Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox’s three farmers, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, are established as the antagonists of the story. The local children sing about Boggis, Bunce and Bean being “horrible crooks” who are “equally mean” (5). This apparently ubiquitous song establishes the farmers’ cruelty as widely accepted. Roald Dahl humorously depicts the farmers’ greed through their physical appearances and habits: They are archetypal “bad guys,” characterized as cruel and gluttonous. Boggis and Bunce are grotesquely overweight, with their respective diets of “three boiled chickens smothered with dumplings” and “donuts” stuffed with “goose livers” designed to repulse readers and symbolize the men’s greed (2-3). While Boggis and Bunce, “enormously fat” and a “pot-bellied dwarf,” are characterized as repulsive and greedy through their hyperbolic fatness, Bean is instead characterized as cruel and conniving through his thinness (2-3). Drinking “gallons of strong cider” in a different show of gluttony, Bean “was thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all” (4). The simile likening Bean to a pencil illustrates Dahl’s use of humorous and hyperbolic physical descriptions as a means of characterization.

All three farmers own thousands of animals, having “done well” as “rich men” (1). Dahl suggests that the three men are stingy for resenting Mr. Fox’s comparatively small bounty of an animal or two each night. Mr. Fox is less powerful and has less at his disposal than the three farmers, and therefore conforms to the classic “underdog” trope. It is interesting that the farmers are characterized as antagonists and Mr. Fox the novel’s heroic protagonist as the latter is a thief. Mr. Fox’s thievery is excused because he steals to feed his family—himself, his wife, and their “four Small Foxes” (7). In this regard, Mr. Fox is an unconventional hero; the reader is positioned to support him in spite of his questionable behavior. The novel is set up as a classic “good versus evil” story, with Mr. Fox representing the side of “good,” and the three farmers representing the side of “evil.” Paradoxically, while Mr. Fox, an animal, is personified, the farmers are depicted as animalistic in their greed and gluttony.

Mr. Fox is characterized as clever and cautious in his successful evasion of the three farmers, who lie in wait hoping to shoot him. Mr. Fox’s guile is praised because it is harnessed to feed his family, as opposed to Bean’s guile, which is condemned because it is used to destroy and kill. Similarly, Mr. Fox’s determination to outsmart the farmers is depicted as admirable, whereas the farmers’ determination to protect their farms is critiqued: People “jeered and laughed” at the enormous crater the farmers dug in their effort to catch Mr. Fox and his family (28).

Suspense is built through the use of omnipotent, third-person narration, which allows the reader to simultaneously imagine the farmers lying in wait and Mr. Fox emerging from his burrow. Similarly, as Mr. Fox and his family go to sleep after having evaded the farmers’ shovels, the reader learns that the farmers are retrieving machinery. The reader is further positioned to support Mr. Fox and his family through language which frames the farmers’ actions as barbaric and terrifying. The farmer’s machinery, tractors with mechanical shovels, are rendered more terrible through the metaphor “murderous, brutal-looking monsters” (22).

At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Fox is personified as a caring father and husband who must work hard to support his family. He feels proud and loved when his wife, Mrs. Fox, calls him a “fantastic fox” for saving the family from the farmers’ shovels (19). Mr. Fox’s ability to outsmart the three farmers becomes tied to his identity and sense of self, as it brings him respect and adoration from his wife and children. This foreshadows Mr. Fox almost being caught in Bean’s cellar, as he becomes excessively ambitious and performative with his heists.