Lots of Spoonfuls

I've never liked the taste of stories with neatly presented lessons. They always seem too nice and tidy. Crisp white bibs starched and ironed, faces wiped clean after each bite. A stories moral when spoon fed is no lesson at all, it's exactly what it is, a spoon feeding. Have you ever seen a small child spoon fed? Their plate is clean, but you're not real sure if they enjoyed a single mouthful. Softening the imposing moral of the story places the spoon in the hand of the reader. Hand the child the spoon. Let them pick and choose what will fill them. Some days it might be peas and carrots, the next beets and asparagus. Over the years the child's pallet will grow as they collect lessons. Not until the reader has tasted the lesson can they truly appreciate the moral or for that matter the story. After a good feeding a child always wants to check into dessert options. I quickly made haste of the lessons depicted in the the story Lots' Wife, I go looking for frosted animal cookies. I wonder why the two daughter's motives for having their fathers baby changes. They first mention satisfying their own desires of having children. Thinking that no man would ever have them hidden in the earth as they are. They decide to take their fathers' seed without permission. They then become aware of how this may sound, so they become selfless and mention their father's lineage. Knowing he still would not approve, since it's not a strong argument, they take his seed without permission. The end result is the same, a baby, with their father's seed, not a problem for them. But the two paths are different, the path is what gnaws at them. Outwardly it may look like a translation hiccup of small consequence, because the end result is the same. But their was a change and it gnaws at me. They had chosen to have a child... with their father (Yuck). They just hadn't decided which path would be more acceptable. To whom are they seeking acceptance from... themselves or their fathers' god? The conflict between satisfying their fathers' god or themselves, the same conflict their mother faced. Although the choice the daughters made satisfied both, as they saw it. I don't think they learned the moral of the story from being spoon fed their mother's fate. Maybe the lesson they learned was... learn to work the system. Lessons, morals and dessert.