AN UNORDINARY LITERARY DISCOURSE WITH ETHICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS: FOX 8 BY GEORGE SAUNDERS

III - INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERATURE, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE, 12 - 14 Temmuz 2025, ss.129, (Özet Bildiri)

Fox 8, a short story with an animal narrator, is the product of the extraordinary imaginative talents

of George Saunders. It is very interesting story with its title and linguistic features. It is narrated

with a sentimental quality that evokes pity or sadness. Narrator and main story person Fox 8 is a

special fox. He is a dreamy and curious fox. He learns to speak Yuman from sitting outside a

window as a mother reads bedtime stories to her kids. Yuman is a family of North American

languages including Yuma, belonging to the Hokan group. The fox misspells many of the words,

and the story begins by apologizing to the reader about his misspellings. But Fox 8's language is

often very funny, and the reader soon becomes accustomed to the linguistic malapropisms

Saunders uses in representing the contemporary American idiom such as “I woslike: Fox 8, crazy

nut, when sun goes down, werld goes dark, skedaddle home”; “Dude, chek me out”; “I was fast

and nated”. Fox 8 is about the damage of animals’ natural habitats and their extinction due to

humans destroying forests and building shopping malls in their place. This study aims to analyze

this childish fable, which tells the story of man, who is an enemy of nature and who mercilessly

harms nature through the eyes of a fox, who gives a moral lesson to humanity. It also detects

Saunders’ message that sounds like exactly the kind of advice humanity needs right now through

the misspelled words of Fox 8: “If you want your Storys to end happy, try being niser.”

Keywords: Literary discourse, Fox 8, George Saunders.