“The Fantastic Mr. Fox” Pre-Viewing Notes

The Plot Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 British-American stop-motion animated comedy film based on the Roald Dahl children's novel of the same name. The film is about a fox who steals food each night from three mean and wealthy farmers. They are fed up with Mr. Fox's theft and try to kill him, so they dig their way into the foxes' home, but the animals are able to outwit the farmers and live underground.

Alliteration The repetition of consonant sounds within close proximity, usually in consecutive words within the same sentence or line.

Symbolism The use of specific objects or images to represent abstract ideas. This term is commonly misused, describing any and all representational relationships, which in fact are more often metaphorical than symbolic. A symbol must be something tangible or visible, while the idea it symbolizes must be something abstract or universal. In other words, a symbol must be something you can hold in your hand or draw a picture of, while the idea it symbolizes must be something you can’t hold in your hand or draw a picture of.

Setting The time and place where a story occurs. The setting can be specific (e.g. New York City in 1930) or ambiguous (e.g., a large urban city during economic hard times). When discussing or analyzing setting, it is generally insufficient to merely identify the time and place; an analysis of setting should include a discussion of its overall impact on the story and characters.

Notes on “The Fantastic Mr. Fox’s” Setting Roald Dahl lived with his family in Great Missenden, a village in Buckinghamshire, UK. Their house was surrounded by fields and woods. As a passionate lover of the countryside, there was one particular tree - known locally as "the witches tree" - that sat on the lane near the Dahl home and came to inspire one of Roald's own favourite stories: Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Dramatic Irony Where the audience or reader is aware of something important, of which the characters in the story are not aware. Macbeth responds with disbelief when the weird sisters call him Thane of Cawdor; ironically, unbeknownst to him, he had been granted that title by king Duncan in the previous scene.

Transitions A film transition is a technique used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing by which scenes or shots are combined. Most commonly this is through a normal cut to the next scene. Most films will also include selective use of other transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story. Other transitions may include dissolves, cuts, fades (usually to black), and wipes.

Juxtaposition Juxtaposition is a literary technique in which two or more ideas, places, characters and their actions are placed side by side in a narrative or a poem for the purpose of developing comparisons and contrasts. In literature, juxtaposition is a useful device for writers to portray their characters in great detail to create suspense and achieve a rhetorical effect. It is a human quality to comprehend one thing easily by comparing it to another. Therefore, a writer can make readers sense “goodness” in a particular character by placing him or her side by side to a character that is predominantly “evil”. Consequently, goodness in one character is highlighted by evil in the other character.

Music/Sound Music can be used in two different ways in a film. One kind is music from outside the film story, added to the soundtrack in post-production, usually for atmosphere. The second kind is music that originates within the film story itself, such as when a character sings. This is called 'diegetic music' (the diegesis is the world of the film); the other kind is called 'non-diegetic music'.

Anthropomorphism Where animals or inanimate objects are portrayed in a story as people, such as by walking, talking, or being given arms, legs, facial features, human locomotion or other anthropoid form. (This technique is often incorrectly called personification.)