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The moral lesson of Robin Hood is that regardless of what time you live in, money will always give you power and you will instantly be deemed evil and worthy of victimisation for either being born into it or working hard to achieve it.



Answer 2

There is no one answer - in the c.750 years the Robin Hood tales have been in circulation, each generation has found its own moral lessons in the tales, and conversely produced new tales or changed old ones to create new morals.



This was true from the very beginning of the Robin Hood myth: the earliest tales portray very different Robins both from one another and from the Robin we know today. Freedom fighter/proto-Socialist/disinherited Earl he was not. The earliest tales tell of a low-born, rather violent, outlaw, who did not rob from the rich to give to the poor, but robbed from the undeserving and gave (some) to the (sort of) deserving.


The moral lessons of the early tales reflect the different morality of the time. Whilst the complex texts don't lend themselves to simple moral lessons of the type we're used to from Hollywood movies and Dan Brown novels, wry observation, ironic characterisation and a sense of natural justice hold up hypocrisy, dishonesty and irreligion as worthy of punishment, and lampoon abuse of authority as a sin against the natural order. Yet the same tales are accepting of the standing social hierarchy and of religion, and Robin is shown to love his King and the Virgin as he 'should'.


Ever since, new moralities have been embroidered over the original cloth of the tales, and so we can see the development of the legend as a function of the changing morality of its authors and audience. Through the Reformation, the Civil War, Victorian Romanticism, 20th century global warfare and 21st century materialistic guilt, we see a different Robin for every generation.
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15y ago

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