A Summary and Analysis of ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Somerset Maugham’s short story ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ (1924) reinterprets a classic fable through the lens of two brothers, George and Tom. Unlike the fable’s clear-cut division of industriousness and idleness, George (the ‘ant’) works diligently but lacks joy, while Tom (the ‘grasshopper’) lives carefree and spends lavishly.

To understand Maugham’s retelling of this story, we need to know about the meaning of the original fable, too. So let’s begin there.

The original fable

We find a version of the original story of the ant and the grasshopper in the work of Aesop, although Somerset Maugham’s narrator mentions the French writer La Fontaine as the source for his knowledge of the fable.

In Aesop’s version, there are multiple ants who are all working hard to dry their store of corn when the winter arrives. They have industriously spent the summer gathering the corn so they will have something to eat when winter comes.

A grasshopper turns up and begs them for some of their food, because she spent the summer singing. The ants berate the grasshopper for failing to gather some corn during the summer, and tell her that as she spent the summer idly singing instead of preparing for the hard, lean time of winter, she can spend the winter dancing, and they laugh and go back to their work, leaving the grasshopper hungry.

Fables usually have a moral, and the moral of this story is usually given as something along the lines of ‘an idle soul shall suffer hunger’ or ‘you should work today in order to be able to eat tomorrow’.

Summary

In Somerset Maugham’s reimagining of the fable, the story opens with the narrator recalling the plot of the fable along with its moral lesson. He never liked the message of the fable and was more sympathetic to the grasshopper than the ant. When he sees his friend George Ramsay having lunch one day, he reached out to him and asked how he was.

George has a brother, Tom, who is the ‘black sheep’ of their family. Despite having a job and a wife and children, Tom decided one day that he wasn’t suited for married life and didn’t want to work any more, so he left his wife and his office. He spent two years travelling, using what little money he had, and when that ran out, he borrowed more money. He was so charming that he effortlessly made new friends and could persuade them to lend him money easily enough.

Tom is clearly the ‘grasshopper’ in this modern rendition of the classic fable. George, by contrast, is the ‘ant’, working away steadily at his job and putting enough money by in savings so that he will be able to retire early and play golf.

George initially lent his brother some money, believing Tom would use it to get his life straight, but when Tom spent the loan on frivolities, George washed his hands of his brother and refused to lend him any more. In response, Tom began to blackmail George, by taking low-paid jobs in or around the bars and clubs George frequented with his lawyer friends. George gave in and paid his brother off.

On one occasion, Tom hatched a plan whereby he and an associate named Cronshaw would con George out of more money. Cronshaw alleged that Tom had illegally cheated him and took Tom to court. In order to settle the matter before Tom could be convicted, George paid Cronshaw five hundred pounds (a considerable sum in 1924), only to discover that Cronshaw and Tom had split the money between them and run off to Monte Carlo with it, presumably to spend it all in the casino.

Tom lived this dissolute life for twenty years, and the narrator admits that even though Tom was immoral and ‘worthless’ as a friend, he is good company when you socialise with him. At forty-six years of age, he looks a good decade younger, whereas George looks considerably older than his years. He continued to work hard and was a good husband and father.

George looks forward to retiring at age fifty-five and moving to the countryside, while his brother lives out his final years in poverty. George has been putting money by each year to fund his retirement years. But at the end of the story, as we return to the present day and the lunch George is having, George tells the narrator that his brother recently married an older woman and that she has just died, leaving Tom a fortune in her will, including two houses and a yacht.

The narrator cannot help bursting into laughter at this twist of fate, and he tells us that he continues to socialise with Tom, who still borrows money from him, though only out of habit rather than necessity.

Analysis

As the above summary suggests, Somerset Maugham’s retelling of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper invites us to reappraise the moral of the original tale. There are several key differences between the Aesopian fable and Maugham’s modern-day version, perhaps chief of which is the latter’s lack of moralising.

Maugham’s story, and his first-person narrator, don’t explicitly judge or endorse either brother’s approach to life. It leaves the reader to ponder the complexities of finding balance between responsibility, enjoyment, and ultimately, finding fulfilment in life. Another way of viewing this is to say that Maugham’s version of ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ challenges the simplistic moral of the classic fable, suggesting that life is not always a clear-cut equation of hard work leading to happiness and idleness resulting in suffering.

Maugham’s narrator is friendly with both Tom (the ‘grasshopper’ in Maugham’s tale) and George (the ‘ant’). He is happy to spend time with the charming Tom even while he recognises his flaws, such as his lack of responsibility to his family (whom he did, after all, abandon) and his inability or unwillingness to pay back his friends’ loans.

At the same time, he takes a keen interest in George’s welfare at the outset of the story, and listens sympathetically as he outlines his frugal, steady, and dependable approach to life, providing for his family and preparing for an early retirement and a quiet life in the country.

Nevertheless, it may be telling that the narrator begins ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ by confiding to us that he always identified more with the grasshopper than the ant in the original story, suggesting that he has more sympathy for the dissolute Tom (whom he finds more interesting and charismatic) than the rather dull and unadventurous George.

George and Tom

It would be easy to read Maugham’s story and conclude that George has been poorly served by his rogue of a brother. Tom borrows money from him and never pays it back, blackmails his brother by threatening his good reputation as a lawyer by taking jobs at his brother’s favourite bar, and cheats his brother with the court scam involving his associate, Cranshaw.

At the same time, we should stop and consider whether the two brothers don’t have more in common than first appears. Although George is hard-working, he doesn’t appear to enjoy his business and wishes to retire some years ahead of the usual retirement age so he can idle away his days playing golf; there is no mention of spending more time with his wife and four children here. He has also worked himself into the ground to provide for his family and earn enough to retire early, and this appears to have taken its toll: he looks more than ten years older his actual age.

George’s life is as governed by money and material concerns as Tom’s, only Tom clearly has more fun with his money than George does. And George helps to feed his brother’s playboy lifestyle by giving in and lending him money, one way or another. George is so concerned with being tarnished by association with his reckless brother that he is prepared to buy him off.

The moral of the story?

In the last analysis, then, what is the moral of Somerset Maugham’s take on this age-old fable? Clearly it is not the same as the moral in the version by Aesop or La Fontaine (although the latter refrains from spelling out a moral lesson at the end of his telling of the story).

The closest thing to a traditional ‘moral’ in the story is probably that some people become successful by sheer luck and charm, whereas others have to settle for less because they lack these qualities (if luck can be considered a ‘quality’ as such). That’s life, as the old line has it. After all, George has worked hard for much of his life and he has the financial stability he clearly craves. Tom seeks no such stability and is happy to live in the moment.

Whether it was luck that led to his marrying a wealthy woman who died soon after the marriage, leaving him rich beyond his wildest dreams, or a more calculated act designed to leave him well-off, we cannot say for sure.