Morals in Fables, Folktales and Myths

The Alchemist is a famous story by Paulo Coelho about a shepherd boy named Santiago who dreams of finding a treasure. He leaves his home in Spain and travels far across the desert toward the pyramids of Egypt. Along the way he meets kind helpers and tricky strangers, and he learns to listen to his heart. In the end, Santiago discovers something surprising: the real treasure was back home all along, but he never would have found it without the journey. The story's big lesson, or moral, is that you should follow your dreams and not give up, even when the road is hard. Notice how the author does not just tell us the lesson. Instead, the events of the story show it. Every hard choice Santiago makes, every person who helps him, and every mistake he learns from points to the same message. When you read a story, you can find its lesson the same way: look at what the main character does, what happens because of those choices, and what the character learns at the end.

In Japan and other parts of East Asia, there is a bright red flower called the red spider lily. People have told myths and folktales about this flower for a very long time. In many of these old stories, the flower is linked to saying goodbye and to remembering people we love who have died. That is why the flower is often planted near graveyards. Different cultures pass down stories like these to share an important message. The message is not really about the flower at all. It is about love, loss, and remembering. This is a neat trick that myths and folktales use: they take something you can see, like a red flower, and use it to carry a deeper idea. When you compare myths from two different cultures, you might find they use different events and different details but still share a similar central message, like be brave, be honest, or remember the people you love.