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Crazy Mr. Fox
I don’t think I am alone in saying that I find Mr. Fox to be an incredibly annoying person. He reminds me of an idea that Jake presents in “The Sun Also Rises”: you can’t run from your problems. Allie Fox seems to be trying to create a new world by moving out into what he considers “savage” land. But he has forgotten that there is a population there already, and that however primitive they may be, he will still face his same problems. The problem with Allie Fox is that he is too cynical about everything. Changing locations will not change who he is, or the fact that what he stands for is very hard for other people to drop their daily lives and accept. He is going into Honduras and bringing all of his problems with him. He does not listen to others, nor accept that they might be right at times. He cannot adapt to anybody else’s culture, and does not seem to see that these people live the way they do perhaps for a reason. According to himself, he is always right, and he feels the need to prove that to others. It is as if he wants to fit in somewhere and the way he thinks he can do this is by impressing people. What he doesn’t do is see that in order to be fully relatable or accepted he must also accept and relate to others.
Mother, on the other hand, has a much better approach. When Mr. Fox is out of town, she allows the people living with her to show her their ways, and they get much accomplished. She does not question authority, and is aware of those around her. She does not make a scene, because she understands the social workings of others and accepts them. In this way, I admire Mother for being able to put up with Mr. Fox. She obviously loves him enough to stick with his craziness and obsessions, while not agreeing with him. He puts her children’s lives in danger, and only then does she show the slightest bit of anger. She accepts Mr. Fox as he is. I have to say, he is very lucky to have a woman like her, who is willing to do this for him. I know I wouldn’t put up with him for 5 minutes.
Mr Fox and me
No, I totally agree with you, Carmen. Whenever I read about Allie in the end of the novel, I had to reread and back up, displacing myself from the book. I found it shocking and disheartening that the family had become so torn apart. It was at times even distracting. Charlie’s change, sparked by Allie’s totalitarian control was so sad to me. Contrasting the innocent respect he had for his father, and seeing their relationship degrade to one where he was plotting his own father’s DEATH. My god! It was just so brutal and dark. But, you can’t really blame the boys, for what Allie did to them, like sending them out in the dugout to teach them lessons, was extreme and unnecessary. Why did they have to go down there? What killed such a close family? Watching the beginning of the film while reading the end of the novel sharpened this difference even more. Allie soon became intolerable to me too. The book makes a radical change in mood and dark psychological commentary. And it seems like this “heart of darkness” was inevitable, for it was subtly hinted at, but it the severity of the darkness makes it seem that much more surprising. And what does this dark social commentary mean? Theroux must have had a purpose in dismantling such a sacred and honored construct: the love of a family. And is there a relationship there to travel? Perhaps, he wanted to prove the point that human darkness, the deep primitive ego of the human soul, can override even, the supposedly, most fixed relationships. This power struggle is only heightened when traveling, away from one’s home base, because it becomes easier to forget one’s social responsibilities and roles. Allie has no grounding in the rules of society in Honduras, and this freedom gives him a slippery slope into power hunger and selfishness. Thus the disconnect from home that a traveler experiences has the potential to lend toward a deviance from previous character. And, in my opinion, in Allie’s case, the wilderness of the jungle made him a crazed, blinded human shell.
that mr fox gentlemen
I had similar sentiments about this character, and my blog expresses a similar frustration with the strange limitations of his methods in the face of what is undeniably a genious mind. But, as our teacher pointed out in class, about 15 of us blogged about this same trait. I wonder sometimes if he is trying to characterize the american youth's general sentiment about America's personality abroad by our reactions to the American dominance of globalization. It would make sense. We're not the kids who don't care. Most of us pay at least a bit of attention.
Anyway, our class strongly rejected Allie Fox's character. Why? He is the American-everyman. Maybe we've seen too much of our character abroad trying to fix things, start things over our own way. Generationally we've had enough of the right-wing moral empire, Reagan's New World Order, and from what i gather there exists a general sentiment about politics about young people today as a whole: the need for more sensitivity, precaution, and better judgement in politics.
i wonder, if this book were written in the 50's or the 80's, wither Mr. Fox would have been a hero...