The Tail of Despereaux (And Why He Had to Lose It)

A Look at the Heroic Critters in Literature, Who (more often than not) Lose Their Tails

 

Ever since I wrote my post Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail a few months ago, another heroic critter has been coming in and out of mind. 

It occurred to me shortly after I shared the post here that Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn't the only fictional critter I knew of who had lost his tail. Despereaux, the heroic mouse in Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux also loses his tail most gruesomely when Miggory Sow chops it off with a cleaver, so sparing his life by a hair, and yet, taking his tail nonetheless. 

 

Reepicheep in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian also loses his tail in a battle against the Telmarines.

 

I thought that surely there must be a mutual string here in these stories. I might not have noticed it otherwise were it not for the trail left by a violently lost tail.

 

Throughout the weeks that followed my first touch on this topic in June, I thought from time to time about Despereaux, wondering occasionally if I could figure out what this symbolism meant, if anything.

Yet I was uncertain whether there was enough in this differential between the loss of tail. It was evident to me that these two stories (Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Tale of Despereaux) did not otherwise have much in common; one being rather grotesque, while the other, though somewhat violent at times, reads much like fairy tale. 

Then, less than a week after I started to ponder Despereaux and his poor cleaved tail, a little chipmunk began to help himself to the food in my bird feeder just outside my living room window. 

Ironically, the little bandit had lost his tail. 

I decided then that it was time to revisit The Tale of Despereuax in an attempt to unravel this mystery. This post is the result of what I have discovered in my lengthy investigation.

We learn from the mouse Reepicheep that the loss of a tail is a heavy burden to bear for any small critter; and so, naturally, Reepicheep was not forgotten in my thoughts as I considered this conundrum. 

In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Reepicheep also loses his tail. Thereafter his mice followers decide to chop off their own tails, saying that it would be better to go without it than to bear the shame of wearing an honour denied to their chief.

 

Fortunatetly, the world Reepicheep lives in is one of healing and redemption, and by the power of Aslan his tail is quickly restored and thus no more tails are chopped off.  

Because of this, I will not be talking much about the wonder that is Reepicheep the mouse and his blessed tail, only say that the reaction of his people shows that the loss of a tail is not to be taken too lightly.

Indeed, I myself would  have been unsettled by such a sight as a group of mice slicing off their own tails with the sharp end of a blade. Surely, Narnia would have to be a more savage place than I remember if that is how the story had gone and we were left to look at the bloodied rumps of these pure creatures. 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post regarding this subject, I find Mr. Fox's own bloodied stump of a tail unsettling, for it represents to me the severity of death in an animal's world and just how near it lives to an animal's rump. A slip down a hole may not be enough to give Death the slip. But if, like Mr. Fox, the critter is lucky, it may miss them by a tail's length. 

 

Despereaux himself is spared from the meat cleaver, and, like Mr. Fox, he must live with this reminder for the rest of his life. Death nearly got him then. But it was not luck that spared him. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a lucky creature, this we cannot deny, for every tight spot he ever gets into he evades with a combination of luck and his own personal cunning. 

Despereaux is not cunning, and indeed, he is often unlucky. 

So, what spared him then?

In the weeks that followed, Despereaux popped often into my mind trailed by this simple question. But the more I thought about these tailless creatures and the argument I had made for Mr. Fox's stump the less it seemed to apply to Despereaux. While it is true that he lives in an often harsh world, death does not dwell nearly so close in Despereaux's castle. Indeed, with an air of destiny, Despereaux evades death the moment he is born, for none of the other mice in his litter survive. He is born along with dead brothers and dead sisters, and though his father claims that he cannot possibly live, the narrator immediately assures us that he does, for this is, after all, his story. 

Thus, Despereaux survives, defying death with his birth alone. One might say it was his destiny that pulled him through. 

 

There is no destiny for Mr. Fox. Indeed, the word is not once uttered. One must remember that the events of the story itself are brought about by the consequences of Mr. Fox's own actions. They are the direct result of his animalistic instincts, to thieve, to eat, to snap chicken necks and crunch on bird bones. 

 

Despereaux, however, is never good at following his mouse instincts. Anyone assigned the task of teaching Despereaux the ways of being a mouse quickly gives up, and so Despereaux is left alone, free to spend his time as he wishes. 

Mostly, Despereaux wishes to daydream.

This simple activity in itself may not seem like a big deal, until one considers that Despereaux is doing things that are beyond even the Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all, despite his fantasticality, Mr. Fox's desires remain largly animalistic. He desires to eat good food, to protect his mate and his offspring, to have good game, and to be tricksy. 

Any fox we might otherwise observe will surely share in these desires: to hunt, to live, to expand the size of his den and further his own line.

 

Despereaux though, as we already discussed, is not just any mouse. He desires to transcend his own mousehood. He has little desire for food. When his sister tells him to eat the crispy pages of a book, Despereaux is perplexed. He would rather read it. While his siblings hunt for crumbs, Despereaux watches the light and he listens to the far off sound of music.

The music, we are told, is enough to make him forget the few mouse instincts he possesses, and so, Despereaux is led by his fate away from his siblings and right to the foot of the human king. 

 

We can all imagine what would happen to Mr. Fox had he forgotten his foxness so: he'd have been shot. His fur would likely have been turned into a hat, and his tail would have prematurely acted as a trophy. 

Despereaux's world is kinder. Indeed, I will tell you that the story ends with Despereaux sharing a table with the King and his daughter, an altogether whimsical image that can only be the stuff of fairytales.

 

Thus, the differential between the two worlds becomes once again evident. The world Dicamillo creates in this narrative is altogether lighter and more dreamy than that of any Roald Dahl book I've ever read, for in this world the gap between humanity and animality can be crossed with compassion and a willingness to change. 

These things are not available to the heroic creatures I mentioned in my last post. For Mr. Fox, for Hazel and Fiver, and for Peter Rabbit there is no crossing this gorge, for death stands in that valley. It is a law not to be breached; a disparity left agape with the curcuial disability of a limited language and an ultimate failure to see the life and possibility in the other. Be it the shortcoming of the beast or the man, these worlds are split apart, and in life they cannot be united. 

 

 

When I said that death does not live close in Despereaux's castle, I meant that death is by no means his next door neighbor. Even so, we find out very quickly exactly where death lives: in its most threatening form it lives in the dungeon, down a long winding staircase and many floors beneath Despereaux's own little feet. Yet, before we even know why, we are told that Despereaux is destined to go there. 

Indeed, the narrator herself tells us that it is fate that sends him there. With the sound of drumming and the smell of celery breath, bound to by a red thread, Despereaux is sent forth to meet death again. 

No mouse, we are told, has ever come back from the dungeons.

 

Despereaux does come back. He goes down the dark winding stair down which mice are sent to die, and he comes back up them again. 

In fact, he does so quite easily. He does not even do so himself. He is carried up on a tray, borne up by a girl named Miggery Sow, who, as I've already told you, will be the one to chop off his tail.

 

It is notable that the first thing Despereaux does when he comes to in the dungeon is to reach for his tail. Throughout the story so far, he has reached for tails often, sometimes his own, sometimes those of others, such as those of his older siblings. But there, with no other tail to cling to, Despereaux searches for his own and is frightened by how long it takes him to find it in the pitch black darkness. 

There in the black, with death circling around him, nearing him with sound of rat claws and long rat tails slithering, his own tail is the only comfort he can cling to.

 

It is also there that Despereaux utters the phrase "I need to live... I can't die," into the ear of the one who will save him.

It is also notable that Despereaux loses his tail the moment he leaves the dungeons. Just as he is recalled to the light and the life that it holds, Despereaux is greeted by a blinding flash as the cleaver comes down. 

So, Despereaux loses his tail. What do you think saved him?

If you want the techincal answer, Migger Sow did. She saved him when she saw more than just a filthy mouse, and so, as cook shouted the implacable words "kill him even if he's already dead", Miggory Sow missed him by a hair, and so Despereaux scurried away; he scurried like an actual professional mouse, the story tells us; for in this moment he is, after all, just an animal who has lost his tail and is running for his life. 

If you want the fairy tale answer, Despereaux's destiny saved him too. For Despereaux, we are told, is destined to save the princess, and thus, to eat soup at the table of the King.

 

That leaves us with one final question. Why did Despereaux have to lose his tail?

 

We are told by the people of Reepicheep that to wear a tail is an honour. 

Honour is a word often uttered by Despereaux throughout the course of his story. It is spoken by him to the princess when he first gives his heart to her. ("I honor you," he whispered with his paw on his heart.)

It is whispered by him in the face of danger and death when the princess is nowhere near, for it makes him feel braver to think of honouring her. 

 

So, one might say, Despereaux does honour her. He loses his tail for her, and so he honours her in the greatest way a little mouse can. Maybe even more.

 

I have, however, come to think that it is not quite that simple. After all, what does Despereaux's and Reepicheep's honour have to do with Mr. Fox's consequential world? The only mutual thread between the bullet, the cleaver, and the heat of battle is that they all have death in them. Yet, none of these critters ultimately dies within their story.

If we are to accept that the losing of a tail is a symbol for death, then we can be certain that these critters have all faced it.

So, why did they have to lose their tails at all?

Probably because only animals have tails; and because Despereaux, in order to transcend his animalness, had to lose a little. In order to unite animality with humanity, he had to give something up. 

 

As for Mr. Fox, he will never cross the breach between animality and humanity in this life. These two worlds cannot be united while they are living. 

Despereaux himself dies by all accounts but actuality: he is sent to the pit of no return, and comes back caked in blood and flour, looking altogether like a ghost. 

 

His story ends with a heavenly image as the author asks us to imagine a mouse and a rat at the table of a king, eating soup and being joyous. It is indeed the stuff of fairy tales. But by the light of this image, I see a heavenly twinge. 

 

 

 

In Despereaux's world death looks like a dark dungeon. Fortunately, it does not look so in mine. To me it looks a bit like the image Dicamillo leaves us with: of animal and humankind eating together at a table. To me, there is light even on the other side of death.

So, as I draw this mystery to a close at last, Reepicheep comes once again into my mind. I am not, however, thinking about his tail. 

I am thinking that Reepicheep is the only critter among all those I've mentioned that doesn't die, who will never die; not by the cleaver, or by the hunter, not in battle, not even by time.

I am thinking about Reepicheep in his little boat, sailing over the sweet waves into Aslan's country, there to depart from death forever. 

I cannot think of another place in literature where man and animal can live and dwell so well together, walk together, fight together, even die together, and then spend eternity together after all else is done.

 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."  (Isiah 11:6-9)