Read this parable, which comes from the hasidic storytelling tradition:
one day a prince begins to act like a rooster. no one, including the king and queen, can convince the prince he is a man until a wise man comes and begins acting like a rooster himself. once the prince accepts the wise man as a fellow rooster, the wise man is able to convince the prince to act like a man again.
what is the most likely moral of this parable?
a. being true to one's nature is more important than conforming.
b. animals offer a unique, and instructive, view of the world.
c. a peer is more persuasive than an authority figure.
d. one must be degraded before one can gain wisdom.

C) a peer is more persuasive than an authority figure

There are a few lines that illustrate the theme that man projects his own fears on nature while nature remains indifferent.

The first is the line: "At these times they were uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them to be gone." Here, all the birds are doing is staring at the men, yet the men feel they are "uncanny and sinister." The men are projecting their own fears on indifferent birds.

The final line also illustrates this theme: "After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow grewsome and ominous." Here, the narrator tells us that the birds strike the men as being "grewsome and ominous." They believe the birds are foreshadowing some sort of evil. Again, they are projecting their own fears onto birds that do not care about them one way or another.