Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Tao of Pooh, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Taoism, Nature, and Happiness
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
Self-Acceptance and Personal Growth
Western Culture and Eastern Wisdom
Summary
Analysis
Hoff tells Pooh about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Pooh says he loves the part that goes “Sing Ho! For a Bear!” But Beethoven didn’t write that—Pooh realizes he’s thinking about a song he made up. This chapter is about “enjoying life and being Special.” In the Pooh books, Rabbit takes Piglet and Pooh on an adventure. Piglet and Pooh worry that they’ll be useless on the adventure—but Rabbit assures them both that they’re essential to it. He helps them recognize their value.
Pooh’s typically humorous, lovable mistakes show exactly how he enjoys his life and why he’s special. His adventure with Rabbit and Piglet shows how wise people can help others better appreciate themselves. This ties in with Hoff’s argument about how people can achieve wisdom and happiness by recognizing and accepting their inner nature. Namely, Hoff suggests that people can help each other through this process of recognition and acceptance.
Themes
The Chinese story The Stonecutter also illustrates how people can struggle to see their own value. An ordinary stonecutter is dissatisfied with his life and envies a wealthy local merchant. The stonecutter magically becomes the merchant, but then he starts envying a powerful high official. He becomes the official, but then starts to envy the sun. He becomes the sun but envies the clouds, becomes a cloud but envies the wind, and becomes the wind but envies stones. Then, when he becomes the stone, he is bewildered to look down and see a stonecutter chiseling into him.
The stonecutter initially fails to see his own value—he views himself as powerless and envies people he sees as powerful. But his journey reveals two important lessons about how people can grow and find happiness. First, everyone envies someone they view as superior to them. When they gain more wealth, power, or status, people’s envy doesn’t go away, and people don’t necessarily become happier. Second, people often don’t understand their value or importance until they see themselves through someone else’s perspective.
Themes
The mail comes, and Hoff gets an envelope for “Mister Pooh Bear.” Even though it’s a flyer for a shoe store, Pooh is honored to be called Mister.
Pooh’s excited to be called “Mister” because this suggests that he’s valuable and important just the way he is. The envelope shows how people can uplift others by recognizing their inherent value.
Themes
To live meaningful lives, Hoff argues, people should stop waiting for fate to save them and start believing in their own power. For example, the scientist Buckminster Fuller nearly committed suicide after his daughter’s death and his company’s bankruptcy—but then he realized he could dedicate the rest of his life to science, if he really wanted to. Similarly, before becoming an inventor, Thomas Edison was kicked out of school as a young boy and later fired from his lab assistant job for blowing up the lab. In short, “play-it-safe pessimists” don’t accomplish great things because they don’t believe in themselves or take risks.
Believing in one’s own power is closely tied to accepting one’s inner nature. Buckminster Fuller and Thomas Edison both failed when they tried to fit other people’s molds for them, but succeeded when they decided to embrace their own inner natures and follow their dreams. This is the same process that Taoism proposes for its followers: by recognizing the inner nature they cannot change, then embracing it and turning it to their advantage, people can unleash their inner potential.
Themes
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In the Pooh books, when Roo falls into the stream, all the other animals try and fail to save him. But Pooh looks around, finds a pole, and uses it to block the stream. He solved the problem by paying attention to what was around him and using it for its true purpose. Similarly, when Piglet gets stuck in a flood, he worries that he “can’t do anything” until he remembers Christopher Robin’s story about a man trapped on an island who sends a note in a bottle out to sea. Piglet does the same, and Pooh gets the note and rescues him.
Yet again, Pooh comes to the rescue because he truly listens to the world and works with what’s in front of him, while everyone else tries to hatch clever plans and change everything around them. Christopher Robin’s story helps Piglet overcome his self-doubt by showing him that he really does have power, whether he realizes it or not. Just as people can help others appreciate themselves by showing them their value, they can also help others take risks and succeed by showing them their power.
Themes
Hoff asks Owl if he has seen Pooh, and Owl says Pooh was putting something in the closet. Hoff opens the closet, which is full of shoes of all different sizes and styles. Hoff says he needs to talk to Pooh.
After getting the “Mister Pooh Bear” flyer from the shoe store, Pooh seems to have gone on a shopping spree. This certainly isn’t the kind of risk Hoff thinks people should take once they learn to believe in their own importance! Of course, Hoff is also pointing out how advertising preys on people’s need to feel important in order to manipulate them into buying things.
Themes
In Taoism, Tz’u means “compassion” or “caring.” Lao-tse says it’s the source of courage. Hoff adds that, without compassion, people can have knowledge and cleverness, but not true wisdom. Pooh once saves Roo and Piglet because of his Tz’u. On a different eventful day, Piglet and Pooh visit Owl, whose house suddenly blows down in the wind. To escape, Owl puts a piece of string through his door, and he and Pooh use it as a pulley to raise Piglet up to the letterbox. Piglet squeezes through it and goes to get Christopher Robin to rescue Owl and Pooh.
Tz’u is what drives people to help others see their value, importance, and power. Along with Rabbit’s encouragement and Christopher Robin’s inspiring story, Pooh’s compassion is part of how Piglet learns to believe in himself and finds the courage to escape Owl’s house. Wisdom is about understanding the order of nature (Tao) and living in harmony with it, so it’s no wonder that compassion is an important part of wisdom. Namely, wise people create further happiness and harmony in the world by helping others understand the same truths that have made them happy.
Themes
Hoff approaches Pooh about the shoes, and Pooh admits that he bought them because the shoe salesman treated him so well and “made [him] feel Important.” Pooh agrees to return the shoes, but he tells Hoff that lots of other people were also buying unnecessary things. Hoff agrees: “a lot of people try to buy Happiness and Importance,” but that’s not the way to actually get them. Everyone can choose to enjoy life if they want—lots of people just don’t.
Hoff clearly distinguishes between true happiness and importance—which depends entirely on a person’s character and mindset—and the fake happiness and importance that Pooh tries to buy. This ties into Hoff’s critique of Bisy Backson culture: the Western economy tricks people with promises of happiness and importance, but it really can’t give it to them.
Themes
Instead of living desperate, unhappy lives, people can become happy and free through “the Tiddley-Pom Principle.” In one of his songs, Pooh sings, “The more it snows / (Tiddley pom), / The more it goes / (Tiddley pom), / The more it goes / (Tiddley pom) / On Snowing.” The Tiddley-Pom Principle is also called the Snowball Effect: the more a snowball rolls, the bigger it gets. Positivity and negativity are both addictive: over time, people can become more and more hopeful (or more and more cynical).
The Tiddley-Pom Principle, or Snowball Effect, is one of the reasons that “a thousand-mile journey starts with one step.” The further people go down the pathway to happiness and wisdom through Taoism, the easier it gets to take the next step. Becoming happy, Hoff suggests, is really about breaking negative cycles and replacing them with positive ones.
Themes
After Piglet rescues Pooh and Owl, Pooh sings a song about Piglet’s bravery, and Piglet is flattered. Later, Eeyore finds Owl a new house—but he doesn’t realize it’s Piglet’s. However, Piglet decides not to say anything. If his own house blew down, he tells Christopher Robin, he would move in with his best friend, Pooh.
Pooh’s song about Piglet illustrates how the Tiddley-Pom Principle is also social: Pooh’s positivity, generosity, and wisdom rubs off on Piglet, who learns to develop some of the same traits. This again shows why true wisdom is as much about helping others as achieving happiness for oneself.
Themes
Hoff argues that true happiness starts with appreciation, while misery starts with discontent. Like Lao-tse’s “thousand-mile journey,” virtues like “Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage” start with a single step. Similarly, Chuang-tse pointed out how one man’s courage can inspire thousands of others in an army. This is why Pooh sings “ho! for Piglet, ho!” (and for himself, too). After Pooh’s song, Christopher Robin explains that their party is to celebrate a special person’s accomplishments. Eeyore starts giving a long victory speech—but the party is really for Pooh. Eeyore is offended, but Hoff promises to explain what makes Pooh special in the next chapter.
Just like compassion, appreciation is infectious. By pointing out that appreciation causes happiness and discontent causes misery, Hoff reiterates that these emotions are entirely in people’s control. If someone has the right mindset, they can be happy in any situation, and if they have the wrong one, they can be miserable even in the best situation. Pooh clearly knows how to appreciate the good things he has in life, and Hoff thinks this is part of why Pooh lives such a happy life. However, Eeyore’s speech shows how there can be a fine line between appreciation and egotism: he’s not interested in celebrating the good he sees in the world, but rather in elevating himself above other people. Tellingly, he becomes discontented when it turns out that the party’s not for him.
Themes
