THE DEVOTED FRIEND - riassunto - Oscar Wide

One day a water-rat met a duck which was trying to teach how to swim to her little ducklings. They started to talk about what was the friendship for hem, so a Linnet told them that story.

This story tells us what’s truly the friendship, but here is decrypted a wrong friendship between Hans, a little, simply, honest and good worker man who has a best friend: the Miller. He is a good orator, but he doesn’t do anything which is concrete, he looks like a man who has good ideas, who is responsible and mellow, but he just command the others do what he want, specially with the poor Hans who had blackmailed for their friendship. Hans believed at all the Miller told him: so he neglected himself and their job because was busy to do what the Miller was asking him.

When during the terrible winter the Miller staid at home, keeping saying that it was the right thing to do, while the poor Hans was suffering the cold and the hungry. When the spring arrived the Miller offered him his wheelbarrow, so whit this excuse asked him a lot of favours. Slowly Hans became more and more tired because he was working free to the Miller.

At the end, the Miller asked him another favour, it was a terrible night with a frightening storm and the Miller’s son was ill, he needed a doctor. Hans went out to call the doctor, but he never returned back: the tiredness killed him. But the story wasn’t useful for the water-rat, so he went away angrily. He didn’t understand the truly meaning of the tale.