As I work to improve my Spanish language skills before moving to Mexico in September, I’ve started reading the Spanish editions of many of the stories I enjoyed as a child. Most of the stories bring back wonderful memories of having the stories read to me, by my mother, grandmother, or a beloved teacher at school. However, there was one story that I found to be more troubling than I remember – The Three Billy Goats’ Gruff.
The story is apparently a traditional Norwegian folktale about three goats who want to cross a bridge in order to reach a lush meadow. According to tradition, the story is supposed to be about using cleverness and teamwork to overcome danger, however, reading it as an adult, I came away with a rather different and more cynical message.
Another story, The Three Little Pigs, seems to provide a clearer picture of using teamwork to overcome a bully in the form of the “Big Bad Wolf.” Each pig constructs a house to the best of his ability and the pig with the brick house gladly welcomes his two brothers in after the wolf destroys their homes of straw and sticks. The willingness to embrace his newly homeless brothers enables the three to thwart the evil intentions of a bloviating bully in wolf’s clothing. However, I didn’t receive the same feeling of camaraderie and mutual care among the Billy goats and here are the reasons why.
First, the two stories begin on entirely different notes. In The Three Little Pigs, we see a mother pig, who despite her best efforts, is unable to adequately provide for her children, and so, when they come of age, she sends them out into the world to make their own fortunes. In contrast, The Three Billy Goats Gruff begins this way, “Once upon a time there were three Billy-Goats Gruff; Little Billy-Goat, Middle-Sized Billy Goat and Great Big Billy-Goat, who lived in a field in a green valley. They loved to eat sweet grass, but sadly their field was now brown and barren because they were greedy goats and they’d eaten every last blade of grass.”
Perhaps my opinion is colored from having lived in an era in which climate change and over consumption threaten the future of the earth; but right at the start I feel much less sympathetic to the plight of the goats, since it is their greed and insatiable hunger for more which leads them into contact with the so-called “evil” troll. In the first story, the wolf is clearly the villain, since he pursues the pigs, who are just trying to live their best lives; while in the second story, the troll is simply minding his own business when his home is invaded by the greedy goats.
The second problematic aspect is in how the goats deal with the troll. The three little pigs clearly work together to defeat the wolf, but when confronted by the troll, instead of going back and formulating a plan together, Little Billy Goat Gruff and Middle-Sized Bill Goat Gruff, basically throw the next largest of the three under the bus by saying, “I’m just Little/Middle-Sized Billy Goat Gruff. Why don’t you wait for my brother? He’s bigger than me and much tastier?” The first two goats seem to be more concerned with enjoying the grass in the meadow than with warning the remaining goat(s) about the danger which lay ahead.
Next, the Middle-Sized and Big Billy Goats Gruff seem motivated not by care for one another, but again by greed and jealousy. “The other goats saw Little Bill Goat Gruff eating the fresh green grass and were jealous because they wanted some too.”
Finally, the differences in the methods used to defeat the villains in each story are very different as well. The little pigs cooperate to make the fire and put on the boiling pot of water to trap the wolf as he tries to enter the brick home through the chimney. Conversely, Big Billy Goat Gruff simply uses brute force to push the troll into the water. Yet what if Big Billy Goat Gruff hadn’t been strong enough to overcome the troll? Would Little and Middle-Sized Billy Goats Gruff would have mourned the loss of their brother or simply gone on happily munching the fresh grass, with a “too bad, so sad, but more for us” attitude?
As I watch the United States descend into warring factions and become decreasingly united every day, I can’t help but wonder if we are now more like the Billy Goats Gruff than the Three Little Pigs. Rather than identifying our common enemy and collaborating to defeat him or her in a decisive way, too many of us simply try to ensure that we get our own share of the sweet, fresh grass with no concern for what happens to anyone else.
In retrospect, I no longer believe that the troll is the villain in the story. If the troll had been as greedy and self-serving as the Billy Goats were, he would have simply eaten the first goat when he had the chance and then dared the others to cross the bridge at their own peril.
I would like to see a sequel to the Billy Goats Gruff story. What will happen with the grass in the new meadow is destroyed by the Billy Goats’ greedy consumerism? Will they begin to fight among themselves and continue to throw each other to the wolves and/or trolls? The Three Billy Goats Gruff – Part 2 could be an important cautionary tale for what is happening to our country when we stop working together and caring for each other. I fear that no one will “live happily ever after” in that story.
quietlyradical 