A Cautionary Tale: Be Less Like Scrat

*This blog was written in partnership with Kailani Zhang. For more Ice Age character analysis, please check out her blog!

The Ice Age movies remain a culturally significant piece of film, even to this day. They are a digestible glimpse into Earth’s past, and they offer a host of life lessons that its primarily children-age audience can understand and internalize. To that end, each movie opens with a small snippet of a character called Scrat, a little squirrel whose only desire is to carry his massive acorn wherever he goes while failing miserably and hilariously. As the movies progress, the audience gets miniature cameos of Scrat as the main characters embark on their titular journey, which adds a nice bit of comedic relief to what are otherwise very heartfelt films. However, within these scenes there are morals to be learned, even though they are supposed to be humorous and very short. Today I intend to reveal some of these morals, and why they are so critical to our growth as people and as a society.

Greedy Ideology

Quite possibly the most potent message of Scrat’s rather static character arc is why greed and a material-motivated mindset are incredibly dangerous. This idea is seen directly in Scrat’s main scenes at the beginning of each movie, where his pursuit for his constantly missing acorn leads to the problem that the main characters have to solve. For example, in Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the movie opens with Scrat finding a place to store his acorn, ultimately deciding to bury it on top of a mountain. And because he is so fervent in burying it, the mountain splits in two, causing the now terrified squirrel to quite literally fall into the center of the Earth, directly on its metal core. Once he regains his senses, lo and behold he finds his acorn lying on the core with him. Per usual, his lustful eyes try to chase it, which shifts the core, causing the entire Earth to rotate. This creates a rift in the ground near the main characters’ home (as well as a whole host of other geographic anomalies, like new continents), which they promptly fall into and spend the entire movie trying to escape, while battling deadly dinosaurs and vicious flora along the way. The significance of this event cannot be understated: Scrat’s refusal to abandon his acorn and cut his losses is the sole reason why the main characters are forced into a situation in which all of them barely escape the clutches of death. Consider that had Scrat been less greedy, less focused on only his acorn, he could have prevented the disruption of the ENTIRE world. But he decided to ignore reason and empathy for his surroundings, leading to death and destruction for his surroundings. We, as viewers, can learn a lot from this event, namely that when we engage in covetousness, we cause unintended consequences far behind the consequence of relinquishing a few of one’s possessions. Economies around the world suffer from this avaricious ideology, and we see its negative effects. When the ultra-rich hoard their wealth or when we refuse to give aid to the unhoused for the sake of supposedly protecting our own resources, social inequality is exacerbated, which leads to public unrest and financial autocracy. So you see, a simple Scrat scene can reveal one of the great unfortunate truths about society. 

Disproportionate Priorities

Yet another concern raised by the Scrat scenes is the issue of poor distribution of priorities. Nowhere is this clearer than in Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, where in a cruel twist of fate, Scrat’s acorn is stolen by a baby hawk and brought to its nest. In a complete panic, Scrat hurries up the cliff hill upon which the nest is located, and begins to search the massive nest for his acorn. Right as he confronts the baby bird enjoying the acorn, the mother hawk swoops in to protect her baby. Scrat prepares for battle as the hawk looks at him with hunger in her eyes. Nearly immediately he is outmatched, almost killed, and ultimately thrown out of the nest with his acorn miraculously making it out too. The lesson present here is one of sheer common sense: is a possession really worth risking your life for? In other words, Scrat’s gung-ho attitude towards fighting a clearly overpowering and lethal opponent simply for an inanimate object is not only irresponsible, but just plain stupid. Scrat clearly knew what the dangers were, given that he showed fear, yet risked his life anyway instead of fleeing where he could be safe, and only by mere serendipitous luck did he escape with his life. Essentially, Scrat put his possessions over his actual life, and it nearly got him killed. Such a sentiment can easily be applied to real life, where materialism consistently overpowers human rights and dignity. Corporations underpay and exploit their workers nearly to the point of being unhoused, all for the sake of hoarding wealth — to be used for a few new fancy gadgets and private jets for the wealthy corporate elite. Even the average person lets their desire for more stuff get before their own lives, as people plunge themselves into debt for the sake of appearing in higher social standing by means of owning more capital. So once again, we see the subtle wisdom of Scrat’s character flaws. 

Ungrateful Thinking

The final societal ill revealed by Scrat’s character is the epidemic of ungrateful thinking. There is one scene which perfectly illustrates this concept, which is in Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. In the scene, Scrat wakes up in “Acorn Heaven”, a warmly lit paradise filled with acorns. At first, Scrat runs around, hugging the acorns and basking in the glow. But soon he sees the grand acorn at the center, and it is like there are no other acorns present anymore. Scrat drops all of the nuts he is holding, and runs towards the gleaming acorn, filled with infatuation. However, the closer he gets to it, the harder he is pushed away. Eventually he cannot keep running against the invisible force anymore, and he is pulled all the way out of heaven, banished forever. There is a simple lesson here: ignoring the great things you have in the pursuit of what you do not is a sure fire way to lose it all. We can see this in the development of technology, where there is a certain pressure to buy the latest model of phone or computer, even when one’s current model works just fine. And when new technology begins to cost more and more, consumers lose increasing amounts of money, often winding up in debt or worse. And unfortunately, this phenomenon of taking things for granted is present in nearly every sector of society. So for the final time, we observe the depth of Scrat’s unique ethical ramifications. 

Conclusion

The observations about Scrat’s contribution to the Ice Age movies and to morality as a whole lead to one ultimate conclusion: if we as a society are to thrive, we must reject the irrationality and delusions which Scrat embodies. There is simply no other path to success, most certainly none which involve acorns.