Fantastic Mr Fox

The farmers’ greed is further solidified when the animals inspect Boggis’s chicken house, Bunce’s storehouse, and Bean’s cellar. Boggis, Bunce, and Bean’s fury over Mr. Fox stealing one or two animals each night seems ridiculous in light of Boggis’s multiple houses of chickens and Bunce’s “thousands and thousands of the finest and fattest ducks and geese” and “at least a hundred smoked hams and fifty sides of bacon” (52). Similarly, Bean’s extensive cellar contains hundreds of jars of cider. The farmers are clearly not left wanting due to Mr. Fox’s modest thievery. This reinforces the needless cruelty of their mission to kill Mr. Fox, and further cements readers’ support for the survival of Mr. Fox and his family.

However, Mr. Fox’s schemes soon outgrow merely ensuring his family’s survival. Readers may feel less sympathetic when it becomes clear that Mr. Fox is determined to see the farmers humiliated. His decision to break into Bean’s cellar, Bean being the “cleverest of them all,” illustrates his growing hubris—as cider is clearly not essential to his family’s survival (4). Mr. Fox has a personal vendetta against the farmers, and his actions reflect this. If his family’s survival was all that was at stake, Mr. Fox would have stopped after stealing chickens from Boggis’s chicken house. Instead, he becomes determined to best all three farmers and boasts that he can feed his friends a “most delicious feast” (48).

Badger’s doubts regarding Mr. Fox’s plan to tunnel to Bean’s farm foreshadow the latter’s close call in Bean’s cellar. A worried Badger asks “doesn’t this worry you just a tiny bit, Foxy? [...] all this...this stealing?” (58). He represents caution (like Mr. Fox once did prior to having his tail shot off) in the face of Mr. Fox’s brash confidence. Mr. Fox angrily retorts that Badger is “far too respectable” (59). Badger’s doubts imply that Mr. Fox is becoming dangerously ambitious. Mr. Fox warning Badger and the smallest fox that Bean’s cellar is “right underneath the farmhouse itself” and to “go carefully” and “not make a noise” (64) continue to build the novel’s tension (despite Mr. Fox’s success up to this point).

Mr. Fox learns the consequence of hubris when he and his smallest child are forced to hide from a woman retrieving cider in Bean’s cellar. While hiding, he realizes that “if she takes one more [jar], she’ll see us” and feels the body of his youngest “pressed tightly against his own, quivering” (70). This close brush with death constitutes a kind of poetic justice: Mr. Fox is punished for endangering others with his ambition. The story can be considered an allegorical warning against greed. Mr. Fox is initially framed as having an admirable, modest goal of ensuring his family’s survival—but he, like the farmers whom he so despises, becomes greedy and almost pays with his life.

Mr. Fox is admonished for his overconfidence but also praised by his wife for providing a delicious meal when they were on the brink of starvation. Keeping his family healthy and happy, and therefore earning their respect and adoration, was Mr. Fox’s original motive. However, some of Mr. Fox’s hubris is still evident in his toast when he declares that the animals should “eat like kings” every day (79).

The farmers, allegedly “still waiting,” pay a far greater price than Mr. Fox for their far greater greed (81). Poetic justice is achieved in their miserable ending: They are punished for their greed, destruction of the forest, and murderous schemes by being left sitting in the rain as (unbeknownst to them) the animals feast on their produce—a show of dramatic irony.