Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
A quick read with short chapters and plentiful illustrations. A classic man vs. animal story. Farmers vs. Mr. Fox. Farmers want to keep the fox out of their collective ‘hen’ houses which include ducks and turkeys too. They band together to rid themselves of their collective pest. But Mr. Fox also wants to feed his family consisting of his wife and three young foxes. The farmers are painted in an unflattering light while the Mr. Fox is seen as the intrepid family man, providing for and protecting his family from harm and starvation.
The largess of his heart for his family expands to his neighbors who do question his actions of raiding the farmer’s poultry while helping him reach his goal of providing food for his family.
This question about stealing does not seem to trouble Mr. Fox who only sees himself as keeping his family from starvation. It is the question which humans have sorted out many times, is it wrong to do something that is immoral or illegal if your motive and intentions appear to be good?
Is it wrong for a man to steal medicine to give to his ill wife?
Mr. Fox then pushes back further by reminding his questioner that they are not trying to kill the farmers, stooping to their level, he calls it. He maintains that he is peace-loving and that helping himself to a few of their chickens and poultry a little here and there is justified by the care he gives his family. His fellow animal is satisfied by this reasoning and declared much affection for Mr. Fox as they continue their work.
It’s a good dilemma to work out in your mind although Roald Dahl left no one wondering who he considered the hero.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
“None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.”
“Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our enquiries.”
“To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.”
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
“A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent nature would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”
“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity.”
“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; American would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”
