The Ant and the Grasshopper

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The Ant and the Grasshopper, also known as The Grasshopper and the Ant or The Grasshopper and the Ants, is a fable attributed to Aesop that gives a moral lesson about hard work and preparation. It concerns a grasshopper who spends the warm months singing away while the ant (or ants in some editions) work to store up food for winter. When the winter does come, the famished grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger. The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:

Idleness brings want.

[edit] Alternate versions

Bowdlerized, happier versions of the fable show the ants taking pity and giving the grasshopper some food.

In a 1934 animated short subject produced by Walt Disney, the Queen of the Ants decrees that the grasshopper may stay in the ant colony, but he must play his fiddle in return for his room and board. He agrees to this arrangement, and the ant tunnels become a grand ballroom where all the ants happily dance to the music of the grasshopper, who finally learns that he needs to make himself useful.

Don Ameche recalls an alternate version in a sauna in the film Things Change, where the grasshopper eats the ant in the end.

Elements of the fable were loosely adapted as part of the storyline of the Pixar film A Bug's Life. In this instance, though, there are multiple grasshoppers, and they act as Mafia-like tyrants who demand a tribute of food from the ant colony.

The Ant and the Grasshopper was made into a song by Leon Rosselson in the 1970s. The song tells the story much as Aesop did.

Author Toni Morrison wrote the 2003 children's book "Who's Got Game?: The Ant or the Grasshopper?" in which the old fable is given a new spin in order to provoke a discussion about the importance of art. The grasshopper represents the artisan. Some times the Leo Lionni book "Frederick" touches upon similar issues of art versus gathering winter food stores.

The story is briefly alluded to in the song STALKER, by the Japanese band the pillows. The line can be translated as "A rocker working like an ant/ Are you harvesting for the winter?". In comparison to the story, this line (spoken by the Last stalker in the song, who claims to always have time for fun) could easily be attributed to the grasshopper.

In the Futurama episode My Three Suns, Fry recounts the story of The Grasshopper and the Octopus as a rationalization for laziness: "All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched T.V. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also, he got a racecar."