BABY CHICK

BABY CHICK

"Awe, Mom! Not again! We’ve only been gone a few minutes and look at you," said Squirt, the baby chick. "Dad won't like this. Yesterday, when he said we kids could explore the other side of the coop without you; you cackled so long and loud we had to cut our adventure short. We promised we wouldn’t be long, and the others are right behind me. What are we going to do with you, Mom?”
“Now Squirt, she needed me. She was all alone and so sad. She needed a hug she could rest in.”
“Pah-leez, Mom! I wasn’t born yesterday. She was sound asleep when you saw her. You needed the snuggle. I knew you would, so I hurried back to cuddle, but now there’s no room for me. Awe, Mom!”

PART II

Literary Theory: An Analogy says, "Studying myths Levi-Strauss noticed as Russian critic, Vladimir Propp that folk tales myths tell the same 'kernel narratives' tending to work to resolve contradictions in the culture" (P 53). The baby chick standing outside its mother's protection while a puppy enjoys the baby chick's place is a contradiction, and could easily signify a contradiction in our culture.

Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist, philosopher and critic says: "A work of literature [is]. . . nothing but an assemblage of signs that function in certain ways to create meaning. . . films, commodities, events and images are lent meaning by their association with certain signs” (p 54).
An on line article on semiotics from Heriot Watt University’s Black Run titled “Advanced Semiotics” articulates:
Throughout the mid-1950's, Barthes wrote a series of brief articles for a French newspaper on the subject of myth . . . Saussure suggested that signifiers (sounds) and signifieds (concepts) are connected together by the process of signification. Barthes suggested that this process does not necessarily end at this point, as a sign can take part in a new level of signification where it becomes the signifier to a new signified at another level. For example, at the most basic level of signification which Barthes refers to as denotation, a photograph or bodyshell may suggest the sign "car". The sign "car" can in turn become a signifier for a further signified. For example one type of bodyshell can conjure up the sign "Jaguar XJS", another sign "LADA". To Barthes, this second level of meaning at the level of denotation is "mythical". He argues that we tend to see such associations as natural and given (XJS = "luxury", LADA = "basic") when in fact they are arbitrary constructions.

The sign of the plump healthy looking hen could signify contentment but could also conjure up a second level of meaning. Where a hen cuddling a baby chick would be “natural,” mothering the pup would be “weird,” or “humorous". Barthes might argue “natural” and “weird / humorous” are arbitrary constructions. However, with no sign of the pup's mother, the hen looking so comfortable, and the baby chick left out, I doubt that “natural” and “weird / humorous” are all that arbitrary.