Fox

“[Of] course she understands that her human is her salvation, but her human, though sharp-eyed and often capable of reading her mind is not here to observe, and so for the time being she has forgotten her human, when a human is not here to observe it is only natural to forget the human.”

Oates narrates from Princess Di’s perspective as the dog enters the woods, leaving civilization behind. Even though she is grateful to P. Cady for giving her a home, as she drives into the wilderness, she goes back to her most feral self. Princess Di is symbolic of Fox, who is only on his best behavior when people observe him.

“It was his strategy, as soon as possible in the new term, to determine which girls, if they were attractive, were fatherless. For a fatherless girl is an exquisite rose on a branch lacking thorns, there for the picking; but a girl with a father in the family was, Francis Fox had learned from experience, so fully protected, she might as well be a rose surrounded by thorns that is also surrounded by a barbed wire fence, off-limits.”

Here, Fox shows that he thinks about threats to the success of his predatory behavior. The close third-person perspective here mimics the narrative voice of Princess Di, highlighting the animalistic nature of Fox’s calculations as he chooses his targets. Though he implies that he will consider the girls with fathers off limits, this is a good example of the kind of self-imposed rule that Fox breaks consistently.

“[I]n desperation to save herself she is tearing pages from the journal with the marbled cover of which she has been so proud, the Mystery-Journal (she has called it) (for it will explain her life to her), in a fury trying to wrench off the cover but he journal is too sturdy, too well-made, a very special object not easily destroyed by weak-faltering hands.”

This is the action Eunice takes after remembering a sexual assault by Fox. Her trauma has made her conflate Fox with her father, falsely accusing her father of sexual abuse. Eunice is trying to get to the truth, symbolized by her efforts to take off the “cover” of the journal and expose what’s underneath. She wants to destroy what Fox has given her but doesn’t yet have the strength, as shown by her “weak-faltering hands.” The parenthetical aside, “(for it will explain her life to her),” foreshadows her later use of the journal as a resource for the memoir she writes in college.

“Sinkholes in the hard-crusted sand, suddenly. He stumbles, nearly falls. If he sprains an ankle in this deserted place shrieking Harpies will swoop down to tear the living flesh from his bones, pluck at his eyes and swallow them whole […] So vivid is this hellish vision, he could swear he has seen it.”

Fox thinks this when he is on the beach in exile. The reference to “Harpies” alludes to ancient Greek mythology, in which the harpies are terrifying bird-women who punish wrongdoers on behalf of the gods. This allusion foreshadows the punishment that awaits Fox, whose body really will be torn apart by birds and other animals after Eunice kills him.

“‘This will never happen again, Simon! I—I am determined.’

‘The name change, d’you mean?’

‘No. The trouble at the school. The misunderstanding.’

‘The girl cutting her wrists?’

‘Well—the misunderstanding.’”

This conversation between lawyer Simon Grice and Fox shows Fox’s lack of empathy and the dance of denial and institutional acquiescence that allows his abuse to continue. Fox reduces Miranda’s suicide, which he deliberately precipitated, to a “misunderstanding.” This distancing language shows that he doesn’t really see Miranda as a living person whose death matters. Simon is clear in acknowledging Miranda’s self-harm, but he sidesteps his client’s role in it.

“She helped him write crucial papers which invariably earned him A’s even as Katy, disadvantaged by her sex as by her unprepossessing appearance, struggled to earn A-’s from their male professors. She was a staunch supporter when an (unsubstantiated) charge of plagiarism made by his advisor abruptly terminated Francis’s graduate career in English literature.”

This passage shows how willing Katy is to help Fox, even violating honor codes to do so. Fox denies charges of “plagiarism” directly after admitting that Katy “helped him write crucial papers.” This is a good example of how Fox obfuscates the truth. It also hints at another cover-up: If the claim was “unsubstantiated,” why did he lose his position? Fox notes that his abuses go back to these years, prompting speculation on the real reason for his expulsion.

“Affluence!—Francis Fox’s heart becomes a fist, bitterly he resents the rich.

Rich people’s children, his students. He is their Mr. Fox.

Hire Fox to fuck your children. Fuck you all, thank you very much.”

Fox resents the rich in part because he envies their power and position. Because of this, he seeks revenge on them through their progeny. He infiltrates their closed system to corrupt what is closest to them. The expletive-ridden language that Fox uses in this passage shows how he desires to reassert power.

“He has hinted at abuses—wounds—in his childhood. He didn’t go into details but it was clearly very traumatic. This is why Francis is so adamant about adults not taking advantage of children. […] It might have been a man, or an older boy who victimized him. He spoke of being in therapy, and making progress. He is a wounded being. But all of this is confidential, Officer. You must not tell anyone.”

This is what Imogene tells Zwender and Odom. Fox uses this story to excuse his reluctance to be intimate. As with his child targets, he makes Imogene think she is special because he has shared this information only with her. In another echo of his behavior with Genevieve, Eunice, and Miranda, he tells Imogene that this secret should not be shared. Fox uses similar tactics of manipulation and secrecy with both girls and adult women.

“For in his innermost heart Francis Fox isn’t an adult male, but a prepubescent like these twelve-year-olds. All of his life shimmers before him, an untrodden path, unexplored, not a much-trodden path, littered and defaced, along which his is staggering no longer young, losing his looks by inexorable degrees and filling up with self-loathing as a septic tank fills with excrement.”

Oates uses free-indirect style—a third-person point of view that closely tracks the thoughts of the character—to inhabit Fox’s bifurcated perspective, at once self-deluded and painfully aware of the distance between his idealized self-image and reality. Fox views youth as a state of power, and as he ages, his path becomes more “littered and defaced.” He is afraid of growing physically ugly and “filling up with self-loathing.” In fairy tales, wicked villains ingest parts of young women in an effort to use their beauty to restore themselves (as in Snow White). This passage suggests that Fox may be doing the same. In his own mind, his eternal childhood places him outside the boundaries of adult responsibility.

“But it is enormously risky to cause a prepubescent girl weighing less than one hundred pounds to fall asleep in a teacher’s office, even into a very light sleep. Scarcely a milligram of Ambien will do it, secreted in a sweet treat—two milligrams would be a catastrophe. At the Kent School, besotted Francis Fox took foolish chances which he will never take again.”

Fox’s fluency in dosages and risks makes clear that he has been drugging girls regularly for years. The allusion to the Kent School, hinting at  “foolish chances” that cost him his job, suggests a long history of horrific abuse. Again, he promises reform even as his present behavior renders such promises uncredible.

“How raw, exposed he looks. His blemished skin is glaring […]

But your eyes are beautiful, Demetrius. You are a custodian of souls.

In your heart, you are beautiful.

He owes it to his mother, to try to remember. The world wears away our memories like wind. He must make a conscious effort to remember.”

Demetrius hates his own reflection. However, he tries to remember the good that his mother saw in him. Ida Healy’s view of her son has religious overtones, as she echoed the cliché that the eyes are windows to the soul. Demetrius is a kind person, which is why he is “beautiful.” That Ida called him the “custodian of souls” hints at how Demetrius cares for others, protecting those who often cannot protect themselves. This foreshadows the final scenes of the novel as Demetrius comforts Eunice and later tries to emulate Jesus by taking the blame for killing Fox.

“Oh, Demmie. I wish you knew […] Mr. Fox. How special he is. How kind and generous he is. Not like people in our family. Not like people who live out here. He gave me this journal. It’s special for me. […] These little stars, see these little red stars?—they mean ‘very promising.’ […] [H]e says I’ve been disadvantaged by my education and background.”

Here, Mary Anne speaks to Demetrius about how she feels about Fox, who gives her hope that she can grow beyond her circumstances in Wieland. Demetrius is frustrated by Mary Ann’s misplaced belief in Fox as “kind and generous,” as he has already seen him hit her with his car and drive away. He can’t believe that Mary Ann has fallen in love with a man who would kill her.

“He isn’t worried. He will be rid of the ferret-faced girl whenever he wishes, rid of any of them, all of them, Little Kitten included whenever he wishes. He is Mr. Fox […] Snap of his fingers, easy as pricking a bubble, press delete, he’s the puppet-master.”

This is Fox at his most arrogant, where he sees the girls he’s seduced as things he can easily toss aside. He doesn’t differentiate between Eunice and Genevieve here. Of primary importance to Fox is his own power to “delete” them from his life. He believes that he is the one running the show. Later, he will find that the girls can’t be gotten rid of so easily. His arrogance ultimately sets him up to underestimate Eunice, who embodies Tenacity as a Survival Strategy.

“Francis wants to protest: He is thirty-seven years old. He is this girl’s teacher. He will not only be fired from his position and publicly humiliated, he will be arrested.

If she accuses him. If it occurs to her. If she realizes how Mr. Fox, for all his authority, is at her mercy.”

Mary Ann has arrived uninvited and drunk at Fox’s residence, and he is panicking. Despite his earlier insistence that he controls when and where the girls enter his life, Mary Ann has thrown him a curve ball. She has broken the rules and, by doing so, has put him “at her mercy.” This passage characterizes Fox as dependent on the illusion of control and easily discombobulated by what he cannot predict or orchestrate.

“Francis loves to touch the girl, shake her around a little. Nothing like taking hold of a full-grown woman—that is gross. Genevieve is a sweet-rag-doll kind of puppet, soft-bodied, unresisting, there’s a dark-sexual excitement in measuring his strength and size against her strength and size for when upright seated together they seem (almost) equals, but that is very deceiving.”

Fox is shaking a drugged Genevieve in his office, trying to get her to be more awake since a knock has interrupted them. Here, he sees her as an object, a “kind of puppet” who is not fully human. His power over her is erotic to him. The passage also hints at a sort of body dysmorphia when Fox reveals that “upright seated together they seem (almost) equals.” This is an echo of his earlier confession that he sees himself as a child of 12. His efforts to gain power over Genevieve, one of the smallest girls, suggests how powerless he really feels.

“Zwender assures P. Cady that she is hardly alone […] Pedophiles like Fox depend upon the naïveté of people around them. They are like parasites boring into living things, hiding in their guts while they devour them from the inside. By the time the victim realizes it’s too late.

The serial pedophile is like a serial killer: hiding in plain sight.”

Earlier, Zwender made sure that P. Cady felt remorse for her role in hiring Fox. Here, he tries more kindly to explain how pedophiles work, using a metaphor to compare them to “parasites” that attack “from the inside,” making them very difficult to detect. Fox exploits the tendency of many people to think of predators as people unlike themselves, even though statistically, most pedophiles are members of the community: religious leaders, family members, and trusted adults.

“Any longtime law enforcement officer understands that there are individuals so loathsome, they deserve being murdered, as there are those hapless others who, in the exigency of the moment, as if fulfilling an unvoiced wish of the community to expunge evil in its midst, rise up as angels of wrath, self-sacrificing as Jesus Christ on the cross: if not the father of the abused and denigrated Mary Ann Healy, then who?”

While Zwender is looking for the wrong suspect, he clearly understands the exact motivation for a person to kill Fox. The description of the killer as “self-sacrificing as Jesus Christ” will be echoed later when Demetrius confesses. Demetrius feels that same need to answer the call of the community to “expunge evil.” The description of the rising up of “angels of wrath” is echoed in the reference to Sylvia Plath’s poem “Lady Lazurus” that occurs the moment before Eunice kills Fox and is symbolic of her strength.

“Pfenning hesitates. How much does this terrible person know? Zwender has burrowed into an innocent man’s life like an infected tick.

But Zwender can’t possibly know how much Eunice has been speaking about Mr. Fox. Complaining bitterly about him, more recently praising him, obsessing over him. In love with him.

But that is ridiculous! Eunice is an immature child, incapable of anything like love.”

Ironically, Pfenning sees Zwender as an “infected tick” that has burrowed into his life, echoing Zwender’s own far more accurate description of Fox as a “parasite.” Pfenning clearly notices Eunice’s growing obsession with Fox but pushes this thought away as “ridiculous” because Eunice is an “immature child.” Like many other adults in the novel, Pfenning lets his own needs stand in the way of his duty to protect children. In this case, he feels hurt by his daughter’s accusations against him and by Zwender’s questioning, and he lets his own hurt feelings interfere with his processing of knowledge, which he could have articulated to the detective.

“‘I met Mr. Fox—Francis. More than once. He—he was nothing like that.’

‘Like—what?’

‘He would never have harmed Genevieve. He wasn’t like that…he was a gentleman. I think you should leave now, Mr. Zwender.’”

Melissa Chambers vehemently denies that Fox could have ever hurt her child. Her insistence that “he was nothing like that” because he was a “gentleman” shows how societal preconceptions make many people in Wieland unaware of true danger. Melissa cannot imagine that someone as fluent in class signifiers as Fox could be a pedophile.

“‘Would Demetrius protect Mary Ann, if he knew that someone was hurting her? Threatening her? Abusing her?’

‘God, yes! I hope so. Demetrius loves Mary Ann.’”

This revelation helps Zwender see that Demetrius has motivation to harm Fox on behalf of Mary Ann. Later, he will note that the word “love” clued him into the depth of Demetrius’s feeling. Although Demetrius is a cousin, he acts like a protective big brother to Mary Ann. It turns out to be true that he is protecting Mary Ann—and Eunice—by helping relocate Fox’s body to the ravine.

“I don’t believe in Jesus personally—I admit it. I’m not proud—but I believe that there is a God who made the world and it got away from him and He can’t unmake it. He made man and woman in His image, now He can’t control them […] But I know this, Demetrius. God does not want you to spend years of your young life in prison. That is not God’s plan. His plan is for you to lead a normal life. You will marry in a few years, you will become a father. That’s what we do. You will be beloved. Your mother expects that. Your father, too. That’s God’s plan for you.”

This is the speech that Zwender whispers to Demetrius before he lets him go. He doesn’t want Demetrius to sacrifice his future or become a martyr. He doesn’t believe in Christianity, but he does believe in raising up those who can be lifted. In this way, Zwender blesses Demetrius as a sort of secular priest, releasing him from the penance he has been doing since his mother died and giving him permission to be “beloved” here on Earth rather than waiting for heavenly intervention.

“‘Well, Eunice! It’s a solution to a problem that simply eradicates the problem. Life is pointless but no one should “take their own life” unless…’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless you have peered into your shallow soul, black muck and algae, and decided yes, this is it. I’ve had enough.’

Still you are not sure that Mr. Fox is saying what he is saying. You wait for the warm smile, the blue glimmer of a wink.”

This exchange took place after Fox tried to break things off with Eunice and she threatened to kill herself. He suggested that she go through with this action, manipulating her by suggesting that her “soul” was “shallow” and full of “black muck.” While Fox had said similar things to himself, the moment of encouraging a child toward suicide was shocking to Eunice and is also appalling to the reader. Moments later, angry at his cruelty and abandonment, Eunice hit him with the bust of Poe. Oates uses the second-person point of view here to place the reader in Eunice’s mind as her understanding of Fox shifted.

“Adamant repeating you did nothing wrong, it was self-defense.

He hurt you. That son-of-a-bitch. You are not the only one that son-of-a-bitch has hurt.

[…]

With a part of your mind you might have registered this. Hearing the thrumming of a machine, the presence of someone responsible.

It is true, Mr. Fox did hurt you. This fact you will clutch as you clutch Mr. Fox’s onyx ring in your hand and never lose it.”

Demetrius fulfilled his role as the “custodian of souls,” caring for a traumatized Eunice and assuring her that she was not alone and that she acted in the only way she could to save herself. The passage also highlights the importance of the ring and Eunice’s taking of it. It becomes a symbolic talisman of what Fox did to her, reminding her that he did, in fact, wound her, that he meant to kill her, and that her killing of him was—as Demetrius says—an act of self-defense.