Mr. Fox
Mr. Fox may at first seem to have something in common with Sam-I-Am. He is kind of a pest to Mr. Knox. But Sam-I-Am is a shill, a salesman, a peddler of oil from a snake. Mr. Fox has nothing to sell and is marketing just one thing: his own superiority. He is the symbolic incarnation of every show-off who merely wants to prove he is better than someone else.
Mr. Knox
It is almost tempting to suggest that the relationship between Mr. Fox and Mr. Knox is the symbolic equivalent of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Like Holmes, Fox is an expert and doesn’t mind proving it. On the other hand, Mr. Knox for most of the book seems similar to Dr. Watson in presenting an image of not being quite as clever and being appropriately impressed. In the end, however, Mr. Knox proves that this isn’t really the case and becomes a symbol of every Everyman who is satisfied enough with his own talents that are equal or even superior to the showoff and content to let the braggart make a fool of himself until a breaking point is reached. Most showoffs will never know for sure how many Mr. Knoxes they have made a fool of themselves in front of because most rarely reach that breaking point. They are plentiful, however, so showoffs beware.
A Pair of Socks
The very first page of the book is an illustration of Mr. Fox, a box, Mr. Knox and a pair of socks. This is the only image in the entire volume in which Mr. Fox is pictured without wearing his socks. “Socks” is separated from the other words just like box, Fox and Knox. In this context, the pair of socks becomes the symbol of how words exist apart from their place in sentences. The socks are picture by themselves and bear no relationship at that point to the Fox who is also isolated. Each exists alone and separate from the other, symbolizing how individual words are the foundation for all sentence structure from the simplest to the most complex.
“Fox in Socks”
The title becomes the second actual sentence constructed in the story, following Knox in box. The accompanying image shows Mr. Knox in a box as well as the fox wearing socks. Because it has been deemed significant to serve as the title of the story, the first appearance here of “Fox in socks” comes to symbolic the mechanics of sentence construction. What had been separate and distinct signifiers of two different objects on the previous page has now been shown to possess the ability to combine in a way that creates a new single individual image.
Tongue-Twisters
At the point of the third page when the words on the previous page have been combined together to create yet another distinct image signified by the words “Know on fox in socks in box” the leap has been made from the very simplest sentence construction to a more complex construction. That complexity is still simple enough to present as one coherent and easily interpreted illustration. By the time the most complicated of the book’s tongue-twisters show up, they reveal the true extent of the complexity of sentence construction.
The most difficult of the tongue-twisters then serve as symbols for the way that words can be combined to create sentences which are beyond the capacity to imagine in a single unique image, thus disclosing how written language can create things that cannot be recreated visually without losing some of the nuance and details.
