Fantastic Mr. Fox — Chapter 17

About This Passage

Dahl compresses into this passage the entire register-shift of classical oratory: the ironic dedication ('by courtesy of Messrs Boggis, Bunce and Bean'), the carnivalesque interruption (the colossal belch and Badger's populist blessing 'Better out than in'), the turn to gravity ('let us be serious'), and the ontological claim ('we are all diggers'). Mr Fox moves from irony through the body through diagnosis to identity in a single continuous speech. Quintilian would recognise the technique as 'amplificatio per naturam': amplifying a shared nature into a shared principle. The belch is not an accident; it is the guarantee that the speaker has not been swallowed by his own rhetoric.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 17 in seven to eight sentences. Track the architectural and rhetorical geography: the bricked-up tunnel entrance, the run past Bunce's and Boggis's stores, the hollowed-out dining room containing twenty-nine animals across five species, the toasts, Mr Fox's three-part speech, and the cheering that closes the chapter. Name every speaker and tabulate the demographic composition of the feast.

Discussion Questions

1. Mr Fox's founding speech obeys the grammar of classical oratory (exordium, narratio, peroratio) compressed into three beats: the ironic dedication ('by courtesy of Messrs Boggis, Bunce and Bean'), the diagnosis ('if we go out, we will be killed'), and the invitation to perpetual residence. Analyse the political register of this address. What is Dahl arguing, by giving a fox the speech-structure of a constitutional founder, about the relationship between rhetorical form and moral authority?
2. The title phrase — 'my husband is a fantastic fox' — is delivered by Mrs Fox 'shyly' and rendered in capital letters. Dahl has withheld the book's own title from its text for sixteen chapters, then placed it in the mouth of the character with the least appetite for public speech. Examine the rhetorical and ethical logic of this deferral. What theory of reputation does Dahl propose by making a shy witness the authority who confers the title, and why does rendering her sentence in small capitals function as the textual equivalent of a community's attentive silence?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide