Chicken Little & The Boy Who Cried Wolf

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” That refrain is what I remember most from hearing the story of Chicken Little as a child. “Chicken Little” or “Henny Penny,” as she is sometimes called, is the bird who feels something drop on her head and comes to the hasty conclusion that a calamitous event is about to occur – the sky is about to break up or explode above her. For whatever reason, Chicken Little believes that the object hitting her head is a piece of the sky, and she feels compelled to alert others to the danger that she expects in the near future.

I don’t know how old Chicken Little is at the time of the incident, but because of the adjective “Little,” I think it’s fair to assume she is on the young side. Young, maybe impressionable as well. Some might even say “ditzy.” Certainly not very wise about the universe or the physical properties of the earth and the solar system.

I’ve thought about Chicken Little lately because I’ve been pondering what compels people to share their thoughts and fears with those around them. Sometimes people reveal a thought or a detail of their lives to another person; sometimes they proclaim their ideas to a group. Some people need to share frequently. But there are some people who rarely speak. It is not always clear why some people speak often and speak up and why others keep their thoughts to themselves. Beyond the issue of introversion versus extroversion, there must be key situations or circumstances which compel individuals to give voice to their ideas or worries. I wonder when it is that we are mostly likely to speak?  Beyond that wonder, I’ve also worried that I’ve been a bit too Chicken Little-ish in recent months.

The version of this story that I heard as a child left me with a three-fold impression that has developed further over time. Chicken Little’s cry constitutes the sounding of an alarm. In fact, this cry is one syllable short of the reported Paul Revere cry, “The British are coming!” The reaction I first experienced when hearing about the cry was related to the incredible harm Chicken Little appears to sense in the offing as she adopts a doomsday ethos. In simple terms, Chicken Little has a message to communicate; in. extreme terms, she has a warning to deliver.

In order to hear this message, Chicken Little’s audience must silence the static and mundane noise of everyday life and let her message ring out clear into the countryside. My second childhood observation, probably that of an older child, such as an adolescent, was rooted in the gossipy nature of Chicken Little’s message. There is a spread-like-wildfire quality to Chicken Little’s frantic delivery: HAVE YOU HEARD? The repetition of the message carries something unseemly, almost tawdry with its insistence. When I reflect on an earlier self’s observation of this aspect of Chicken Little’s warning, I experience a tinge of frustration that this chicken is a woman, at least in the version to which I was exposed as a child. And I worry that I subconsciously adopted a stereotypical view of women as the primary purveyors of gossip. I don’t like considering this possibility.

But my adult self has recognized a third aspect of Chicken Little’s message delivery that goes beyond the gossipy nature and gets at the mundane noise I mentioned above. For Chicken Little to sound the alarm, others must choose to be quiet. Or in a more sinister light, others must be silenced.

Because Chicken Little must be allowed to sound the alarm.

Like Chicken Little, the young male in the Aesop’s Fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” can be viewed as a bit of an alarmist. The various versions of the fable present a range of reasons for the Boy’s lapse in judgment, but all of them tend to the frivolous. The Boy has a tedious job. He is described in some versions as “bored,” finding life “very dull.” Some versions describe his decision to raise an alarm as a “plan to amuse himself.”

When I compare the two characters, I must admit that I lay more culpability at the feet of the Boy for his lack of responsibility. His job is to watch the sheep. It’s a significant responsibility, watching the sheep. He’s been placed in charge and bears the burden of this charge, but he also has a measure of recourse. The villagers have told him that if he faces a threat from a wolf, he can call for help. He just needs to sound the alarm.

For whatever reason, he makes the decision to summon the troops and call “Wolf” when none has been sighted. Not once, but twice. When I envision the scene in which the villagers arrive after his first summons, I imagine the Boy with a sick look on his face as he realizes he’ll have to fess up. Yet most printed versions of this Aesop Fable claim that the Boy laughs when the villagers come. How can he laugh?  Laughing is so cavalier and insensitive. In addition, laughing so boldly in their faces seems rather foolish. I like to imagine an alternative version of the story in which he at least pleads to an advanced case of anxiety and says he needs to practice his summons because he wants to make sure his voice is loud enough. I want to believe that his call is prompted by fear –  that he worries about whether the villagers will come at all – whether they value him enough to put him first.

As the reader of the story, I find it even harder to imagine his face the second time the villagers arrive. They really believed him. Again. And again, he merely laughs. This time, the villagers must be both angry and disgusted, feeling more than anything else, that the silly boy does not value their time or their industry.

So we have these two alarmists, the chicken and the Boy. Why am I so interested in them?  Because I want to understand what causes them to raise their alarms, and not just what causes them to create a furor but what prompts them simply to utter their concerns in the first place. Chicken Little delivers a complete, full sentence, twice: “The sky is falling.” The boy calls out one simple word, “Wolf.”

I want to understand them and their impetus to speak, because even though I’ve lived the bulk of my life as a steadfast introvert, I’ve had those moments when I’ve sounded an alarm or talked too loudly. I cringe to use the phrase, but on occasion I’ve even “drawn attention to myself.” On one hand, as an introvert who has, in many ways, grown more introverted with my cancer diagnosis, I know how easy it is to fall silent, too weary to contribute to the conversation or too reluctant to start a story with twists and turns that get lost in the translation, lost in the world of quick news bites and tweets. On the other hand, as an individual with terminal cancer that is not currently progressing, I’ve felt an odd shame at sharing even the most minimal of details about the odd turns of my diagnosis, thinking that I should be thankful to be alive when so many others are not, and for that reason, I don’t deserve to speak.

Last fall, after a stressful series of events, my body reacted strongly to that stress with various ailments, and I became convinced that I was dying, convinced that the odd findings on my CT scans were proof that I’d finally reached that dreaded spot on my journey – the beginning of the end. I gave voice to that fear. I said aloud to several people, “I think I have started the process of dying.”

And when my quarterly oncology visit did not produce the proclamation that I expected, I felt at first the rush of relief and gratitude for being granted even more time than I’ve already had. But after that rush passed, I immediately felt shame at having voiced my fear aloud.

Really, though, haven’t I given voice to that fear over and over again in a variety of ways, since I was first diagnosed in November of 2012?

The plight of the metastatic cancer sufferers and temporary survivors who take a miracle drug to live longer is that we can never really know exactly what the true message of our health is, and feeling like imposters, we wonder how often or how loudly we should therefore share that message.

“Telling begins in an atmosphere of urgency,” the authors of Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction claim. I used the book over a decade ago to teach a class, and I’m sure I embraced the quote by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall because I needed to take heed of the advice for my own writing. I have learned that in my life, as in my writing, I do not often use the voice of urgency to deliver my messages, whatever they are. Yet from time to time, when I am overwhelmed by the stresses of my terminal diagnosis with its absence of end dates, I become the Chicken Little, whose world seems to be falling apart. “My sky is falling!” I cry out. “Help me, please. My sky is falling.”  Or I am the Boy. “Wolf!” I cry out. Then, again: “Wolf!”

I don’t laugh when people come running; it’s not funny, this fear of my impending death that I live with every day. And I want to make it clear that I don’t gain power from “telling” my message with any urgency. There is no power or control in this telling. My fear is just a weight that grows on my chest, and I need to push it off from time to time. To tell it.

I have other fears I live with as well, unrelated to my own life. I fear that we are living in a type of hyped-up urgency, with intense messages flying into the airwaves every day. Some of us will simply learn to speak louder, more forcefully, or more often, deeming each one of our messages to be urgent. Others will grow silent, feeling their messages unworthy of the “urgent” label, unable to decipher what it is that they most need to articulate. There is an atmosphere of urgency, yes, but how many voices can speak in this atmosphere? Whose voice will be heard? Whose will be drowned out?

Perhaps we need not speak or tell at all; perhaps we need to listen.

–Thanks to Christine Jason and The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia, for allowing me to photograph the chicken in the photo above!