A.A. Milne’s characters inspired a profound examination of the philosophical underpinnings of his works set in the Hundred Acre Wood titled The Tao of Pooh. Many other scholarly and academic papers have taken Pooh and his friends as subjects and as far internet speculation goes, well, you can never tell with bees.
The bees of profundity that buzz around the characters which inhabit Milne’s introductory volume sting with the rationality of intellectual engagement. The examining mind may view the simple story of Pooh and Piglet hunting for a “woozle” as little more than the escapades of two not very bright souls, but if you peel back the simple language and the childishness of the character, there is true significance to be found there. Ask yourself how many times you have suspected one thing only to discover that not only it is something completely different, but something which should have been painfully obvious. The genius of Milne’s works is his simplicity.
Unlike a great many other children’s writers—Lewis Carroll among them, in fact—Milne doesn’t seem to set out to be writing one thing while actually writing another. Winnie-the-Pooh seems for all intents and purposes to be precisely what it sets out to be: a gloriously simple and entertaining book to read to very young children. That is almost certainly why it took so long for its true significance to become manifest. The parents reading the stories don’t usually get it unless they are reading the stories to their own children which their parents read to them. The characters that Milne creates take some time to reveal their depth.
To a child, Pooh is a just a wonderfully lovable silly old bear who will do anything for honey and usually wind up getting in trouble. In other words, Pooh is one of them. Piglet as well: he is every little kid who has ever been afraid of the dark and made fun of for being little. Owl may be the first character whose reality is illuminated. Most kids probably take the word of other characters that he is as smart as he seems; only when reading the book yourself do you fully comprehend that he is not.
And then there’s Eeyore. Eeyore is a special case; not unlike Tigger who won’t enter the Wood until the sequel. With age it becomes clear that Tigger is hyperactive, possibly bipolar and almost certainly suffering from ADHD. But then aren’t most kids? Most kids are not like Eeyore. Eeyore is usually described as having a depressive personality and in the first book that is mostly true. Later on, however, his gloomy outlook becomes more revelatory. He is depressed because he looks around him and see he is surrounding by idiots. Nice, loyal, friendly, supportive idiots, sure, but idiots nevertheless. That is a special type of melancholy and there is a special type of child who clings to Eeyore as a kindred spirit. Just as there are kids who grow into adults dealing with OCD who recognize that all along Rabbit was one of them.
The brilliance of Milne’s book, of course, is that one need not see these diagnoses or even agree with them to enjoy the book. Milne does not, as previously observed, seem to have set out to disguise various mood and personality disorders as simple lovable characters inspired by his son’s stuffed toys. The best writing is usually done while working at full speed on both a conscious and subconscious level. This is the case with Winnie-the-Pooh. Or at least it seems to be. It seems to be a conscious effort to write timeless fables for children to enjoy while winding up as a subconsciously conceived examination of many of the most primal fears and anxieties of its readers, both young and old.
