手袋を買いに — why does the mother let the fox cub go to town alone at all?

Question

手袋を買いに by 新美南吉 — given how protective the mother fox is at the start (scared of humans herself), it felt like a big leap of trust to let her cub go into town alone to buy gloves. Is that meant to read as a risk she consciously takes, or does the story just need it to happen for the plot?

Accepted Answer

It reads as a conscious, anxious risk rather than a plot convenience — that's actually the emotional center of the story. She changes only ONE of his paws into a human hand (leaving the other as a fox paw) specifically so he can't be caught out completely if something goes wrong, which shows she's hedging, not blindly trusting. The tension of the whole middle section is built on us (and her, implicitly, waiting at home) not knowing if her calculated risk will pay off.