Numskull And The Rabbit Analysis

The “Panchatantra” is a book that was written to originally teach princes how to rule their kingdom and how they should live. In the “Panchatantra” the story of the “Numskull and the Rabbit” is a story to teach princes several lessons. One lesson that might be taken from this story is that it is wiser to defend a fortress than to attack it. Another lesson is that someone does not have to be strong to defeat their opponent. In this story a lion is the strongest in the forest and would go on rampages and eat all the animals he could find. In the end of the story, a rabbit tricks the lion by telling him that there is another lion in the forest. The rabbit leads the lion to a well; the lion sees his reflection and jumps in to attack and dies. …show more content…
This theme is also represented as a metaphor to the lion's cave. The cave is like a fortress to the lion story and that it is smarter to defend it. When Numskull heard about the other lion, he decided to leave his “fortress” and attack; in the end he died, which further proves the point that it is wiser to defend a fortress than to attack. Another theme presented in this story is that someone does not have to be strong to defeat their opponent as shown by the rabbit when he tricks the lion into jumping into the well. The subject or foundation of this story is the story of talking animals used to teach young princes life principals but the deeper the story is read into, the more themes it …show more content…
Unfortunately because the story was translated any intended alliteration or other similar literary devices would have been left out. The story does use repetition, metaphors, personification and imagery. Repetition is used in several instances in this story mostly before the italicised words like “As the saying goes” or “for the proverb says.” Also the reason the words from the proverbs and scripture were italicized was most likely used to put emphasis on them and to show the greater meaning in the context of the story. The italicized words were used as metaphors to what is happening in the story or as examples of what a character should be doing. An example of this is when Numskull was killing all the animals in the forest and the animals approach him and tell him a proverb about only tasting his kingdom a bit at a time. They're many examples of imagery in this story an example from the text is the sense of sight and sound as the lion “licked his chops.” This narrative uses many literary techniques to convey the important ideals of the lesson taught in this