Winnie-the-Pooh is an antihero.

And yet, when one thinks of antiheroes, one recalls the young truant Holden Caufield; the foolish semi-autobiographical criminals of Trainspotting and Fight Club and Crime & Punishment and The Beach and The Battle of Hillsboro; the complex disturbed mind of a Russell Banks protagonist, such as Wade Whitehouse in Affliction; and even the selfish young Nicholas Urfe of The Magus by John Fowles.

One does not immediately think of Winnie the Pooh.

But an antihero Pooh bear is, and this is why.

Not a Hero

A proper hero, according to the blog post I read a while ago that inspired this series, should know what is going on; should embody the morality of the audience; should have a plan for the situation based on their morality and their understanding of the situation; and should use their personal force of will (“agency”) to implement their plan and shape events to their will.

Winnie-the-Pooh, by contrast, has no idea what is going on; has no apparent personal philosophy or underlying morality; has no plan; and rather than shaping events to his will, tends to get swept along by events, which turn out for the best most of the time anyway because he is the main character in a children’s story.

Selfish, Greedy, Silly Ol’ Bear

Let us take, for example, the famous story of Pooh’s visit to Rabbit. This story is told in the first Winnie-the-Pooh book, titled Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, in the chapter, “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place.”

Winnie-the-Pooh is wandering about aimlessly with no particular plan when he finds himself passing by Rabbit’s house. Being an incredibly self-centered individual, Pooh thinks to himself, “Rabbit means Company… and Company means Food and Listening-to-me-Humming.” Far from altruistic, this is the ultimate in self-centeredness. Pooh decides to stop by Rabbit’s house in hopes that Rabbit will feed him and indulge his musical experimentation.

Pooh sticks his head down the rabbit hole and asks if anyone is home. Rabbit, well aware of who the company is and exactly what Pooh wants, answers “No! … Nobody.” He wants Pooh to go away because he is well aware that Pooh is a selfish, annoying person who will eat all of Rabbit’s food. But Pooh rudely presses the point, takes advantage of social niceties to compel Rabbit to feed him, ignores Rabbit’s social cues when Rabbit would rather put the rest of the honey back in the pantry, and soon eats all of Rabbit’s honey. Hardly a hero, at this point Pooh is the villain of the story. To make matters worse, Pooh has overindulged to the point where he can no longer fit through the door, and gets stuck. Pooh is cuddly and lovable and sweet, but he is really a terrible person.

The Tao of Pooh

Benjamin Hoff makes a similar point in his popular book, The Tao of Pooh. Drawing the parallel between Pooh’s behavior and the Taoist philosophy of “not-doing,” Hoff explains:

“The surest way to become Tense, Awkward and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard – one that thinks too much. The animals in the Forest don’t think too much; they just Are.”

This is a different element of the antihero (and a Taoist philosophical practice that I badly need to master in my own life), but still a marked contrast with the ideal of the Hero with a Plan that Succeeds. Putting into practice (with no effort or conscious thought) the Taoist philosophy of not-doing, Pooh just sort of lets things happen. He is the antithesis of the forward-thinking planner. He doesn’t know what is going on, because he is a Bear of Very Little Brain. And that is precisely why we love him. And that, in turn, is why the world needs antiheroes, every bit as much as it needs heroes.