Three Little Pigs
Laura Metzger
English 1301.131
23April2015
A Fox and Psycho Pixies
The Fox and Pixies will be examined through the psychoanalytical literary criticism. The story is about obsession and the cost attributed to it. The story starts off with a hungry fox searching for food and then he finds a pixie locked up in a wooden house, and once he gets the idea of eating the pixy, even though there is most likely easier food to find elsewhere, he can’t let go of eating the pixy. So the fox tries to get the pixy to let him inside the wooden house by talking to him but that didn’t work so he climbed on top of the house and collapsed it and ate the fairy. All of that isn’t too strange when people or animal get very hungry they will do drastic things to eat, but then the fox wants more he won’t try to find any other food he just wants more pixy to the point where he seeks them out and destroys or attempts to destroy more houses. When he comes across a house he can’t destroy he sits outside and plots and plans for a way to get the pixy. Normal wildlife does not do this nor do people. If someone wants a burger you prowl around outside Red Robin trying to get in you move on and find another place to get one or let it go and stop worrying about it for now. This fox though he just sits there plotting, planning, and obsessing over how to get this tasty pixy. “It was too strong for him, and he went away in despair. But he returned the next night and exerted all his foxlike qualities in the hope of deceiving the pixy.”
Insecurity also plays an interesting role in this story. If you look at the pixy’s houses you can see that the last pixy is clearly insecure and maybe even a little paranoid. You can see it in his choice of building materials. “The third was an iron house.” Those who are normal don’t build metal fortresses, they build homes. This house could not have been cheap to build and is prone to rust. Only someone with a severe anxiety or an obsession with security and this pixie most likely does not really leave his house except on rare occasions. Although this time, the pixie’s paranoia paid off because the fox wasn’t able to crumble his house like his fellow pixies. This could be revealing about the author as he shows support for the paranoid pixie with the iron house. Showing that in rare cases that kind of obsession with safety can pay off in the end. You can see this from how the first house was made of wood which should be enough to stop a fox but it does not. The second house which was made of stone which most defiantly should have been more than enough to stop the fox from getting the pixie but that did not work either. It is not until the fox reaches the house made of iron that the fox is stopped. The writer could be trying to show the extreme circumstance that would justify his own anxiety.
This story had a theme of obsession and subliminal support of the paranoid lifestyle. Anyone can see that from the fox’s constant attempts to eat the last pixie. The subliminal message is shown by how the overly prepared pixie is the only one who makes it out alive. The story of the “The Fox and the Pixies” is an interesting tale with heavy psychological deeper meanings.
