Fantastic Mr Fox

Mrs. Fox is the wife of Mr. Fox. She lives in a hole under a tree above Boggis, Bunce, and Bean’s farms with Mr. Fox and their four small children. Mrs. Fox and her four children are the catalyst for the story’s events, as Mr. Fox is motivated to steal from the three farmers in order to feed his family. These robberies motivate the angry farmers to kill the family of foxes.

Although Mrs. Fox and the Small Foxes necessitate Mr. Fox’s thievery, they also inspire him: Mr. Fox thinks “I can’t let them down” upon observing his children’s earnest trust in his tunneling plan (36). Mrs. Fox encourages her husband by affectionately calling him a “fantastic fox” whenever he succeeds (77). Mr. Fox’s children partake in his plan to tunnel into the farms, digging and transporting supplies back to Mrs. Fox to prepare a feast for the other animals.

Boggis is a greedy and rich chicken farmer. He eats three of these chickens, boiled and smothered with dumplings, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. The man’s hyperbolic gluttony and fatness are characterization tools utilized by Roald Dahl to illustrate his greed. Like the other farmers, Boggis is characterized as an unlikable antagonist and is despised and mocked by the local community. Although he has “thousands of chickens,” he resents Mr. Fox for stealing to feed his family (2).

Boggis teams up with farmers Bunce and Bean to kill Mr. Fox. After failing to shoot Mr. Fox, they use shovels and machinery to try to excavate the family of foxes from their hole. As he digs, Boggis triumphantly yells into the hole, “You’ve had your last chicken,” confident that he will capture and kill Mr. Fox (27). Mr. Fox ultimately bests Boggis, who is left furiously sitting in the rain as the animals feast on chickens stolen from Chicken House Number One.

Bunce is a duck-and-goose farmer. Like Boggis and Bean, he is extremely rich, having “thousands of ducks and geese” (3). Like Boggis, Bunce is also hyperbolically gluttonous: He is a “pot-bellied dwarf” who greedily eats donuts and goose-liver paste to the point of sickness. He is characterized as an unlikable antagonist with a “beastly temper” (3).

While Bunce resents Mr. Fox’s robberies, it is revealed that he owns a “Giant Storehouse” which contains “thousands and thousands of the finest and fattest ducks and geese” (52). He is ultimately punished for his gluttony by being left, angry and beaten, in the pouring rain as the animals feast on his stolen produce.