The Hidden Meaning Behind The Borrowers

The Borrowers is a comedy about tiny people called The Borrowers who live in our houses and borrow items from their 'beans' (Human Beings). The film plays on our day to day forgetfullness and how we see to always keep losing batteries, keys, needles and scissors. The film places our excuses in the hands of The Borrowers who simply borrow the things we don't need or have an abundance of for their day to day life.

Not only is the film amazingly shot with excellent props and settings the films has an another level that until recently had alluded me: The film can be seen as an allegorical tale of the relationship between British and American relations.

The first reason was actually the thing that made me continue along this line of thought. The Borrowers are all played by British actors, the Humans Americans. The relations aspects comes into play as the borrowers are much smaller and live off the humans, as is the stereotype of our relationship. They are many times overlooked by the human beings because of their size and completely ignored because of the abundance of the items the borrowers take.


Most humans are also very ignorant. They take the loses of items as being forgetful and dismiss any ideas, until the younger more adventurous human goes in search of the borrowers. He is not contempt with assumption but tries to educate himself and discover the world outside his own life.

Moreover the 'bad' human being, the evil fat businessman who wants to destroy where the borrowers live and turn it into his Pottersville. When he discovers the borrowers his answer is to crush them, destory them, completely opposed to the younger human/american. The businessman represents America's ruthless, aggressive, capitalist attitudes who want nothing but to destroy for their own gain.

The borrowers are 'quiet, cautious, inconspicuous'. The famous line recited many times by the dad of the family is an expression of the stereotypical reserved British attitude. Think about how many times you were on holiday and saw a commotion your reaction was politely ignore it. Being quiet, cautious and inconspicuous is the stereotype of our mentality.

There are holes in this theory one being the exterminator and policemen are played by two famous british actors but fuck you my theory is right. I am also aware it was a book and has had many films preceding it but I am ignoring all these to suit my theory like any good researcher!