Here's what I did with my afternoon
Jan. 8th, 2025 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureI was so loamy with malaise today that when I sat down with K. for an online work session, I was sure that if in our alotted hour I managed to submit my lone request for funding, I would have done as much as I could possibly expect of myself.
(This is the request for funding to take the online course Reading the Odyssey with Bruce King, the same instructor I studied Gilgamesh with last spring.)
I did complete the request, despite many very stupid technical issues.
Somehow this led to my remembering that I'd wanted to write a kind of mock-but-not academic essay about how "Tigger is Unbounced" is an epic narrative.
All this to say that I spent the rest of that hour, and then another afterwards, amusing myself with the following:
While the form of A.A. Milne's "Tigger is Unbounced" might seem to adhere most closely to a folktale of the "biter bit" formula, I argue that this short story is more usefully read as an epic narrative, with particularly affinities to The Epic of Gilgamesh. By examining Milne's story in epic terms, we might better illuminate the story's ethical concerns -- and its philosophical value.
Whereas a folktale generally describes the triumph of a single disadvantaged protagonist, “Tigger is Unbounced”, like The Epic of Gilgamesh, concerns itself with the larger questions of balance between the individual and the community, the role of leadership, and the abuse of power. Also like Gilgamesh,, "Unbounced" comes down in favour of reconciliation to community over individual ascent. Both the story and the epic are interested in the necessary humbling of the mighty, not the profitable rise of the meek.
Milne's Pooh stories, though on their surface formulated as Edwardian animal fables for children, generally eschew straightforward moral precepts; rather than present absolute values, they offer communal solutions to individual problems -- what to feed Tigger, how to cheer up Eeyore, how to find a new house for Owl. These solutions are comic and humane, often incorporating losses and errors (Eeyore’s house is accidentally torn down and rebuilt; Piglet’s house is mistakenly given to Owl). Yet these imperfections generally do not undermine the success of the solution in restoring both individual well-being and collective bonds.
The Story
"Tigger is Unbounced" is a short story by A.A. Milne, set in the Poohniverse. It was first published as a chapter of the second book of Pooh stories, The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Since then, it has repeatedly been published as a standalone story.
"Tigger is Unbounced" begins with Rabbit airing his Tigger-related grievances to Piglet and Pooh. Pooh, however, is not listening, and finds himself agreeing to a plan he does not really understand.
Pooh's obliviousness is a first signal to the reader that Rabbit's perspective is not infallible. Rabbit believes that the de-bouncing of Tigger is essential to community well-being. In response, Pooh produces a short poem about perspective: if Rabbit (and by extension, the Very Small Animal Piglet) were not so much smaller than Tigger, then the bouncing would not be such an issue (9). However, Pooh dismisses his own insight, and the plan goes ahead.
Not unlike Gilgamesh in his own epic, Tigger is overflowing with life energy -- too much energy, overwhelming and frightening those around him. He's just too bouncy. His activity upsets Rabbit's sense of order and Piglet's sense of safety. (Pooh seems more phlegmatic.) "There's too much of him," declares Rabbit (8). Rather than cry for help to the gods (or the semi-divine authority Christopher Robin), the proactive inhabitants of the Hundred-Acre Wood agree to teach Tigger a lesson themselves.
Rabbit proposes that he, Pooh, and Piglet take Tigger for a "long explore" (10), then "lose him" (abandon him in the woods overnight) and stage a rescue in the morning. When Pooh and Piglet express doubts about the harm this plan might cause to Tigger, Rabbit invokes the higher wisdom of the sage Owl and semi-divine Christopher Robin to reassure them (10). However, there are hints that Rabbit has a more nefarious purpose, or at least would not mind if Tigger stayed permanently lost (13-14).
This plan has the hallmarks of a godlike intervention, manufacturing the conditions to teach Tigger a Stern Lesson through suffering and privation -- or even to kill him. Since Tigger's bouncing is demonstrably excessive by community standards, this solution, while punitive, might seem reasonable. However, in the ethical universe of Pooh, "losing" Tigger lacks the essential compassion towards self and others that marks successful solutions to communal problems in the Hundred-Acre Wood. As in Gilgamesh, smiting is not the way: both Uruk and the Hundred-Acre Wood are low-exit communities.
Nevertheless, Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit pursue the plan. They lead Tigger into a misty wood (a wonderfully liminal setting) and hide from him until he vanishes into the fog.
Now things begin to go wrong for our scheming would-be gods. Rabbit tries to lead the others home, but his sense of direction is faulty (20), just as his ethical leadership is flawed. Tigger, unburdened by malice, easily finds his way back, while the others become hopelessly lost in the mist. The narrative inverts: now Tigger and Christopher Robin most go in search of the trio (24).
Meanwhile, among the party of the lost, Pooh makes a resonant proposal (25-26). His counter-plan is less directly stated in the original written version, but in the 1977 Disney film (and the Read-Along recordings I listened to as a child), his proposal is presented in a neat formula:
In looking for community using the tools of control and punishment, the animals become lost. If they instead turn towards this insight, that their efforts have led them to a wasteland, they may paradoxically find return to community and wholeness.
Rabbit scoffs, but tries this out, and is himself immediately lost. Pooh and Piglet abandon him and return home, led by Pooh's mystical connection to the "twelve pots of honey" in his cupboard (27-9). (A bit of a deus ex melle.)
Epic Features
In what sense is "Tigger is Unbounced" an epic? It is not epic in length, clocking at 30 pages, and those interrupted by E.H. Shepard’s spiky, wistful illustrations. I submit, however, that the story is epic in its ethical scope and specifically in its concern for how to resolve the tension between the individual and the community, as explored in works like Gilgamesh and the Iliad.
Plotwise, the story involves a long explore to a space of possibility outside the ordinary world, much like a gentler version of the epic katabasis, or journey to the underworld. Those who make the journey into the mist with impure intentions must return changed or be lost.
If the story is legible as an epic, then the character performing the role of "culture hero" or community embodiment is not Pooh, as we might expect, or even the epically outsized Tigger, but Rabbit. Pooh, ostensibly the protagonist of his own book, in this story becomes merely one of the catalysts of Rabbit's transformation.
"Tigger is Unbounced," then, narrates an epic journey that begins with one goal -- Rabbit's wish to unbounce Tigger -- that transforms into a different goal -- the collective need to reunite and re-establish the community of the Hundred-Acre Wood. Since it turns out that the authoritarian Rabbit, rather than the exuberant Tigger, is the greater threat to the community, it is Rabbit who must be subject to his own lost-and-found treatment. And it requires the uncomplicatedly loyal Tigger to rescue Rabbit, since his very noisiness and disturbance become the way that Rabbit finds him in the mist (30).
Tigger then, is not unbounced at all -- he remains his exuberant self. Instead, the meaning of his bounciness is transformed for Rabbit:
Rabbit attempts to cast Tigger as the protagonist of a folk tale or myth in which Tigger must learn a lesson about how to be in community, and instead finds that he himself is the epic hero who must learn this same lesson. In that the lesson is about abuse of power, the resolution is communal, and the journey to get there is katabatic, "Tigger is Unbounced" aligns itself formally and thematically with cultural epics like Gilgamesh. The slipperiness of the goal in "Unbounced" -- from Losing Tigger to Finding Home -- might remind us of the shifting goal in Gilgamesh -- from taming Gilgamesh, to seeking immortality, to finding home: "Climb the wall of Uruk, Ur-Shanabi! Walk its length. / Survey the foundation, study the brickwork ... seven thousand acres is the size of Uruk" (Helle XI.323-341, 112).
In its humane ethical values and its focus on the well-being of both the individual and the whole community, "Tigger is Unbounced," while spanning only a Hundred Acres to Uruk's seven thousand, is epic at its heart.
Notes
1. I apologize profusely for "poohniverse." I couldn't un-hear it.
References
Helle, Sophus. (Trans.) The Epic of Gilgamesh. Yale UP, 2021.
Milne, A.A., "Tigger is Unbounced." in The House at Pooh Corner. Methuen, 1928.
Reitherman, Wolfgang, and John Lounsbery (Dirs.) The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Disney, 1977. Film.
(This is the request for funding to take the online course Reading the Odyssey with Bruce King, the same instructor I studied Gilgamesh with last spring.)
I did complete the request, despite many very stupid technical issues.
Somehow this led to my remembering that I'd wanted to write a kind of mock-but-not academic essay about how "Tigger is Unbounced" is an epic narrative.
All this to say that I spent the rest of that hour, and then another afterwards, amusing myself with the following:
"If we can make Tigger feel small and sad just for five minutes we shall have done a good deed." (11)
While the form of A.A. Milne's "Tigger is Unbounced" might seem to adhere most closely to a folktale of the "biter bit" formula, I argue that this short story is more usefully read as an epic narrative, with particularly affinities to The Epic of Gilgamesh. By examining Milne's story in epic terms, we might better illuminate the story's ethical concerns -- and its philosophical value.
Whereas a folktale generally describes the triumph of a single disadvantaged protagonist, “Tigger is Unbounced”, like The Epic of Gilgamesh, concerns itself with the larger questions of balance between the individual and the community, the role of leadership, and the abuse of power. Also like Gilgamesh,, "Unbounced" comes down in favour of reconciliation to community over individual ascent. Both the story and the epic are interested in the necessary humbling of the mighty, not the profitable rise of the meek.
Milne's Pooh stories, though on their surface formulated as Edwardian animal fables for children, generally eschew straightforward moral precepts; rather than present absolute values, they offer communal solutions to individual problems -- what to feed Tigger, how to cheer up Eeyore, how to find a new house for Owl. These solutions are comic and humane, often incorporating losses and errors (Eeyore’s house is accidentally torn down and rebuilt; Piglet’s house is mistakenly given to Owl). Yet these imperfections generally do not undermine the success of the solution in restoring both individual well-being and collective bonds.
The Story
"Tigger is Unbounced" is a short story by A.A. Milne, set in the Poohniverse. It was first published as a chapter of the second book of Pooh stories, The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Since then, it has repeatedly been published as a standalone story.
"Tigger is Unbounced" begins with Rabbit airing his Tigger-related grievances to Piglet and Pooh. Pooh, however, is not listening, and finds himself agreeing to a plan he does not really understand.
Pooh's obliviousness is a first signal to the reader that Rabbit's perspective is not infallible. Rabbit believes that the de-bouncing of Tigger is essential to community well-being. In response, Pooh produces a short poem about perspective: if Rabbit (and by extension, the Very Small Animal Piglet) were not so much smaller than Tigger, then the bouncing would not be such an issue (9). However, Pooh dismisses his own insight, and the plan goes ahead.
Not unlike Gilgamesh in his own epic, Tigger is overflowing with life energy -- too much energy, overwhelming and frightening those around him. He's just too bouncy. His activity upsets Rabbit's sense of order and Piglet's sense of safety. (Pooh seems more phlegmatic.) "There's too much of him," declares Rabbit (8). Rather than cry for help to the gods (or the semi-divine authority Christopher Robin), the proactive inhabitants of the Hundred-Acre Wood agree to teach Tigger a lesson themselves.
Rabbit proposes that he, Pooh, and Piglet take Tigger for a "long explore" (10), then "lose him" (abandon him in the woods overnight) and stage a rescue in the morning. When Pooh and Piglet express doubts about the harm this plan might cause to Tigger, Rabbit invokes the higher wisdom of the sage Owl and semi-divine Christopher Robin to reassure them (10). However, there are hints that Rabbit has a more nefarious purpose, or at least would not mind if Tigger stayed permanently lost (13-14).
This plan has the hallmarks of a godlike intervention, manufacturing the conditions to teach Tigger a Stern Lesson through suffering and privation -- or even to kill him. Since Tigger's bouncing is demonstrably excessive by community standards, this solution, while punitive, might seem reasonable. However, in the ethical universe of Pooh, "losing" Tigger lacks the essential compassion towards self and others that marks successful solutions to communal problems in the Hundred-Acre Wood. As in Gilgamesh, smiting is not the way: both Uruk and the Hundred-Acre Wood are low-exit communities.
Nevertheless, Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit pursue the plan. They lead Tigger into a misty wood (a wonderfully liminal setting) and hide from him until he vanishes into the fog.
Now things begin to go wrong for our scheming would-be gods. Rabbit tries to lead the others home, but his sense of direction is faulty (20), just as his ethical leadership is flawed. Tigger, unburdened by malice, easily finds his way back, while the others become hopelessly lost in the mist. The narrative inverts: now Tigger and Christopher Robin most go in search of the trio (24).
Meanwhile, among the party of the lost, Pooh makes a resonant proposal (25-26). His counter-plan is less directly stated in the original written version, but in the 1977 Disney film (and the Read-Along recordings I listened to as a child), his proposal is presented in a neat formula:
We keep looking for home and we keep finding this pit. So I just thought if we looked for this pit, we might find home. (56:47)
In looking for community using the tools of control and punishment, the animals become lost. If they instead turn towards this insight, that their efforts have led them to a wasteland, they may paradoxically find return to community and wholeness.
Rabbit scoffs, but tries this out, and is himself immediately lost. Pooh and Piglet abandon him and return home, led by Pooh's mystical connection to the "twelve pots of honey" in his cupboard (27-9). (A bit of a deus ex melle.)
Epic Features
In what sense is "Tigger is Unbounced" an epic? It is not epic in length, clocking at 30 pages, and those interrupted by E.H. Shepard’s spiky, wistful illustrations. I submit, however, that the story is epic in its ethical scope and specifically in its concern for how to resolve the tension between the individual and the community, as explored in works like Gilgamesh and the Iliad.
Plotwise, the story involves a long explore to a space of possibility outside the ordinary world, much like a gentler version of the epic katabasis, or journey to the underworld. Those who make the journey into the mist with impure intentions must return changed or be lost.
If the story is legible as an epic, then the character performing the role of "culture hero" or community embodiment is not Pooh, as we might expect, or even the epically outsized Tigger, but Rabbit. Pooh, ostensibly the protagonist of his own book, in this story becomes merely one of the catalysts of Rabbit's transformation.
"Tigger is Unbounced," then, narrates an epic journey that begins with one goal -- Rabbit's wish to unbounce Tigger -- that transforms into a different goal -- the collective need to reunite and re-establish the community of the Hundred-Acre Wood. Since it turns out that the authoritarian Rabbit, rather than the exuberant Tigger, is the greater threat to the community, it is Rabbit who must be subject to his own lost-and-found treatment. And it requires the uncomplicatedly loyal Tigger to rescue Rabbit, since his very noisiness and disturbance become the way that Rabbit finds him in the mist (30).
Tigger then, is not unbounced at all -- he remains his exuberant self. Instead, the meaning of his bounciness is transformed for Rabbit:
And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a Friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce.
Rabbit attempts to cast Tigger as the protagonist of a folk tale or myth in which Tigger must learn a lesson about how to be in community, and instead finds that he himself is the epic hero who must learn this same lesson. In that the lesson is about abuse of power, the resolution is communal, and the journey to get there is katabatic, "Tigger is Unbounced" aligns itself formally and thematically with cultural epics like Gilgamesh. The slipperiness of the goal in "Unbounced" -- from Losing Tigger to Finding Home -- might remind us of the shifting goal in Gilgamesh -- from taming Gilgamesh, to seeking immortality, to finding home: "Climb the wall of Uruk, Ur-Shanabi! Walk its length. / Survey the foundation, study the brickwork ... seven thousand acres is the size of Uruk" (Helle XI.323-341, 112).
In its humane ethical values and its focus on the well-being of both the individual and the whole community, "Tigger is Unbounced," while spanning only a Hundred Acres to Uruk's seven thousand, is epic at its heart.
Notes
1. I apologize profusely for "poohniverse." I couldn't un-hear it.
References
Helle, Sophus. (Trans.) The Epic of Gilgamesh. Yale UP, 2021.
Milne, A.A., "Tigger is Unbounced." in The House at Pooh Corner. Methuen, 1928.
Reitherman, Wolfgang, and John Lounsbery (Dirs.) The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Disney, 1977. Film.
