almost always negative. What I wanted to do with this adaptation was have it be positive and portray the message of treating people with kindness and spreading love. Even a small act of kindness can have a major impact on someone and spreading this little by little can make this world a safer and happier place.
Although the theme of the original tale is till in my adaptation, it isn’t the main one which was my goal. I wanted to adapt it in a way where I could still maintain that message, but add two of my own more positive messages that I wanted to get across as well. By reading the excerpt from Hutcheon and creating an adaptation of my own it made me realize how many things in our world are adapted and what these adaptations can do to the plot and the overall theme. Hutcheon believes that adaptations are their own creations. Even though they are based off of an original story, they should be treated as their own piece of art. She stated this in her writing Beginning To Theorize Adaptation by saying “a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing” (Hutcheon 9). That shows that she believes adaptations of another piece of work are just as special and just as unique as the original. This helped shaped my thinking of adaptation because I never really believed it until I created an adaptation of my own. Once I started creating my own, I understood what she was saying. Even though I still have the basic idea of the original tale, my adaptation allowed for a different plot and it even added in two extra messages that I was trying to portray. That being said Hutcheon made me realize that adaptations should be treated as their own unique piece of art and that adaptations can have an effect on the overall plot and the theme of the original piece.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf 