Joel Chandler Harris - How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox

While reading "How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox" by Joel Chandler Harris, I found it to be very difficult in understanding.  I was able to find a link on the internet and it read the short story to me.  I followed along in our textbook as it read it to me.  Here is the link that I used www.archive.org/details/uncle_remus_librivox.  After listening to someone else reading the short story and me following along with them I was able to understand it much better.  Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit are always in a struggle for authority and demotion.  In this short story Brer Fox always wants to hurt Brer Rabbit so bad that he took Rabbit’s advice and let him go.  I think that this demonstrates to us that when we try and squeeze someone too hard they have a better chance of sliding through our fingers.  Harris claimed that his documents of these plantation narratives were solely for the purpose of continuing this tradition of the Old South for future generations.  In the tales there is an element of social observation.  The struggle for authority in the animal kingdom precisely matches the struggle for social dominance in the antebellum and Reconstruction-era South.  During the antebellum period, slaves may have told a version of this tale in order to document their dominion and demotion by whites through the institution of slavery.  During the Reconstruction era, when Harris was collecting the tales, the story also had importance in showing the social uncertainty of a society that could no longer rely on the institution of slavery to maintain social boundaries.  Regardless of what Harris was trying to get from these tales it shows how closely related this time period was with how the animals in the wild live as well.  Harris’ stories are so inspiring by the way that he presented them and because of their humorous wisdom.  Different from the other stories during this time period, Harris’ stories were taken from blacks that he had actually known. This short story was told first hand through a black character, Uncle Remus.  Stories wrote this way made more of an impression on its readers that did a story that was wrote about blacks.  By having stories wrote in this fashion, everyone would be able to read the stories without being offended.  People enjoyed Harris’ writings because of the wisdom that they were left with after reading them.  This story made me laugh at the end but it also left me with a little more wisdom.