Essay Questions

What does Pooh teach us about never giving up?

The very first time we meet Pooh, he is in the process of trying to get honey from the honeycomb at the top of the tree. Unfortunately he is not very good at climbing trees and he cannot climb up high enough. However, he does not give up and comes up with a Very Good Plan. He gets a blue balloon and then rolls in some mud to disguise himself as a black cloud. He holds onto the balloon and floats up into the tree so that he can take the honey without the bees realizing.

It doesn't go to plan and the bees are not fooled, but Pooh does teach us a very important lesson about never giving up and always finding another way to do things.

How does the author make the anthropomorphic animals in the book seem more realistic?

The toys and animal characters in the book are made more realistic by the introduction of other completely fantastical creatures, such as the Woozle and the Heffalump.

The Woozle is a creature that seems to scare Piglet enormously. Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet have been walking around in the snow when Piglet notices some big footprints and panics because he thinks they were made by a Woozle. Although the author does not go into enormous detail about the nature of a Woozle, we know it is clearly something very frightening.

Heffalumps do not seem to be such frightening creatures because Piglet agrees to help Pooh trap one, using honey and a little pit to trap him in. Pooh eats the honey and gets stuck in the trap instead, and so they don't catch a Heffalump, and again we are not really told in any detail what one of these actually is. The important thing is that they add realism to the main characters because they are so entirely fictional; this makes the "fictional" teddy bear, piglet and other animals seem completely real.

Eeyore's birthday doesn't go as planned. What lesson does it teach us nonetheless?

The importance of friendship is one of the main themes of this book and the incident of Eeyore's birthday is one of the best examples of this. Eeyore is gloomy because he thinks his friends have forgotten his birthday. This naturally makes him very sad. Pooh doesn't want his friend to be sad so he buys him a jar of honey (to Pooh this is the best gift anyone could ever receive). Piglet gets him a balloon. They begin to walk to Eeyore's house but Pooh forgets himself and eats the honey, and Piglet trips up and falls on the balloon. When they arrive at Eeyore's house all they have to give him is an empty pot and the rubber that used to be a balloon. However, because it is truly the thought that counts, Eeyore is happy and decides to keep the balloon remnants in his empty pot. The lesson for the reader is that it is friends remembering us that is the important thing, not what they might give us as gifts; that friendship is the true gift in of itself.