Foxes Symbol Analysis

In A Single Shard, foxes represent how bravery is hard to define and often dependent on context. Foxes first appear in the story when orphaned boy Tree-ear asks his disabled guardian Crane-man why Crane-man chose to live under a bridge when most poor villagers move into the nearby monastery. Crane-man explains that the evening he began walking to the monastery, a fox—considered a bad-luck animal, possibly possessing evil magic—blocked his way, so Crane-man went back the way he came and ended up sleeping under the bridge. By the time Crane-man was willing even to consider making the journey again, the bridge had come to seem like home to him. Crane-man’s story shows how bravery is difficult to define. on the one hand, readers could think Crane-man cowardly for allowing the fox to prevent him from seeking shelter. But on the other hand, they could think him brave for choosing to live independently—and eventually to care for an orphan—despite his poverty and disability.

In the same vein, when Tree-ear encounters a fox on his way to Songdo to deliver his employer Min’s pottery to the royal emissary, Emissary Kim, Tree-ear is utterly terrified, and he hides from the fox all night in a rock crevice. Yet he does not turn back, and he ultimately does reach Songdo. While Crane-man might have been brave to live independently rather than go to the monastery, Tree-ear is clearly also brave to continue traveling to Songdo despite his encounter with a fox. Thus, Crane-man’s and Tree-ear’s different brave responses to foxes show that whether a person’s bravery often depends on context. And ultimately, what matters most is that they have the courage and conviction to carve out a course of action and follow it through.