Moral of the Story

( Please read Old Monk short story before reading this article ).

"So that's how the story ends, Now tell me what is the Moral of the story?"

These were the words i used to hear after every story from my moral science teachers during my childhood days. And they would teach me a moral for each of the story that has been told by someone else and we would write the same answers in the exams.

I wondered why is that this subject is called as "Moral Science"? I always thought that science is the knowledge that is build completely on observation ,experimentation , proofs and is solely based on facts which cannot be denied by anyone. Then how can we merge Science and Moral together because both are of different poles. Most of the morals which we preach are not supported by facts and are of shear assumptions and beliefs. When reasoned out you feel they are not acceptable.

Every time when i was told so called Moral story, i always ended up myself in a totally different moral than that was told to me. But i was said not to question them because they believed that all stories have just one moral and that is what is given by the author/story teller. But i believed there is no need to come up with the moral of the story at the very end. Because moral is nothing but a view/opinion on the story and they will never be the same across persons. This is born out of the observation and experiences of the person who is listening to the story. Hence these stories are just to be told not explained with moral.

We are so much conditioned with the Moral bug in us that we can't accept a story without explicitly stating the moral. For the story "Old Monk" its left to the creativity of the reader to come out with views of his own. I can come out with quite a number of morals, Let me ink down few of them.

Based on the belief system if i am an atheist then my moral would be, if sam doesn't believe in all the spiritual crap then he would have stayed in the flat during the fire accident and would have saved his studio.If i were to be a theist then my moral would be, If he has not listened to gods words then he would have been burnt alive in the flats it god who has saved his life in disguise.

Now if analyzed the moral can be any of the above or more based on the reader who reads it. But why is that we need a moral to a story ? Can we not just read the story and leave it a that ?