Reaching Toward Interdependence in The Fox and the Hound

The narrative of The Fox and the Hound reinforces the power of wild nature, even suggesting the limitations of domestic orthodoxy without, as in Bambi, condemning it as only a vicious enemy to the natural world. A hunting scene that opens the film suggests the need for a clear bifurcation between humans and nature, but the interactions between a fox cub and both a human and a domesticated hunting dog call that binary into question. Although contemporary and more recent reviews of the film seem ambivalent about the film’s valorization of nurture over nature and its revisions of domesticated and wild nature, we see the film as complicating Bambi’s message that wild nature and domesticated culture of humans must remain separate in order to survive.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times argues, for example, that The Fox and the Hound “breaks no ground whatsoever” (“Old Style Disney”). Roger Ebert agrees that The Fox and the Hound “looks like a traditional production from Walt Disney animators” (“The Fox”). Yet, according to Ebert, “for all of its familiar qualities, this movie marks something of a departure for the Disney studio…. It’s not just cute animals and frightening adventures and a happy ending; it’s also a rather thoughtful meditation on how society determines our behavior.” The mixed feelings Ebert asserts are reinforced by a later reading by Leonard Maltin, but they all marvel at the hyper-realistic vision of nature like that highlighted in Bambi opening The Fox and the Hound. 

The conflict between human and nonhuman nature is established when a dog’s bark enters the scene, and gunshots explode. A fox is hit, but its cub survives to help blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman nature with help from a friendly widow who adopts him. The binary between wild and domesticated nature, however, is also reinforced in the same scene, since as the widow rescues the fox pup, a hunter who lives next door brings a hunting dog pup named Copper to Chief the elder hound dog, so he can teach him his hunting strategies. Ultimately they force the widow to release Tod in a nearby nature preserve.

The boundaries between domestic and wild nature are blurred, however, when Tod and Copper interconnect and form an interdependent relationship that saves them both when a bear attacks Copper on a hunting trip. Now Copper and Tod may live in separate spaces, but they share an alliance. The next year the caterpillar has turned into a butterfly, demonstrating how any creature can change, including the violent and angry hunter. Because a fox named Tod saved him and his hunting dog, Copper, Amos rejects his former hatred of wild nature and builds an alliance with the widow, the bridge between domestic and wild nature. Copper sleeps and dreams of Tod, while Tod and Vixey, his fox mate, watch the house from their hill, separated in their nature preserve without the overwhelming fear of human nature reinforced in Bambi.