“Conspiring” values: The ant and the cicada

Abstract

In a time which is common to hear about “value crisis”, “society without values”, “values inversion”, we felt the need to understand how the literary infant text, in general, and the fable, in particular, work as a pattern in the world, offering a valid contribution not only for it’s decoding, but also to form individuals and to transmit the cultural background of each society. Of the huge fabulist universe we focused our attention in the fable The ant and the cicada, since it is one of the texts that portrays, in the popular imaginary, unhappy episodes of the human condition showing the negative consequences when not followed the preconized teachings.