The talking fox of Woody End

[Alcuin]

…A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.

‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.

This passage from Fellowship of the Ring always bothered me. It seems so … out of place. Childish. Cutesy. Almost like Beatrix Potter - whose work I freely admit I enjoy, but a completely different genre.

In Reader's Companion, Hammond and Scull comment,

To be told what the fox thought is a curious departure from the narrative, which otherwise records the experiences of those taking part. It is much more in the manner of The Hobbit, with an outside narrator inserting comments, a device Tolkien grew to dislike.

Except that I never recall Tolkien inserting the thoughts or “words” of creatures like foxes or birds (excepting the ravens of the Lonely Mountain, who do use normal speech to communicate with the Dwarves). Even in Farmer Giles of Ham, Garm, the talking dog, communicates with Giles using words. I suppose that makes Garm a “magical” dog, but that story also features a talking, half-tamed dragon, “half-tamed” out of fear of Caudimordax, “Tailbiter”, a magical sword that cuts off dragon’s tails just for starters! But Farmer Giles is a happy, light-hearted story, one suitable for children even younger than those to whom parents (or grandparents) might read The Hobbit. Lord of the Rings is an altogether cat of a different stripe. Why insert a talking fox?

In my old copy of Lord of the Rings, this incident is at the top of page 71. Midway on page 76, Frodo meets Gildor and the Noldorin pilgrims, whose mere presence drives away Khamûl the Nazgûl. And I realized something.

The Lord of the Rings picks up where The Hobbit left off. The Hobbit is a children’s tale, written for Tolkien’s own children, written because whenever their father erred in his recitations by memory, his children (usually led by second-eldest Michael) corrected his recollections, something along the lines of, “But last night you said…” So the doting father wrote it all down. As readers “listening in” as Tolkien tells his children a marvelous and entertaining story, we participate with the children. It’s a story meant to be read aloud, and even the frightening parts (the spiders of Mirkwood were intended to frighten young Michael, and did the same to my granddaughter, who made me stop) are intended to entertain and enrapture children. As The Lord of the Rings begins, our ears are still tuned to hear The Hobbit. Yes, Gandalf frightens Frodo with a terrifying tale of the origin of the Ring, but that’s a just a story. When Frodo and Sam and Pippin finally set off across the Shire on a carefree walk, we’re still “listening in” as if listening to The Hobbit.

At the high point of this part of the story, the Hobbits are sleeping among the roots of a great tree like children nestled in their parents’ arms. The fox sees them, and we hear his internal dialogue, almost like a marvelous children’s story, “listening in” in a way that supersedes even what we experience in The Hobbit.

They awaken, and trouble is not far away. First the Nazgûl comes upon them but cannot determine what troubles him: he rides on. Then he overtakes them a second time, but the Noldor follow hard upon his arrival, and he retreats. Then Gildor speaks with Frodo. The Elf “of the House of Finrod” must at least be one of Finrod’s counselors of old: It is likely, I think, that Gildor was one with whom Finrod took council before leaving Nargothrond with Beren. “[A]dvice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.” All courses ran ill indeed for Finrod. “[D]o not go alone. Take such friends as are trusty and willing.” Even so must Gildor have also advised Finrod.

From this point on, until he at last boards ship with Elrond and Galadriel and Gandalf, Frodo is no longer in the world he had before inhabited. He is not even in the (for Middle-earth) day-to-day world his uncle Bilbo inhabited with the Dwarves. He is in the world the Edain inhabited, the world Aragorn inhabits: the Middle-earth of the Noldor, the Middle-earth of their ever-repeating wars against Morgoth and Sauron. He has crossed a boundary and can never leave. He can never truly return home: for Frodo, home is gone forever.

The last signpost of that happy, carefree world Frodo left behind is a talking fox.

[Valandil]

Or at least a thinking fox. Whose thoughts get recorded in the story.

Crazy thought I've never had before... The fox wouldn't have anything to do with CS Lewis' Narnia creatures, would it? Influenced by? Jab at?

I wonder whatever became of the fox. Anyone up for some fanfic on it? Or an RPG? Dare we christen it "Frodo's Fox"?

[Varnafindë]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Crazy thought I've never had before... The fox wouldn't have anything to do with CS Lewis' Narnia creatures, would it? Influenced by? Jab at?

No. Tolkien's fox was written about fifteen years earlier than the Narnia stories.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Varnafindë

No. Tolkien's fox was written about fifteen years earlier than the Narnia stories.

You may both be right. Narnia may have come years later, but as one of the regular Inklings, Lewis was listening and reviewing and suggesting improvements. “Come on, Tollers!” he would say, addressing Tolkien familiarly. “You can do better!” Lewis was very encouraging: in Letter 227, Tolkien wrote that

… I owe to [C. S. Lewis’s] encouragement the fact that in spite of obstacles … I persevered and eventually finished The Lord of the Rings. He heard all of it, bit by bit, read aloud, but never saw it in print till after his trilogy was published.

Poet and fellow Oxford professor Hugo Dyson hated it: it is probably true that one night in Lewis’s rooms at Merton College as Tolkien began to read to the Inklings from the LotR draft, Dyson fell back on his couch as if in agony and exclaimed, “Oh, G*d! Not more f*****g elves!”

Back to the subject. I seriously doubt that the fox was a randomly chosen creature. Lewis was a medievalist: if I am not mistaken, Narnia is in fact a complex medieval-style allegory composed by Lewis and based upon his nearly-unmatched knowledge and understanding of medieval allegory. I think the fox was indeed chosen to demark the shift in story-telling. I don’t think anyone else - not on this board, and not among professional interpreters of Tolkien - has noticed this before. It’s taken me over forty-four years and perhaps a hundred readings to notice it, along with reading a lot of criticism of the scene both from folks like us and from academicians. It seems deliberately obvious: nearly everyone notices and is aggravated by the fox, but no one notes the shift it marks. It must be a signpost, an intentional marking of a particular turn in the story.

Why then a fox? My guess is that C.S. Lewis suggested a fox. Hoping to substantiate it, I looked up “fox in medieval literature” on Google and found quite a bit of reference material, particularly about Reynard the Fox, “the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure,” as Wikipedia puts it. There are a great many other references (over 950,000 tonight), and I have not time to plow through more than a sampling.

Does anyone have any idea why Tolkien would choose to mark this part of the story with a fox rather than, say, a squirrel or a badger or bird or some other creature?

[Valandil]

No idea. Why does a fox fit best in your theory?

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Valandil

No idea. Why does a fox fit best in your theory?

Nor have I any idea. That’s why I’m asking the ’Moot.

Perhaps this holds a clue…

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

Back to the subject. I seriously doubt that the fox was a randomly chosen creature. Lewis was a medievalist: if I am not mistaken, Narnia is in fact a complex medieval-style allegory composed by Lewis and based upon his nearly-unmatched knowledge and understanding of medieval allegory. I think the fox was indeed chosen to demark the shift in story-telling. I don’t think anyone else - not on this board, and not among professional interpreters of Tolkien - has noticed this before. It’s taken me over forty-four years and perhaps a hundred readings to notice it, along with reading a lot of criticism of the scene both from folks like us and from academicians. It seems deliberately obvious: nearly everyone notices and is aggravated by the fox, but no one notes the shift it marks. It must be a signpost, an intentional marking of a particular turn in the story.

I've always regarded the fox as a left-over from The Hobbit and I have an inkling (hah!) that his presence in the story has at least once been touched upon in older threads. But I lack the time to look for it now and 'fox' is too short a search term, and well, I may have imagined it. But in any case the fox and its thoughts feel very Hobbity and if you take out the Gandalf's long historical explanation (which I always felt had to have been considerably added to at a later stage given its change of gravitas) the start of LoTR feels very much like a continuation of the The Hobbit. So the fox here does not feel particularly out of place for me. Although I can't remember whether it felt as a signpost of a story-turn when I read it. Unless I re-read more carefully I have a hard time saying where LoTR stops being The Hobbit's sequel and strikes out on its own path.

Why then a fox? My guess is that C.S. Lewis suggested a fox. Hoping to substantiate it, I looked up “fox in medieval literature” on Google and found quite a bit of reference material, particularly about Reynard the Fox, “the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure,” as Wikipedia puts it. There are a great many other references (over 950,000 tonight), and I have not time to plow through more than a sampling. `

Being from Belgium, Reynard the Fox has featured significantly in my childhood's literature but it strikes me as very different from Tolkien's fox. So much removed in fact that I would go as far as say that there are no simularities other than the species concerned and that Tolkien was not at all influenced by Reynard when he brought up his fox.

Does anyone have any idea why Tolkien would choose to mark this part of the story with a fox rather than, say, a squirrel or a badger or bird or some other creature?

Much (IMO) has to do with biology and habits of foxes and not so much with its role in literature or mythology. It's nighttime when the fox chances across the Hobbits and most birds are creatures of day-light. Foxes are predators, in England they could be considered even apex predators with the removal of wolves, and they're culture followers, so this is an animal that dares to get close to human and their camps while looking for a meal, unlike other animals. Badgers are much more private in that regard. Foxes would take note of human movements in their territory whereas other animals might not. Foxes not only hunt at night but have considerable larger territories than most other species with which it shares its habitat so a fox would be well suited to comment on having seen strange things in the neighbourhood.

[katya]

I think a fox is a good choice over any other creature, for the reasons Earniel stated. Squirrels are too common, it would be odd to pick one squirrel out of the bunch when squirrels wouldn't even be notable. Badgers and porcupines are too specific, they are not just a popular forest animal. An owl could work, but that is a little too close to the bird spies of Saruman. A wolf or bear would be too threatening. A fox has the right aesthetic and the right behavior, they are curious and I can imagine one taking notice of some hobbits and then going about his business.

I don't know that there's a really significant reason for the fox. I figured it was just the author's artistic license (not Tolkien, I mean the in-world author). Just a harmless little bit of whimsy. As the story gets more serious, so does the tone of the writing. That said, I always had a thing for the fox and in fact I've used some variation of "shire fox" as a username on the internet several times.

[Valandil]

Would have been fun in the FOTR movie - if they had a fox turn to observe the hobbits setting out on their journey.

[FernStump]

Gonna resurrect this thread...

Three Thains of the Took line had the name "Isengrim." If you dig into the Reynard tales you will quickly find that Reynard's principle opponent was "Isengrim the Wolf."

As an aside - the name breaks down to Iron + Fierce in Anglo Saxon.

Lewis and Tolkien were both medievalists and being teachers of medieval literature would have been absolutely aware of the Reynard cycle. Given that Lord of the Rings is patterned after medieval epics (much like Narnia is after medieval allegories) it makes perfect sense from this perspective that an "English thinking" fox would make an appearance in some fashion.

I think the dissonance comes from expectation of a modern novel having a consistent voice. Works of medieval literature often have more than one author (much like the Red Book of Westmarch) and changes in the narrative voice and style of Lord of the Rings can be expected.