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What I learned from “The Adventures of Reddy Fox”

What I learned from “The Adventures of Reddy Fox”

Last updated on: October 21, 2016 at 7:43 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

What I learned from “The Adventures of Reddy Fox” 2016-10-21T07:43:57-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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When I was a little boy, a go-to author was Thornton W. Burgess, because he simply was happy, kind, and gentle. There is nothing complicated about a Burgess book which creates an animal civilization that may never have existed in this actual world, but does exist in the mind of every child.

This is nature as it-sort-of-is if most animals were jolly misters and misses and even the bad ones are not so bad. These are not great books, but good books and if you can stand wholesome entertainment (much has made us unfit for it just now), then you are in for treat, because Burgess wrote piles of stories and books.

Burgess wrote from the Edwardian period to the early 1960’s. He started before World War I had destroyed hopes for a better Christian Century and outlived JFK and Camelot. He did not change, at least very much, but the world did. His love of nature was acceptable and so he has a sort-of-second life, but his values and his gentleness did not survive World War I and the memory of gentility kept fading until he died.

Of course, the world was not gentle for most people in 1905, where “Jim Crow” was not a character in a children’s book. Yet there was hope amongst good people that what they were getting right, increased education and opportunity, would keep spreading. We would all gentle our condition. But instead of the civility, manners, and love of Nature spreading, as so many Edwardians assumed they would, the gentility died. Perhaps, it had to do so as it was alive at the same time as colonialism, scientific racism, and the growth of the ideas of Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx.

The sins of his era turned out to be more potent than the virtues, many of the hearts in the era were very dark indeed, as Joseph Conrad knew, but the virtues were there. Perhaps, just now, we might recall the virtues. We need them.

Getting ready to teach tomorrow, I turned to Burgess for hope and he gave it to me. What did I learn from The Adventures of Reddy Fox?

You should listen to your grandparents. This is very good advice generally. Sure some people have rotten grandparents, but for the rest of us we know this much: whatever mistakes our grandparents make (or made!), they have a different perspective.

Don’t boast.

The boaster is obnoxious and he prevents people from seeing his good qualities by exaggerating or drawing attention to self. He does not give credit to the community or those who have helped him get to where he is going. Cultures that encourage boasters, or reward boasting, end up narcissistic leaders.

Reddy Fox lost friends over his boasting:

Reddy Fox had been taught so much by Granny Fox that he began to feel very wise and very important. Reddy is naturally smart and he had been very quick to learn the tricks that old Granny Fox had taught him. But Reddy Fox is a boaster. Every day he swaggered about on the Green Meadows and bragged how smart he was. Blacky the Crow grew tired of Reddy’s boasting.

Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) (2009-10-04). Adventures of Reddy Fox (p. 9). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

A humble attitude, God help me, is attractive and makes people wish to help. Real humility is not “poor mouthing,” pretending you are no good when you have done something well, but is the desire to let your deeds speak for you. Self-promotion consumes self until nothing authentic is left. I don’t know for sure how to escape it (is writing this post a case?), but we must.

It is dangerous to get too cocky:

Now it is one of the worst habits in the world to think too much of one’s self. And Reddy Fox had the habit. Oh, my, yes! Reddy Fox certainly did have the habit! When anyone mentioned Bowser the Hound, Reddy would turn up his nose and say: “Pooh! It’s the easiest thing in the world to fool him.”

Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) (2009-10-04). Adventures of Reddy Fox (p. 13). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

As Han Solo warned Luke Skywalker “Don’t get cocky, kid.” Some success or learning can make us think we have arrived when the journey has just started! Cocky people are in more danger, because they rely on their little knowledge or few skills more than than they should. This puts them in danger, because they often overreach their talents.

Nobody likes a braggart and they are happy if he fails. Braggarts often are bullies.

Now people who brag and boast and who like to show off are almost sure to come to grief. And when they do, very few people are sorry for them.

Burgess, Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) (2009-10-04). Adventures of Reddy Fox (p. 17). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

Bullying is physical bragging. Just as boasts take up too much airtime, so bullying takes up too much space or power. Sometimes bullying is obvious: the kid pushing in line today, but sometimes it is sly. The sneaky bully will use religious language to get his way. He might say: “We should honor God’s leaders” when he just happens to be the leader.

This kind of bully is harder to spot, but falls just as hard.

Finally, if you are naughty, then bad things often happen, but the people who love you will stick with you.

Reddy Fox is not reformed at the end of the book, but he has learned to listen to his Granny. She sticks with him, even though he has much to learn and his naughtiness has made her life harder. This is great news and gives hope. If we change and do not just say we are sorry, then we make moral progress.

The good news, as Thornton Burgess shows, is that the decent, humble animals are happy, because they get to frolic in all the good things God gives us for free in nature: wind, sun, rain, and grass!

Just now, I wish I could get our leaders to sit down and read some Thornton Burgess.

—————-

*Caution: some of the “dialect” in the books may be meant to represent African-American or Southern dialect.

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