Household Tales · Chapter
The Moon explained
Three travelers from a moonless land steal the moon from a neighboring kingdom and bring it home, where it brings joy until they die and each takes a quarter to the grave, plunging the land back into darkness.
What happens
Three travelers from a moonless land steal the moon from a neighboring kingdom and bring it home, where it brings joy until they die and each takes a quarter to the grave, plunging the land back into darkness. In the underworld, the reunited moon revives the dead, who resume their vices, prompting Saint Peter to retrieve the moon and hang it in heaven.
Themes in this chapter
Greed and Its Downfall
The four men's greed in taking the moon for themselves and later hoarding its quarters leads to the return of darkness and chaos.
Magic and the Supernatural
The moon is a magical object that can be stolen, buried, and later revived in the underworld, with Saint Peter intervening from heaven.
Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished
The dead's vice-ridden behavior in the underworld is punished by Saint Peter, who restores order and removes the moon.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“In days gone by there was a land where the nights were always dark, and the sky spread over it like a black cloth, for there the moon never rose, and no star shone in the obscurity.”
Long ago, a country existed where it was perpetually dark at night because the moon and stars never appeared.
Sets the initial condition of a moonless world.
“The four took care that the moon was provided with oil, cleaned the wick, and received their weekly thaler, but they became old men, and when one of them grew ill, and saw that he was about to die, he appointed that one quarter of the moon, should, as his property, be laid in the grave with him.”
The four men maintained the moon for a weekly fee, but as they aged, each dying man demanded a quarter of the moon be buried with him.
Explains how the moon's light diminished as each man took his share to the grave.
“When, however, the pieces of the moon had united themselves together again in the world below, where darkness had always prevailed, it came to pass that the dead became restless and awoke from their sleep.”
In the underworld, the moon's pieces reassembled, and the dead woke up, able to see again.
The moon's reunion in the underworld revives the dead.
“Saint Peter who guards the gate of heaven thought the lower world had broken out in revolt and gathered together the heavenly troops, which are to drive back the Evil One when he and his associates storm the abode of the blessed.”
Saint Peter, the gatekeeper of heaven, mistook the noise from the underworld for a rebellion and assembled the heavenly army.
Saint Peter's initial reaction to the chaos below.
“There he reduced the dead to subjection, bade them lie down in their graves again, took the moon away with him, and hung it up in heaven.”
Saint Peter subdued the dead, ordered them back to their graves, and took the moon to hang in the sky.
Resolution: Saint Peter restores order and places the moon in heaven.