Toph Bei Fong (北方 托芙) is a fictional character in Nickelodeon's animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The character, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, was voiced by Jessie Flower.
In the show, Toph is a blind Earthbending master of the Earth Kingdom, a race of people who can control and manipulate earth.[1] She grew up in a wealthy and highly respected family but left it behind when she had agreed to teach Aang earthbending to help him fulfill his duty as the Avatar, and accompanies him on his quest to defeat the imperialistic Fire Nation and bring peace to the war-torn nations.[2]
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[edit] History and family
Toph is the only child of the wealthy Bei Fong family, who reside in the Earth Kingdom town of Gaoling and whose symbol is a flying boar. Toph's parents are very protective of her, viewing her blindness as a disability in every sense of the word. They assume that she is weak and vulnerable to everything around her. She ran away constantly when she was younger. To avoid risk and danger, they kept her at the beginner level of earthbending for over six years, had guards keep close watch on her at all times, and kept the knowledge of her existence from the public.
Toph said she left her privileged existence behind in order to "teach Aang Earthbending"; in reality, she left to escape the influence of her controlling parents. She further claims to hate them both, but she once, in tears, confided to Katara how she actually thinks that she "probably really hurt them" when she left. She has Katara send a note to them, but does not disclose her words.
Despite her handicap, Toph has developed special skills that make her a very formidable Earthbender. Once, when she was very young, Toph ran away from home, seeking refuge in nearby caves. It was there she found companionship with the blind, earthbending Badgermoles that inhabited the caves. By imitating their movements, Toph came to harness her own earthbending abilities, becoming a master in her own right. However, she kept her talent secret from her family and Master Yu, her earthbending teacher. Toph fought frequently in Earth Rumble, an underground earthbending Lei tai tournament, under the alias "The Blind Bandit." By the time Aang and his friends discover Toph at the tournament, she had won her way to become the current champion, holding a 42-0 win-loss record prior to her encounter with Aang.[2]
The Bei Fong family appears to be well-known and influential in the Earth Kingdom. In the episode "The Serpent's Pass," Toph's mere showing of her family's seal was sufficient enough to gain passage on a Ba Sing Se-bound ferry, despite lacking proper documentation to obtain a ticket normally.
Toph's hometown, Gaoling (高陵) (which means "tall hill"), is also a name of a county in Shanxi, a central province in China.
[edit] Plot overview
In search of an earthbending teacher who "listens to the earth," the group arrives in the town of Gaoling and eventually come across the town's underground earthbending tournament, Earth Rumble VI. After watching Toph's performance and recalling the vision he experienced in the swamp, Aang believes she is that person.[3] When Xin Fu, the tournament host, calls for volunteer challengers, Aang takes up the offer for a chance to speak to her. Thanks to his airbending in conjunction with her inability to see what is not on the ground, Aang easily defeats Toph and upsets her winning streak. She, however, does not give him a chance to speak and immediately leaves the arena in a huff.
Aang later finds Toph at the Bei Fong estate, and he is eventually able to talk to her about his quest and need for an earthbending teacher. However, before Toph can make a decision, she and Aang are kidnapped by the earthbending tournament stable, who believe that Toph lost intentionally because they didn't see anything hit her.
The tournament wrestlers demand a ransom, which Katara, Sokka, Master Yu, and Toph's father (voiced by Cam Clarke) pay, but only Toph is released. The competitors announce that they will be handing Aang to the Fire Nation for the reward instead, prompting Katara to plead Toph for her help in rescuing Aang. Her father interjects, claiming that his daughter is blind, tiny, helpless, and fragile, and unable to help them. Slighted, Toph steps forward and single-handedly defeats the entire tournament stable and the host, Xin Fu. Master Yu is speechless and awed by Toph's amazing earthbending skill. Her father is silent.
That night, Toph tries to reason with her parents that she is skillful at fighting and enjoys it, and that she should be allowed to live a normal life like any other kid. She hopes that all of this new information does not change the way they feel about her. Toph's father replies that it does not change his love for her as a father, but it instead has made him realize that he has allowed her too much freedom. He plans to have guards watching over her all day long. Toph's protests are unheard.
Outside town, just as Aang and his friends are about to depart, Toph appears and claims that her father had changed his mind, saying that she was free to travel the world. Upon hearing this shaky testimony, the group is swift to depart, sailing into the night sky with a new member and earthbending teacher. With his daughter's sudden absence, Toph's father concludes that the Avatar has kidnapped his daughter and issues a large reward to Master Yu and Xin Fu to bring her back by any means necessary.[2] While traveling with the Avatar, Toph's social attitudes change considerably. She becomes much less snide and private, but nonetheless still retains her cocky attitude. Her bending abilities also improve throughout Book Two, as she has learned to bend metal using her special ability to "see" the impurities (small fragments of earth) in the metal.[4]
Toph joins Sokka and Suki in the series finale to hijack a fire nation airship to attempt to prevent the "burning of the old world". While commandeering an airship she uses Metalbending almost as proficiently as Earthbending. The three succeed in stopping the airship brigade, giving Aang the time he needed to defeat Phoenix King Ozai and to save the world. Toph's last appearance is complimenting Sokka's poorly drawn painting of the group by saying "they all look perfect", again pointing out that she can't see it, and makes everyone laugh except Sokka. It's unknown if she returned to her parents after the battle ended.
[edit] Character
As a tomboy, Toph brings a totally new personality to the group. Unlike the nurturing Katara, flighty Aang or gruff but goofy Sokka, Toph is fiercely independent, sarcastic, direct, brutally frank, and confrontational--the choleric of the group. She appears to have the same carefree and adventurous personality as Aang, and she is very tomboyish in the way she acts and dresses - a contrast to the delicate doll her parents see her as. However, unlike Aang, who avoids fighting whenever possible, Toph loves battling and takes great pride in her earthbending skills.
Despite being blind, Toph is arguably the most perceptive of a person's true character in the group, most likely due to her ability to perceive people's lies by their heart rate. When Zuko attempted to join the Avatar's group, she was the only one who trusted his sincerity, while the others thought it was a trick of his. While a good judge of character and often logical, she can sometimes let her fierce pride cloud her judgment of a situation or people she knows, especially when she believes she has been insulted. This makes her quick to anger at others, but she never fails to admit her own fault once she has calmed down.
Toph's relationship with her parents is very conflicted: when Aang suggested that she should leave with them, Toph voiced reluctance of doing so. After she joined "Team Avatar", she claimed that she hated them. In "The Earth King", Toph receives a letter supposedly from her mother, saying that she seemed to understand her daughter. Toph is glad to go see her mother again, although it turns out to be a trap. And in "The Runaway", she confesses to Sokka that one reason she relied on Katara was that Katara cared about who she really was (in contrast to how her parents wouldn't let her just be herself), and added that was more than her own mother ever did. But Toph still does love her parents; she realizes that they just wanted to protect her and were most likely hurt when she ran away. In the end she sent them a letter (with Katara writing it down) using Sokka's messenger hawk.
Toph is brutally honest when criticizing others. She is vocal about her opinions on others regardless of status or age.[5] Her occasional spoiled attitude or aloofness may be related to her being the only child of one of the richest families in the Earth Kingdom. Thanks to her time as a competitor and champion of the earthbending tournaments, she is an expert in verbally taunting and insulting her opponents,[2] and on occasion her friends, particularly Sokka.[5]
Inside this hardened exterior, though, Toph hides trace insecurities in regards to her blindness. She has doubts about her appearance, being unable to see what she looks like.[6] Being coddled by her parents all her life because of her disability, Toph hates being tended to and catered for. Her eagerness to prove her strength and independence has led to some initial difficulties with Aang and his friends. Toph insists that she can "carry her own weight," and often mistakes a simple friendly gesture as an act of pity for her blindness. Her encounter with Iroh, however, has taught her that Aang, Katara, and Sokka care for her because they are friends, not because her disability makes them feel obligated to do so.
One of Toph's most obvious traits involves her very poor personal hygiene. She has been seen belching loudly (to the point that when a group of playwrights was gathering info on the Avatar and his companions, many believe she "saw" through echolocation), picking her nose, spitting, and is usually covered in dirt or, as she calls it, "a healthy coating of earth."[6] She is accustomed to lying on the ground and always walking around everywhere barefoot, leaving her soles quite soiled. This is common, as Earthbenders in the show walk barefoot, likely so that they are in direct contact with the earth at all times. Despite her uncouth habits, Toph is in fact well-educated in the manners and bearings of high society--she merely chooses to ignore them.[7]
[edit] Name
Toph is the only character within the series to express a surname, Bei Fong. In "The Serpent Pass," Toph's passport reads as 土國頭等護照北方拓芙 (tǔ guó tóu děng hù zhào běi fāng tuò fú) which translate as 'Earth Kingdom First Class Passport: Bei Fong Toph'. Here, her name means 'supported lotus,' which matches her parents view of their daughter as a flower that has to be protected. In "Tales of Ba Sing Se", her name was written as 托 夫 (Tuō Fū), which means "entrusted man". In "The Earth King," on the document from home, her name is reverted back to 拓芙. Her last name Bei Fong ( 北 方 ) is the Mandarin pronunciation for the word "North". The word 托 (Tuō) also means 'to support in one's palm' and the word used for child care[8] and is usually a prefix to another Fù ( 付 ) that means "pay".[9]
[edit] Earthbending
While the Earthbending style used by most Earthbenders is rooted in the Hung Gar style of Kung Fu, Toph's style is uniquely based on Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu.[10] Though blind, Toph has the unique ability to use Earthbending to "feel" even the most minute vibrations in the earth, be it the presence of trees and buildings or the march of ants several meters away. Through this heightened seismic sense, she can visualize where people are, their relative distance to her, and their physical build. This sense provides her with a distinct advantage when facing other Earthbenders in combat, as they characteristically require contact with the ground and extract rocks from their surroundings.[2] As another result of her blindness, Toph has acquired an acute sense of hearing, enabling her to recognize people by the sound of their voices and home in on distant conversations.[11] Most significantly, Toph retains the ability to sense when a person is lying based on his or her heartbeat and breathing patterns. [12]
Unfortunately, due to her dependency on vibrations in the earth, Toph is left considerably vulnerable to attacks initiated in midair or opponents who require little constant contact with the ground, such as the case with Airbenders.[2] Terrain that impairs Toph's ability to sense vibrations also hinders her abilities. She has some difficulty with sand, which constantly shifts and lacks solidity, disallowing her to accurately "feel" her surroundings, describing the vibrations as "fuzzy" (During the finale, she displays her new proficiency at bending sand, but it is unclear whether or not she still has trouble seeing through it). As further illustrations of her affinity for the earth, Toph does not know how to swim and expresses an aversion for flying[13][14] as well as travelling underwater in a submarine.[12]
As of the end of Book Two, Toph is the only known Earthbender with the ability to bend metal. While Toph is seen concentrating in her iron prison, Guru Pathik explains to Aang in a parallel scene how metal is just a part of Earth that has been purified and refined. As a result of her ability to feel the vibrations in earth, Toph is able to locate the impurities (the small fragments of earth) and manipulate them to "bend" the metal portion.[4] Later on, Sokka gives Toph a small piece of meteorite, which being composed of earth and metal, she can easily mold into a myriad of shapes (one of which appeared similar to the Nickelodeon logo and subsequently transforms it into an arm bracelet she now wears).[15] She has said to have learned Earthbending from the original earthbenders, the badgermoles, when she ran away to a cave and came upon them. Through learning earthbending not as a martial art, but as an interaction with the world, she was able to learn how to effectively "see".
While other Earthbenders such as King Bumi or Aang may be more powerful, Toph is undeniably the most skilled Earthbender in the world at the end of the series; she is one of only two humans known to use the Badgermoles' Earthsight ability. In addition, Toph invented Metalbending and studies Sandbending (it is implied that Sandbending is difficult for "normal" Earthbenders). (www.wikipedia.org)
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