Structure

The short story “Chicken Little Goes Too Far” by Margaret Atwood is written like a fable. The author uses animal characters with human personality traits to deliver a moral lesson about society. The story begins in medias res with Chicken Little realizing that the sky is falling. This happens because he reads “too many newspapers (...) listened to the radio too much, and (...) watched too much television” (ll. 1-2). The rest of the story consists of Chicken Little trying to bring awareness to the fact that the sky is falling to the rest of the population, and the reactions of other characters, such as Henny Penny and Goosey Loosey, who do not take him seriously. The plot is simple and straightforward, and there are no instances of foreshadow...