Department of English Gymnasium Steglitz Berlin |
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Essays on James Thurber´s "The Seal Who Became Famous" |
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| Arrogance often results in failure | Everybody should be happy with the abilities he has | |
Arrogance often results in failure
I
think it means something like: “Whom God gave no wings should not try to fly!” You
should make the best of your talents and be satisfied with them. You should not long for
other things that were not meant for you. The seal should not have been performing in the
circus, but he should have been swimming in the sea instead. The seal´s wish was to
change his life, but this change was also damaging to him. In the end he died because he
forgot his original ability. I think sometimes it is better to accept the things you are
able to do. The seal was so conceited and arrogant that when an article reported about a famous seal in the United States, he thought it was written about him. He wanted to show his friends what he could do and to show them that he was better than they. He also bragged about his new things from the city. The story shows that arrogance often results in something bad. I like the story because I believe it is true that everybody has got a special talent. There is always something that you are able to do. I believe it is important that everyone tries to contribute his abilities to his community and to make the best of them - so life will not be boring either. However, I guess it is also important not to limit oneself only to one`s natural abilities but to also discover other talents or interests. (C.S. 11c, June 2009)
The fable “The seal who became famous” by James Thurber is about a seal who wants to be different from all other seals. He wants to do something better than the other seals. But when he realizes that seals just have the ability to swim and that they all do it in the same way he swims away to find something special the other seals cannot do. He ends up in a circus and stays there for more than two years. When he comes back to his animals of the same species he shows them that he can balance on the rocks wearing clothes for humans. Afterwards he asks the other seals to show him something special they can do. But because they all can just swim they go swimming. He himself goes in the water to the other seals, too, but he has forgotten how to swim over the years so he cannot keep himself above the water. James Thurber explicitly added a moral to the fable: “Whom God has equipped with flippers should not monkey around with zippers.” I think that he wants to express with this moral that God once created humans and animals and everything else with a specific thought how they should look like and what their abilities should be. This seal is not happy about the one ability to swim. It seems as if he is in a competition with the other seals. He wants to be different and does not accept how God has created him or seals in general: Spending the whole time of their life with swimming as something special for them. But as it is said in the moral: You should be satisfied with the things God gave you. Each animal has something different it can do. So therefore he should not try to be special and do more things than others. That is the reason why he dies in the end. Because he does not concentrate anymore on the ability he has but wants to learn another thing. Although the biggest mistake the seal does is to think that the ability God gave him to swim is natural. He thinks that this is something they will always be able to do and concentrates on balancing in the circus. That shows that you can do something else apart from the thing you are supposed to do but you have to do everything permanently because you will forget about it otherwise. Summarized I interpret the story in the way that everybody should be happy with the ability he has and should not try to be able to do something else because other people or animals are the species for doing this. But this thought can be interpreted in two ways because of Catholics and Protestants: Catholics always accept what God created and are happy about this, whereas Protestants are happy with this, too, but always try to reach more. So my interpretation would just work out with a Catholic thought behind the moral and not with a Protestant thought, because they would do the same as the seal. The second part of the moral is more directly connected with the story. It is said that they “should not monkey around with zippers.” I think “Zippers” stands for the clothes the seal wore when he came back from the circus. That again comes back to the thought that God created everything. In this case God equipped seals with flippers and a thick enough skin that they do not need clothes to keep warm. But because the seal wants to be different he wears clothes even if clothes are not created to be used to swim with, which is another reason why the seal dies in the end. I think in this story everything attributes to God’s creation of heaven and earth. But I also think that it really makes clear that it is not necessary to be different from the same species because they are supposed to be equal. And it also shows that nobody should be jealous of somebody because they can do something else, but not the thing they can do. So everything is created so that the abilities are replenishing life for a good working planet. (F.S. 11c, June 2009)
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