“No, no, no! You’re thinking about this all wrong!” Percy protested. “You must break free you see, break free from what everyone else is telling you to do!” His whiskers trembled passionately as he made his point. “Foucault had it right you know – we must break free from the constructs, we must become enlightened. We must break even from the present and look to a brighter and glorious future!”[1] George looked unconvinced. The field mice had come across each other one late afternoon in the countryside of Derbyshire. Located in the north of England, the rolling green hills were still damp with the midday rain, though the sun was now peeking shyly from behind the clouds.
“I don’t know…” George responded slowly. “It seems like an awful waste to break from everything you’ve ever known. And how do you even break from the present? It is omnipresent.” He had a small knapsack over one shoulder and leaned on his tiny walking stick in deep thought.
“It is not a waste!” Percy scoffed. “It is the only way you can ever become free! Free from the oppressive authority of the past, from the constraints of the present!”[2] As he spoke, he banged his paw emphatically on the small toadstool he was using as a booth. The toadstool jiggled, and the piles of leaflets (small blueberry leaves which carried Percy’s slogans) ruffled.
“It also seems to me,” George continued, unperturbed, “that we are coming about the question from the wrong side.”
“Question?” Percy spluttered, “What question? You must be free. You must rebel to be free.” He hit the toadstool once more, and the leaflets became even further unstacked. “Look at you,” Percy gestured disdainfully, “following on the path of hundreds of other people. You cannot even think for yourself! Everyone has made the pilgrimage to Canterbury. Some old fogie even wrote a boring book about it – I haven’t read it of course, too old – but I wouldn’t read it anyway, I don’t want people telling me what to think. If you can’t think for yourself then you are an intellectual infant!” At this point, he raised one gray brow and said with great importance: “So says Kant at least, Foucault’s esteemed predecessor.”[3]
George nodded thoughtfully and switched his walking stick to the other paw.
“I know that I am ignorant. That’s why I am searching for the answer to the question.” Here he chuckled to himself. “I suppose that’s why they call it a quest.”
His easy-going answer seemed to have taken some of the wind out of Percy’s proverbial sails.
“The only question worth answering is ‘what is the enlightenment.’” He proclaimed, then seemed to remember the leaflets he had painstakingly written. “An answer I can give you right now!”[4] He waved a leaflet under George’s nose, “Modernity is breaking from what came before. Enlightenment is breaking from the constructs that define us so that we can be truly free! We must become post-modern!”[5]
George seemed to realize that Percy had worked long and hard on these leaflets and politely took the one being so insistently shaken beneath his whiskers. It read: ARE YOU TRULY FREE? JOIN THE MOUSE REBELLION: DENY THE TITLE “FIELD MICE.” YOU ARE NOT A COLLECTIVE BUT AN INDIVIDUAL. REJECT ALL CONSTRUCTS AND SEIZE FREEDOM NOW. BUILD A GLORIOUS FUTURE. It was rather a lot to fit onto one small blueberry leaf, but Percy had managed it skillfully.
“What an interesting idea,” George said, holding the leaflet at arm’s length (his vision was not the best). “But again, I’m afraid I am more interested in answering a different question altogether.” Percy scoffed.
“What could be more important than freedom?” The mushroom wobbled beneath his emphatic paw. George took his time in answering, first taking a seat on a nearby pebble, then removing his small knapsack from his shoulders.
“Canterbury Cathedral is a pilgrimage site because of a man who died there long before.” He said, rolling his shoulders now relieved of weight. “He died not for freedom, but rather for his faith.” Percy rolled his eyes.
“Faith is the biggest construct – “ George held up a paw.
“If you please,” he said quietly, “I was not quite finished.” Percy rolled his tongue back into his mouth and shut it tightly.
“He died for something bigger than him,” George continued, “and I believe he died not for freedom – he was already free – rather, he died because he felt he had the responsibility to do something with that freedom.” George rolled his shoulders again, looked at the sun now hanging lower and larger in the sky, and murmured gently, “I would like to know what to do with my freedom.” Percy’s jaw was hanging open again, but shockingly he could think of nothing to say. It was just as well, for George had not completed his thought.
“A wise man once said that ‘Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon of which the positive aspect is responsibility,’” here he glanced at Percy with sparkling eyes, “so really you see it is an entirely different question altogether. You are looking to find freedom, I am endeavoring to know what to do with that freedom. Hence the journey,” he said, looking once more into the bulging sun.[6] “You seek to break free, I seek to find what to do with that freedom. I seek to know why I am here, for what was I made.”[7]
“But how can you be free if you are still chained by the constructs of others?” Percy asked. He hit the toadstool half-heartedly, and it, in turn, gave a half-hearted wiggle. “How can you be free if you are following an antiquated Church and a dying religion? ‘God is dead and we killed him.’” With these words he gained some of his old importance: “So says Nietzsche at least.”[8]
George looked amused.
“I believe that we all must be influenced by something. We are social persons, built not for solitude but for community. We cannot help being influenced by something.”[9] Here George’s whiskers twitched mischievously. “In fact,” he drawled, “if you are free of constructs, of outside influences, then why have you quoted Kant, Foucault, and Nietzsche to me? You seem to have your own constructs that you accept as better than others, rather than being free of constructs all together as you claim.” Percy spluttered. If mice could blush he probably would have. George continued, unperturbed by his interlocuter’s fluster.
“In fact, Foucault always seems to oversimplify the issue in my opinion.” Here George reached up to scratch his ears, which were turning increasingly golden as the afternoon drew on. “Foucault rejects constructs, rejects society, and eventually rejects reason as all over negative or evil because they can influence. In my experience, very few things are simply good or simply evil – especially persons, and organizations made up of persons. There are no simply ‘good’ or ‘evil’ people. Nor are there necessarily ‘good’ or ‘evil’ institutions.”[10] Here he turned to Percy, “you, for example, could be a murderer but still buy your grandmother a sweater on her birthday.” He shrugged, then used a deeper vote to quote:
“’The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss…’”[11] He snorted. “The same is true for field mice.” When Percy still did not respond he continued sheepishly, “I’m afraid I’ve talked for too long. I suppose all I am saying is that it is much simpler to see everything as a mix of good and evil – constructs, people, this world. We shouldn’t be surprised when people are difficult to manage. I’m sure you’ve been ignored many times today – though you only want to help people. Mice, humans, ants; all are difficult to manage, and we can really only control what we do. It is not so much expunging all influences, as it is choosing what we will let influence us.” Here he turned to Percy, squinting slightly as the sun grew enormous on the horizon. “Only you can choose. ‘Constructs’ as you call them, only influence you if you let them.”[12]
“How do you choose?” Percy murmured. The sun dipped down past the horizon. The greens of the rolling countryside had turned dusky and faded. “What do you choose?” George looked into the sunset and chuckled.
“See?” he said, “Now you are asking the right questions.” The setting sun flashed off the white in his fur and whiskers, making him seem older and wiser. Percy suddenly felt uncomfortable and turned to glance at the sunset himself. He had to catch his breath and catch himself as he leaned on the toadstool. The sky was splashed with magenta, cerulean, periwinkle, and a million other shades he couldn’t name. It was as if he had never truly seen a sunset before. It was as if he was being born. To his left, he heard George continue.
“I don’t know the answer to your question.” Percy tore his eyes away to peer with trembling whiskers at the older mouse.
“What do you mean? How can you not know?” George chuckled at his astonishment.
“Why do you think I’m walking to Canterbury? I’m trying to figure out the answer. I’m trying to find my ‘why’” The sun was a red globe, uncharted territory that was as bloody as a martyr. “Once you find the ‘why’ then your life changes I’m told.” Then his whiskers twitched mischievously once more. “In fact, one of your favorite thinkers, once said: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how.’””[13] At Percy’s bemusement, George chucked again.
“Nietzsche.” He explained.
Both of them grew quiet, and the first of the evening breezes brushed across the grasses, ruffled their fur, and carried Percy’s carefully written pamphlets off the toadstool to parts unknown.
“Would you… would you like some company on your journey?” Percy asked softly. George turned from the sunset, his bright eyes shining with pleasure.
“It would be an honor.”
[1] Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” Class Handout
[2] Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” Class Handout
[3] Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” Class Handout
[4] Kant and Foucault Class Handout
[5] Foucault and Kant Class Handout
[6] Viktor E. Frankl, Harold S. Kushner, and William J. Winslade, Man’s Search for Meaning, trans. by Helen Pisano and Ilse Lasch, (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2014)
[7] Frankl, Man’s Search,
[8] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Clancy Martin, Kathleen M. Higgins, and Robert C. Solomon. Thus Spoke Zarathustra : A Book for Everyone and No One, (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005).
[9] Frankl, Man’s Search, 103.
[10] Frankl, Man’s Search, 86-87.
[11] Frankl, Man’s Search,
[12] Frankl, Man’s Search, 99.
[13] Frankl, Man’s Search, 105.
What a fun reflection! I might not be excited to read philosophers, but I would read more stories like this. It feels very much like Lewis, using simple animals to reveal deep truths about the human condition.