Fantastic Mr. Fox — Chapter 16

About This Passage

This passage earns its place because Dahl compresses an entire moral and rhetorical reversal into a half-page exchange. Rat shrieks territorial insults downward from a 'high shelf'; Mr Fox answers with a single calm sentence of prediction — 'You are going to be poisoned' — and Rat's only reply is Poppycock, a nonsense word substituting for an argument. Quintilian would note the imitatio value: dialogue in which position, volume, and diction each do different work.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 16 in five to seven sentences. Begin with Mr Fox, Badger, and the Smallest Fox hiding behind the cider jars and end with the three of them escaping through the hole in the wall while Rat shouts after them. Name every character who speaks and track how close each cider jar Mabel removes brings her to discovering the foxes.

Discussion Questions

1. Mabel tells Mrs Bean, 'I'll be glad when the rotten brute is killed and strung up on the front porch,' and then casually asks for the tail as a souvenir. What does Dahl want the reader to register about how ordinary people speak when they are certain they are on the right side? How does the domestic setting — a cellar, a rolling-pin, two women chatting about errands — sharpen or soften the cruelty of the request?
2. The Smallest Fox's body is 'pressed tightly against' Mr Fox's, 'quivering with excitement' — not fear. Why does Dahl choose that word? What does it reveal about how the Smallest Fox understands the stakes compared to how a child reading the chapter understands them, and how does this choice change the emotional temperature of the whole scene?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide