In this lesson, we will study Aesop’s Fable, “The Peacock’s Complaint”.
I. THE FABLE
Read the fable below carefully. Read it aloud if you are able to do so. Then read it a second time, slowly, before you go on to the rest of the lesson. The rest of the lesson will make little sense to you unless the story itself is clear in your mind first.
The Peacock complained to Juno that while every one laughed at his voice, an insignificant creature like the Nightingale had a note that delighted everybody. Juno, angry at the unreasonableness of her favourite bird, scolded him in the following terms: “Envious bird that you are, I am sure you have no cause to complain. On your neck shine all the colours of the rainbow, and your extended tail shows like a mass of gems. No living being has every good thing to its own share. The falcon is endowed with swiftness, the eagle, strength, the parrot, speech, the raven, the gift of augury, and the nightingale with a melodious note, while you have both size and beauty. Cease then to complain, or the gifts you have shall be taken away.”
II. LITERAL SENSE
Before we can find the lesson of a fable, we must be certain that we understand the story itself. A lesson cannot stand on a story that has not been made clear first. So let us go through this fable piece by piece.
First, the peacock. A peacock is a large bird, kept in ancient times as it sometimes still is now, prized above all for its tail. The tail of a peacock, when the bird lifts and spreads it, opens out into a great fan covered with round marks of blue and green and gold, marks that catch the light and shine. But a peacock’s call, the sound it makes with its throat, is a harsh, loud shriek. It is not pleasant to hear. A peacock is a bird made for the eye and not for the ear.
Second, the nightingale. A nightingale is a small, plain, brownish bird, easy to overlook if you saw it sitting on a branch. It has no bright color and no impressive size. But a nightingale sings. Its song is soft, rich, and winding, and it was so prized by the ancient world that the nightingale’s song became the very example people pointed to when they wanted to describe a beautiful sound. The fable calls the nightingale “an insignificant creature.” Insignificant means small and unimpressive, not worth much notice. The peacock is saying that a bird so plain and small in appearance has been given something, a beautiful voice, that he himself does not have.
Third, Juno. Juno was a goddess of the old Roman religion, the wife of the chief god Jupiter. The old stories often gave each god a favorite animal, a creature especially connected to that god and cared for by her. The peacock was said to be Juno’s favorite bird. That is why the peacock brings his complaint to her, and not to some other god. He goes to the one who is supposed to look after his interests, expecting her to take his side.
Fourth, the word “complained.” To complain means to express unhappiness about something, especially something one thinks unfair. The peacock is not merely sad. He is bringing a grievance, a charge that something is wrong and ought to be fixed. He believes an unfairness has been done to him, and he wants Juno to hear it and set it right.
Fifth, the falcon, the eagle, the parrot, and the raven. Each of these birds is named for one particular gift. The falcon is known for its swiftness, which means great speed, especially in flight and in diving upon prey. The eagle is known for its strength, its powerful body and its powerful grip. The parrot is known for speech, because a parrot can be taught to repeat human words, which no other bird can do. The raven is known in old belief for the gift of augury. Augury is an old word for the practice of foretelling the future by watching the flight or behavior of birds. Ravens were thought in ancient times to give signs that wise men could read, warning of things to come. Juno lists these four birds, each with one single gift, to show the peacock something important, which we will return to in a moment.
Sixth, the word “unreasonableness.” Unreasonableness means the quality of not being reasonable, of not thinking rightly about what is fair or what makes sense. Juno is not merely annoyed that the peacock spoke. She is angry because his complaint does not hold up when it is thought through carefully. We will see why in a moment.
Now let us set the events in order, so we see how one leads to another. The peacock has a magnificent tail, covered in bright colors, but he has an ugly voice. Because he hears the nightingale praised for her song, and because he himself is laughed at for his voice, he becomes discontented. Because he is discontented, he brings a complaint to Juno, the goddess who favors him. Because Juno hears an unfair charge, one that ignores what the peacock has already been given, she grows angry. Because she is angry, she answers him with a list of examples, showing him that every creature has one gift and not every gift. Then she warns him. If he goes on complaining, the very gifts he does have, his size and his beauty, might be taken from him.
The fable stops there, with Juno’s warning. We are never told whether the peacock answered her, or whether he was satisfied, or whether he went on complaining afterward. Aesop leaves the peacock standing before Juno in silence, having just been corrected.
One thing here is easy to get wrong. A child might think Juno is saying that the peacock’s tail matters more than the nightingale’s song, or that beauty is worth more than a sweet voice, and that this is why the peacock should be content. That is not what Juno says. She does not rank the gifts against one another at all. She says something different and more exact: no single creature holds every good thing at once. Each creature holds its own share, and the peacock’s share, his size and his beauty, is enough. He is not being told his gift is better. He is being told that comparing gifts in this way is the wrong way to think about them, and that he already has a real good of his own, which is enough for him.
III. MORAL LESSON
The principal lesson of this fable is that we should be content with the good things we have been given, rather than being discontented because we lack some good thing that another has.
The fault at work in this fable has a name. It is called envy. Envy is sadness or discontent at the good fortune of another, felt because that good fortune is his and not ours. Let us take this apart piece by piece. Envy is not the same as wanting a good thing for yourself. Envy is being unhappy specifically because someone else has a good thing. The peacock is not simply wishing for a nice voice. He is unhappy that the nightingale, small and plain as she is, has one, while he does not. That sting, that particular unhappiness at another’s good, is envy.
The virtue that stands against envy does not have one single common name, but it is closely tied to what the old teachers called contentment, together with a right use of gratitude. Gratitude is a settled readiness of the soul to recognize a good thing given to us, and to be satisfied in it rather than measuring it constantly against what others have. Recall that a virtue is a good habit of the soul, and a habit is a settled readiness to act in a certain way, formed in us by doing the same good act again and again. So a grateful and content soul is one that has practiced, again and again, the act of looking honestly at its own gifts and resting in them, instead of constantly measuring itself against its neighbor.
Let us separate what the peacock wants from how he goes about seeking it. It is not wrong for the peacock to notice that his voice is unpleasant, or even to wish it were better. Wishing to be better in some way is not by itself a fault. The fault lies in how he responds to that wish. Instead of considering his own gifts honestly, he goes to Juno with a complaint that treats his lack of a sweet voice as an injustice done to him, as though he had been cheated. That is the manner that is wrong, not the noticing.
Now let us watch the doctrine appear directly in Juno’s own words. She does not deny that the nightingale’s voice is lovely. She does not tell the peacock his voice is secretly fine. Instead she says, “No living being has every good thing to its own share.” This is the very principle at the center of the fable. Every creature is given some particular gifts and not others. This is simply how the natural order is arranged. The falcon has speed, and not the eagle’s strength. The eagle has strength, and not the parrot’s speech. The parrot has speech, and not the raven’s gift of augury. The raven has that gift, and not the nightingale’s song. And the nightingale, small as she is, has a beautiful voice, and not the peacock’s size and splendor. Each creature is given its share, and no creature is given every share. Juno lists five creatures before she even returns to the peacock, so that by the time she names his own gifts, the pattern is already plain in the hearer’s mind. The peacock is not an exception to a rule that applies to everyone else. He is simply one more example of the very same rule.
We should also name the two failings that stand on either side of a right response to one’s own gifts, so that the middle way is clear. On one side stands envy, which we have already named, the discontent that begrudges another’s good and refuses to be satisfied with one’s own. On the other side stands a kind of vanity or pride, which does the opposite wrong: it forgets that one’s own gifts are limited, and imagines that one creature, or one person, ought to hold every excellence there is. The soul who is neither envious nor vain looks honestly at what it has, is glad of it, and does not require itself, or any other creature, to be first in every way. Juno’s own words are aimed at showing the peacock this middle way. She does not tell him to admire himself above all others. She tells him only to stop measuring himself against the nightingale, and to be content with the true and considerable good things that are already his.
Last, let us ask whether the peacock’s error could be undone, and what that tells us. Envy, unlike some faults, does not usually do outward harm the moment it is felt, the way a rash choice might trap a body in a well with no way out. But envy left unaddressed does something else. It wears at the soul from within, and if it is voiced and repeated, as the peacock has now done before Juno herself, it can bring real consequences. Juno’s warning shows this exactly: “Cease then to complain, or the gifts you have shall be taken away.” The peacock’s complaint can still be dropped. He can still choose contentment instead of grievance. But if he continues in it, the warning says, he risks losing the very things he has been discontented about failing to add to. This teaches that even a fault that seems to harm no one but oneself should be corrected early, before it hardens into a habit and before it brings on consequences that are harder to undo.
Aesop was a pagan and did not have the light of faith, yet a truth like this one can be seen by reason alone, without any special teaching from revelation. Any thoughtful person, pagan or Christian, can look at the natural world and see that no single creature holds every excellence, and can draw from this the sense that contentment is more fitting than envious complaint. The Church takes up this same truth and carries it further. She teaches that envy is counted among the serious faults that turn the soul away from charity, because it grieves at a neighbor’s good instead of rejoicing in it, and charity requires us to rejoice in the good of another as in our own. She teaches further that every good gift, in any creature, comes from God, and is given according to a wisdom none of us can fully see. A Christian who looks honestly at his own gifts is called not merely to be content, as Juno tells the peacock, but to be grateful to the giver of those gifts, and to trust that the whole arrangement, in which one has this and another has that, serves a good ordering that reaches beyond what any one creature can see for itself.
IV. AESOP’S CHOICES
Aesop was a teacher, and this fable, like all his fables, is the deliberate work of a teacher. Every part of it was chosen and placed with care. Let us take up the parts one at a time and ask why each one is fitting.
Why a peacock? Because no creature shows the shape of this fault better than the peacock does. The peacock already possesses one of the most striking gifts among all birds, a tail of astonishing color and size, and yet the fable shows him unhappy anyway, fixed upon the one thing he lacks. A creature with fewer gifts complaining might seem to have some case. A creature so richly gifted complaining makes the folly of envy stand out sharply, because we can see at a glance that he has been given a great deal already. Aesop wants the hearer to notice this gap between how much the peacock has and how little content it has bought him.
Why a nightingale, rather than some other singing bird? Because the nightingale is small, plain, and easily overlooked, while her song was famous throughout the ancient world as one of the loveliest sounds in nature. Setting the grand, gaudy peacock beside the small, plain nightingale makes the contrast as sharp as it can be made. If Aesop had chosen two birds of similar size and similar splendor, the lesson would blur. By choosing the largest contrast available, size and color against smallness and plainness, he makes the single point of the fable impossible to miss: a great gift in one respect and a small gift in another respect can exist side by side in the same natural order, without any injustice being done.
Why Juno? Because Juno was known as the peacock’s own patron among the gods, the one who was supposed to favor him above other birds. If some other god had rebuked the peacock, the rebuke might seem to come from an outsider with no particular care for him. Because it is Juno, his own favorite and protector, who corrects him, the correction carries the weight of someone who already loves and favors the peacock and still tells him plainly that his complaint is unreasonable. This shows the hearer that even those who care most for us will not, and should not, indulge an unreasonable complaint.
Why does Juno list four other birds, the falcon, the eagle, the parrot, and the raven, before coming back to the peacock at all? Because a single example might seem an accident, one unlucky pairing of gifts. Four examples, each naming one clear gift and no other, build a pattern before the hearer’s eyes. By the time Juno finally says, “while you have both size and beauty,” the hearer has already seen the same shape four times over, and recognizes the peacock’s case as nothing special, simply one more instance of how the natural order distributes its gifts.
Why does the fable end with a warning, and not with the peacock’s answer? Because Aesop wants to leave the hearer to supply the answer himself. If the fable had ended by saying the peacock repented and was content ever after, the hearer might feel the lesson had already been settled and needed no further thought from him. By ending instead on Juno’s warning, unanswered, Aesop leaves a question hanging in the air: what will you do, hearer, the next time you find yourself in the peacock’s place? The shortness of the fable serves the same end. There is a peacock, a nightingale, a complaint, and an answer with a warning. Nothing more is added, and nothing more is needed.
Now let us ask why Aesop tells a story at all, rather than simply stating a rule. He might have written only this: “Do not envy another’s gifts, for no creature has every good thing.” That is a true statement, and it is also a statement that slides out of the mind almost as soon as it is read, because there is nothing in bare words for the mind to hold onto.
Here is why the story succeeds where the bare rule fails. All that we come to know begins in the senses, in what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell of particular things around us. From many particular things taken in through the senses, the mind gradually draws out what is true of many such things, and at last what is true always, in every case. A child has never seen envy itself, because envy is not a thing that can be looked at directly the way a bird can be looked at. But a child can picture a proud peacock, his splendid tail spread out, standing before Juno and complaining that a small brown bird sings better than he does. Once that picture is fixed in the mind, the mind can travel from that single picture outward to the general truth about envy in anyone at all, including in the child himself.
This is not a turning away from the visible world in search of some higher, invisible world. It is the very opposite movement. The fable teaches through pictures a child can hold in his mind precisely because picturing is the road by which human understanding travels from what is known first, particular things met by the senses, to what is known last, the general truths that hold for all such things. Man is made to learn in this order, beginning with sight and ending with understanding, and Aesop’s fables are built to travel that same road with him.
V. APPLICATION
A lesson you cannot use in your own days is a lesson you will not keep, so let us bring the peacock and the nightingale into your own life.
Consider your friends and your brothers and sisters first. Suppose a friend of yours is very good at running, faster than anyone else on the field, while you are slower but better at drawing or at reading aloud. The envious act is to complain, as the peacock did, that your friend received the gift of speed while you did not, and to let that complaint sour your friendship with him. The right act is to remember Juno’s words: no living being has every good thing to its own share. Your friend has speed. You have some other gift, just as real, even if it draws less attention on the field. Naming your own gift honestly, instead of measuring yourself constantly against his, is the peacock’s lesson lived out at recess.
Consider next your schoolwork and the praise that other students receive. Suppose another student in your class is praised for a beautiful piece of writing, while your own strength lies in arithmetic, where you rarely receive the same kind of praise. The envious act is to resent that student’s praise, the way the peacock resented the praise given to the nightingale’s song, as though praise given to one person were somehow stolen from you. The right act is to notice, honestly and without grumbling, that different students are given different strengths, exactly as the falcon has speed and the eagle has strength and the raven has its own gift, and that your own strength in arithmetic is a real good, whether or not it draws the same attention that day.
Consider third the things about your own body or your own family that you cannot change and are sometimes tempted to complain about. A child may wish he were taller, or that his family had more money, or that some other family’s house or vacations were his own. The envious act is the peacock’s own act, exactly: to go complaining, as it were, to whoever will listen, that some unfairness has been done because another has what he lacks. The right act is to look honestly, as Juno tells the peacock to look, at the real good things that are already his own, his own family, his own particular gifts, and to be content in them rather than measuring his life constantly against another’s.
Now here is why this fable will help you remember this lesson long after a bare rule would have faded from your mind. A rule such as “do not be envious” is easy to hear and easy to forget, because there is nothing in it your mind can picture and hold onto. But you can picture the peacock’s great tail, spread out in all its colors, standing before Juno. You can picture the small plain nightingale, whose song nobody could see but everybody loved to hear. You can hear Juno’s own list, the falcon’s speed, the eagle’s strength, the parrot’s speech, the raven’s augury, each creature named with its one particular gift.
That picture of the peacock, splendid and yet discontented, will return to you someday, before any rule does. You will be standing, in some ordinary moment, envying a friend’s swiftness or a classmate’s praised paper or a neighbor’s finer house, and in that moment the peacock will come to your mind first, spreading his glorious tail and complaining anyway. Let his picture do its work in you, the very work Aesop intended it to do.
Carry the lesson in one sentence: No creature has every good thing, so be content with the good things that are truly your own.
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