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Henny Penny

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The Sky is Falling, also known as Chicken Little, Chicken Licken or Henny Penny is an old fable of unknown origin about a chicken who believes the sky is falling. The phrase has also become used to indicate a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.

Origin

The origin of this story. Sometimes it is listed as one of Aesop's Fables. However, it is not. The basic motif, and many of the elements of the tale, can be found in one of the stories in the Jataka. That version features a rabbit or hare as the central character, rather than a chicken.

Basic plot

Template:Spoiler There are many versions of the story, but the basic premise is that a chicken called Chicken Little, Chicken Licken or Henny Penny believes the sky is falling down because an acorn (or in some versions a pebble that falls from a roof) falls on his (or, sometimes, her) head or tail. He decides to tell the King, and on his journey meets other animals who join him in his quest. In most retellings, the other animals have similarly rhyming names (See Characters). Finally, they come across Foxy Loxy, a fox who offers to guide them all with the King, but taking them instead into his cave.

After this point, there are many endings. In the most famous one, Foxy Loxy kills all of Chicken Little/Licken's friends, but the last one survives enough to warn Chicken Little/Licken and he escapes. Other endings include Foxy eating them all, them being saved by a squirrel or an owl and/or getting to speak to the King, one where the King saves them with hunting dogs, and even one in which the sky actually falls down and kills Foxy Loxy.

Characters

As it is common in fables, all the characters in this tale are animals. Also, they all have rhyming names.

Moral

Depending on the version, the moral changes. In the "happy ending" version, the moral is not to be a "Chicken Little" and have courage. In other versions the moral is usually interpreted to mean "do not believe everything you are told". In the latter case, it could well be a cautionary political tale: Chicken Little jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox uses to manipulate them for his own benefit.

Adaptation

The Sky is Falling has been taken into children books many times, having both Chicken Little and Henny Penny as main characters. Some of those books are in print today.

Walt Disney Studios has adapted this story into animation twice. The first adaptation was an animated short released during World War II. It tells a variant of the parable in which all the animals are eaten by Foxy Loxy, and uses this as an allegory for the idea that wartime fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives.

The second Disney adaptation is a feature-length computer-animated film which bears little resemblance to the plot of the original fable being more of a follow up. It focuses on Chicken Little's disappointment that no one believed his claim that the sky was falling, and follows his story of redemption as he shows that something strange did indeed fall from the sky.

The animated series Garfield and Friends adaptated the story for the U.S. Acres segment "Badtime Story", in which Bo, Lanolin, Roy, and Wade all fill in for a sick Orson to read the story to Booker and Sheldon. Throughout the story, the characters (played by regulars on the series) blame the sky's falling on "all this tampering with the ozone layer". The episode also manages to poke fun at the story's extensive use of rhyming names with a scene in which Wade lists the names of everyone involved in Chicken Licken's quest, among them Catty Fatty (portrayed by Garfield himself) and Beaver Cleaver (a reference to Leave It to Beaver).

Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, did a version of the story.

An episode of the sitcom The Golden Girls featured the girls performing a brief musicalization of "Henny Penny" at an elementary school, decked out in feathery costumes. Rose Nylund was the airheaded Henny Penny, Blanche Deveraux was the sultry Goosey Loosey, Dorothy Zbornak was the intellectual Turkey Lurkey, and Sofia Petrillo was the narrator. The character of the actor portraying Foxy Loxy was played by George Hearn, who once starred as Sweeney Todd in the musical of the same name on Broadway. In the final number of the "Henny Penny" musical, he holds up a knife and fork, just the way Sweeney holds up his razor at various times in the musical.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales parodied this story. The story starts off similarly to the original, only with the acorn/pebble being replaced by "a piece of something" (visualized as a small white box with a number on it) and the King changed into a president. Otherwise, the standard cast remains the same, with the main character being Chicken Licken, and her friends being Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Cocky Locky. Just after Chicken Licken gathered all of her friends, Jack the Narrator interrupts the story, exclaiming, "I forgot the table of contents!" He tries to tell them about the afore-mentioned table of contents, but Chicken Licken ignores him and the story continues, with Chicken Licken and friends arriving at the airport and Foxy Loxy taking them to his cave, but the story abruptly ends when the table of contents crashes down upon them (the "piece of something" turns out to have been a loose page number).

Modern references

  • The fable is referred to in many modern shows and movies. One of which is The Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode "Hotel Hangout", on which Carey Martin says to Marion Moseby, "Mr. Moseby, every little problem with you is like, 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" Then a satellite dish falls from the roof and Marion Moseby replies, "Sometimes Chicken Little knows what he's talking about!"
  • Popular British band Radiohead use the line "Go and tell the King that the sky is falling in" from Chicken Licken in their song "2+2=5" taken from the album Hail to the Thief.
  • Sky is Falling is also a song by British indie rock band James.
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