Toph Beifong

Toph Bei Fong
Voiced by	Jessie Flower
In-universe information
Aliases	The Blind Bandit, The Runaway
Gender	Female
Position	Guardian/ Earthbending Master
Nationality	Earth Kingdom (Gaoling)

Toph Bei Fong (北方 托芙) is a 12-year old fictional character in the Nickelodeon animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender. She is a blind earthbending master who has agreed to teach Aang earthbending to help him fulfill his duty as the Avatar, and to restore balance to the world by defeating the imperialistic Fire Nation.

History and family

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The luxurious Bei Fong estate

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. 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.

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.

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.

Plot overview

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The Blind Bandit, champion of Earth Rumble VI.

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. When Xin Fu, the tournament host, calls for volunteer challengers, Aang's 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 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. Toph, however, disagrees and steps forward, and she soon 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. 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.

Character

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Toph relaxing.

With her joining of Aang's party, 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. 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.

Toph is brutally honest when criticizing others. She is vocal about her opinions on others regardless of status or age. 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, and on occasion her friends, particularly Sokka.

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 admitted that she hated them. And, in "The Runaway" she confesses to Sokka that one reason she relied on Katara was because Katara cared about who she really was (in contrast to how her parents wouldn't let her do what she wanted), 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.

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. Being coddled by her parents all her life because of her disability, Toph hates being tended to. 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 personal hygiene. She is accustomed to lying on the ground, and walking everywhere barefoot leaving her soles quite soiled. This is common, however, as most Earthbenders in the show walk barefoot, likely so that their body is directly touching the earth at all times. Also, she has been seen belching loudly, picking her nose, spitting, and is usually covered in dirt or, as she calls it, "a healthy coating of earth." Despite her uncouth habits, Toph is in fact well-educated in the manners and bearings of high society--she merely chooses to ignore them.

Name

As of yet, Toph is the only character within the series to express a last name, 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 Cantonese pronunciation for the word "North". The word 托 (Tuō) also means 'to support in one's palm' and is usually a prefix to another Fù ( 付 ) that means "hand over".

Earthbending

A visual of Toph's ability to feel vibrations traveling through the ground.

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. 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. As another result of her blindess, 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. Most significantly, Toph retains the ability to sense when a person is lying based on their heartbeat and breathing patterns. However, Toph's senses are not absolute, as Azula demonstrates that she is easily able to lie without even the slightest physical reaction.

Unfortunately, due to her dependency on vibrations in the earth, Toph is left considerably vulnerable to attacks intiated in midair or opponents who require little constant contact with the ground, such as the case with Airbenders. 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." As further illustrations of her affinity for the earth, Toph does not know how to swim and expresses an aversion for flying as well as travelling underwater in a submarine.

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. 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, and subsequently transforms it into an arm bracelet she now wears.