Raising Ferdinands
I ask my son what he wants to read, but I know the answer already. I just love hearing him say it.
“Fur-dee-nan dah bull.”
“Are you sure? We read that yesterday.”
“Fur-dee-nan. DAH. BULL!”
Each and every night at bedtime, he asks me to read “The Story of Ferdinand,” a tale about a bull who’d rather sit and smell the flowers than fight.
I always oblige Oliver’s request, in part to avoid a meltdown, but also because I’m a huge Ferdinand fan. Murno Leaf’s writing is clever and Robert Lawson’s illustrations seem to reveal a new detail during each reading.
But more importantly, I expose my son to all the right lessons about manhood. Through the gentle Ferdinand, we learn it’s about having the confidence to be different, being brave enough to remain peaceful within a violent culture, and showing the strength to remain true to your beliefs despite the cost.
Men are behaving badly these days. Sure, this has been the case for most of human history, but lately a whole new level of masculine misbehavior has been exposed. We’ve recently witnessed the arrogant ignorance of Donald Trump, the sexual predation of Harvey Weinstein, and the extreme sexism, violence and self-imagined grandiosity of the Las Vegas shooter. Just in time for my son’s childhood, too many of the men in our culture are aggressive and aggrieved, misogynistic and misanthropic, hollow and hedonistic.
Ferdinand offers an alternative to this toxic masculinity. He’s a sensitive bull, content with being by himself. While his stereotypically male bull friends are off snorting and butting their heads together, Ferdinand sits under his favorite cork tree, quietly smelling the flowers. In the parlance of today, he’s mindful.
Oliver loves to join in with Fur-dee-nan, deeply inhaling and exhaling every time the bull stops to enjoy the moment.
Midway through the story, a bee stings Ferdinand, sending him into a rage right in front of the organizers of the bullfights in Madrid. What the men see convinces them Ferdinand’s the perfect bull to be the matador’s terrifying foil before the crowd.
A less talented writer might have clumsily had the timid Ferdinand transform into a hero of the bullring. But rather than charge, our bull refuses to fight, sits down in the middle of the ring, and quietly smells the flowers in the women’s hair. In the end, the men bring him back to where he’s most happy — underneath his cork tree.
When the book was originally published in 1936, Ferdinand was a fairly radical male character. Some people read a pacifist allegory into the story; Franco’s dictatorship in Spain even banned the book. Even today, Ferdinand might be labeled as a coward or a snowflake, someone any red-blooded American boy should avoid emulating.
We need to raise fewer men who are vain, petulant, conceited, and cowardly like the matadors, violent like Ferdinand’s bull friends, or greedy like the bullfight promoters.
A movie adaption of the book recently came out in theaters. Pixar wasn’t involved and it will likely stray a bit from the original story. (One of the previews included a scene in which cute animals sing The Macarena.) I’d urge parents to buy the classic book to read to their sons instead.
Toward the beginning of the story, we see Ferdinand’s mother. Rather than urge him to be like all the other bulls, she does what any “understanding mother” would do, and lets him keep to himself because she sees it makes him happy.
I hope I can be as an understanding a father to my son Oliver. Because we need more Ferdinands, and fewer raging bulls.
