"The Courtship of Arthur and Al" ~ James Thurber ~ Analyse?

Question by : "The Courtship of Arthur and Al" ~ James Thurber ~ Analyse?
Aloha.
Ich werde in einigen Tagen eine für mich sehr wichtige Englischklausur schreiben und habe dank meiner Nachhilfelehrerin wahrscheinlich bereits den Text der Arbeit.
Diese Arbeit wird wahrscheinlich eine Analyse/Inhaltsangabe oder sonstiges zu folgendem Text sein :

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Once upon a time there was a young beaver named Al and an older beaver named Arthur. They were both in love with a pretty little female. She looked with disfavor upon the young beaver's suit because he was a harum-scarum and a ne'er-do-well. He had never done a single gnaw of work in his life, for he preferred to eat and sleep and to swim lazily in the streams and to play Now-I'll-Chase-You with the girls. The older beaver had never done anything but work from the time he got his first teeth. He had never played anything with anybody. When the young beaver asked the female to marry him, she said she wouldn't think of it unless he amounted to something. She reminded him that Arthur had built thirty-two dams and was working on three others, whereas he, Al, had never even made a bread-board or a pin tray in his life. Al was very sorry, but he said he would never go to work just because a woman wanted him to. Thereupon she offered to be sister to him, but he pointed out that he already had seventeen sisters. So he went back to eating and sleeping and swimming in the streams and playing Spider-in-the-Parlor with the girls. The female married Arthur one day at the lunch hour — he could never get away from work for more than one hour at a time. They had seven children and Arthur worked so hard supporting them he wore his teeth down to the gum line. His health broke in two before long and he died without ever having had a vacation in his life. The young beaver continued to eat and sleep and swim in the streams and play Unbutton-Your-Shoe with the girls. He never Got Anywhere, but he had a long life and a wonderful Time.

Moral: It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
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Der Inhalt ist ja relativ simpel,
allerdings hab ich immer so meine Probleme damit diesen Inhalt richtig zu interpretieren und
wollte deswegen Fragen ob mir vielleicht jemand dabei helfen könnte und mir mögliche Deutungen des Testes und geschichtliche Bezüge nennen kann.

Lg Laszlo


Best answer:

Answer by N
Soll ich am besten gleich in Englisch schreiben? Sag bescheid falls du etwas nicht verstehst, dann übersetze ich es.

The moral of the story "It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all" is a parody on two famous lines from a poem by the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson: "'Tis better to have loved and lost. Than never to have loved at all".

To loaf means to be idle and lazy. Therefore the moral of the story is that it is better to have been lazy and to have not got what you wanted than never to have been lazy.

Arthur was hard working and never lazy. Although he got the girl he never really had time to enjoy his family because he was always working and then he died. Al was lazy, he did not work but he had fun and lived a long life (however, he did not get the girl).

I think the real moral of the story is that life is not only about work, you need a balance.

Hoffe das hilft ein bisschen.

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