The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (The Animated Short): A Review
Image Source: Apple
I don’t come across very many children’s stories worth talking about. Actually, I don’t remember the last time I read or watched one. I think that’s a mistake on my part.
But if you’re like me and enjoy perusing bookstores for hours on end, you might have come across a book by Charlie Mackesy called The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. The only reason this book stood out to me at first was the long and somewhat cumbersome title.
I haven’t read the book, but I recently watched the animated short on Apple TV+. There will be spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t seen it, I recommend doing so. It won’t take much out of your day to watch as it’s only a half-hour long. If not, here’s a…
Spoiler-Free Review (of the Short):
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse short based on Charlie Mackesy’s book is a beautiful, family-friendly story about life, home, and profound change for all ages. Mostly, it’s about living your best life, and that’s why we read Myth stories.
Now, here’s a…
Longer, Spoiler-y Review (of the Short):
In order to fully appreciate this story completely, I believe we have to look at this story as a Myth. Mackesy probably didn’t mean to write it as a Myth, but it comes across as one to me at least.
The Myth Story Form
Lately, I’ve been reading John Truby’s book, The Anatomy of Genres, and I’ve gained a ton of insight into different types of story forms out there. I’m not even halfway through the book, but I happen to be on the Myth chapter (3rd), and so I thought I’d put my newfound knowledge to the test.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is a straight up Myth story. I’ll present some evidence to back up that assertion. Most of the ideas found in this post will be coming from Truby’s book, which I highly recommend.
According to Truby, the Myth is the first genre to answer the essential question: What does it mean for a human being to be a self-conscious animal? It says that life is a journey in which one's ultimate goal is to understand oneself. Mackesy is absolutely telling one of these stories, and one way you can see this is by the way the story is “shaped.”
Image Source: Wikicommons
Visually, the Myth plot looks like a “meander,” a winding path without apparent direction. In the story, the Boy doesn't know where to go until they get to a river (a meander) leading to "home." This is the essential Journey, which is symbolic of the life path or life span. The story doesn’t need a physical river in it, just a not-so-linear motion as the characters move through the plot.
Along the way, heroes in Myth stories come across a variety of other characters from different levels of society (think of The Wizard of Oz movie when Dorothy arrives in Oz). This, along with a succession of opponents along the journey, is why Myth stories tend to be episodic in nature. Writers can get around this problem with creatively and organically introducing new characters and opponents throughout the hero’s journey. Mackesy has this problem introducing the three other animal characters in succession. The Fox is introduced in a semi-organic way. The Mole and the Horse are introduced suddenly. They are simply not there one scene, and there in the next. Exactly where the Boy needs them to be.
Normally, introducing new characters like this is frowned upon. It’s not organic, but these characters are not real people in a real society. Mackesy is not insinuating that these animals would naturally form a community with a human. The animal characters in this story are more symbolic than anything.
In Myth (specifically children stories), animal characters are “symbolic models” on the path to enlightenment:
The mole represents overcoming one’s fears
The fox represents tempering one’s aggression
The horse represents realizing one’s true potential
Image Source: Apple
Of all the animal characters, the fox represents the greatest change. He begins in his basic, primal state, following instincts that lead him into a trap rather than toward his desire: food. The Mole, who is the smallest character, conquers his fears by confronting the fox and freeing him from the trap. Fear and aggression are primal, and when one conquers them, they don’t simply go away. They help us along the way to enlightenment.
The Horse is probably my favorite animal character in the story.
The revelation that he actually has wings may make some lift an eyebrow. It seems like Deus ex Machina and lazy writing. But when you look at this story as a Myth, it makes perfect sense. Because his specialness made the other horses jealous, he hid away his talent. He hid away from his full potential. When he unfurled his wings, he became beautiful.
Because the Horse symbolizes realizing one’s true potential, there’s a lesson here when the Boy “lets go” of him and falls into freezing water. The action symbolizes temporarily letting go of his destiny to become a fully realized human being.
Myth is all about how one finds one's destiny. We fall when we "let go" or get distracted from our understanding of our true self.
Image Source: Apple
Side note: Notice how the above scene is shown in warmer colors. It’s supposed to be the dead of winter. He’s going to get hypothermia! I’m not sure if it’s the particular picture I got, but nothing is done by accident. When we fall, when we “let go” of who we are, it’s not the end of the world. We know we are loved (we are enough) and we keep moving.
Transcending Myth
The best stories are those that transcend their own genre. They move beyond what has already been told. In The Anatomy of Genres, Truby describes one way of transcending the Myth genre is to use the “Female Myth” versus the age-old “Male Warrior Myth,” which is what Joseph Campbell calls the “Monomyth.”
Truby says,
[The Monomyth] is not the universal story, or even the universal Myth…At most we could say it is the universal male warrior Myth…According to Campbell [in Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine], approximately three thousand years ago, hunter-warrior societies conquered gatherer-agricultural societies. As a result, male warrior myths wiped out female cyclical growth myths. The Female Myth has been largely missing from Western Culture ever since.
Mackesy’s story transcends a simple "Male Linear Myth" (Monomyth) by taking us on the Female Cyclical Beats: birth, growth, maturity, decline, death, resurrection, rebirth, and repetition of the cycle.
Image Source: Apple
We're introduced to the Boy suddenly, in a cold, snowy wilderness. That is where he is "born." From there he is lost, searching for a home. He learns lessons from the Mole, Fox, and Horse—all symbolic enlightenment models—and grows and matures along the way. When he falls off the horse, it is a decline, a sort of death from which the symbolic animals (life lessons) help him recover by reminding him that he is enough. He is enough. He then resurrects, but he isn't reborn until he has a “self-revelation.” The Boy chooses to remain with the animals, and the cycle begins anew.
The self-revelation is perhaps the most important part of any Myth story, which is all about character change. “Being is becoming,” as Truby puts it. Life is about change and creating. In real life, such a profound change is rare—especially in such a short amount of time. In Myth, it’s crucial.
“Home isn’t always a place, is it?” the Boy asks at the end of the story.
They’ve reached their destination. The Boy has found the village that “appears” to be his home and where he belongs. By refusing "home" and remaining with the animals who love him, the Boy values the models of living a good life over security, and mortality over immortality.
In both Male and Female Myths…the hero’s physical journey is often circular: the hero returns home, where he/she learns a truth that was always deep inside.
Image Source: Gustav Schwab via FromOldBooks.org
In Mackesy’s story, what happened before the opening visuals doesn’t matter in this case, and it’s never explained why the Boy is out in the wilderness to begin with. Logically, he was born somewhere. He came from somewhere. But Myth is not always logical. To us, he was “born” in the snowy wilderness because that’s where the story begins. As humans, sometimes we feel like we’re just dropped into a wilderness, abandoned and lost. But the truth the Boy learns in the end is this: despite his searching, home is about loving the journey rather than the ending.
This is a fun twist on the traditional homecoming myths like Homer’s Odyssey.
Imagine if Odysseus were originally a vagabond rather than a king, always traversing the world, searching for a place to call home. But when he comes to the shores of Ithaca, he realizes his home was out among the dangerous world, with the friends whom he’d shared laughs and stories over campfires. “Home” wouldn’t be Ithaca.
Not for him.
Negative Review?
In doing my research, I inevitably found myself online looking to buy the book. There are a multitude of positive reviews. This book has over 100,000 reviews! That’s any author’s dream.
Obviously, no work of fiction has a 100% universal appeal. Myth stories attempt to reach that percentage, and have a high probability of succeeding, but there are many who don’t like Myths at all. Understandable. However, before you critique a book in any genre, I believe it’s important to know how to read it.
As it turns out, I did notice one very prominent negative review for the book. I don’t wish to embarrass or single anyone out, so I’ll simply paraphrase what they said.
Essentially, the reviewer complained that the messages in Macksey’s book would make people feel worse rather than better, specifically those who find themselves less fortunate in life. This is because they may not have a tribe who loves them enough to bring them home. The reviewer mentioned that depending on others to love you while filling voids with relationships without addressing personal issues would not be emotionally healthy.
Now, what this person asserts here may or may not be true—I’m not going to comment on the accurateness of the psychology. What I want to point out is an unfortunate misreading of Myth.
Firstly, the animals in the story are not real animals (besides being animated and therefore fictional). But, in my opinion, they don’t even represent real animals. The Mole might have been a squirrel, for example. All that mattered was that he needed to be a small mammal that’s preyed upon by larger predators. Secondly, the animals also don’t represent individuals or even categories of people in my opinion.
In Myth, animals have always represented ideals. As Truby said, they are models. They represent different facets of how to achieve enlightenment or fall into darkness. And since this is a children’s book, we shall proceed with the former.
One could say the Boy represents anyone who is completely and utterly alone, and without a tribe to call home. The animals are life lessons they can learn and hold onto so they can feel loved and live a good life. He may find other humans along the way. He may even create his own tribe one day. But that’s not what matters here because the story is a metaphor or a series of metaphors, not a one-to-one allegory.
I think people mistake the one for the other more often than not.
Conclusion
I may be utterly overstepping here. I may be reading too much into a children’s story. I was definitely way too excited to write this post at 4:30 AM in the morning. But this is just an obsessive writer’s take on it. I loved The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse short. It’s a beautiful, family-friendly story about life, home, and profound change for all ages. Mostly, it’s about living your best life, and that’s why we read Myth stories.
I haven’t read the book yet, but if it’s anything like the short (it’s probably better), I recommend it 100%. I plan on getting my copy soon.
My Score:
