Dr. Seuss is a part of every American child’s life. The Grinch is part of the Christmas watching tradition and a beloved character in his own right along with Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman. The Cat in the Hat is one of his best know stories and characters and the cat’s hat immediately congers images of the tale of the Cat and his little cats too. However, that is not his only character he invented, or even the most unusual, Dr. Seuss was ahead of his time creating irreverent off bet characters and societies that just did not fit any preconceived notions. They were just different, and funny looking and they spoke funny too. Dr. Seuss had no qualms about inventing new words. In fact, in some of his poems there are almost as many new words as there are old ones. Take a look at There is a Wocket in My Pocket. . For each every day object there is a new creature with a cleverly invented name. This is a wonderful rhyming tool for little kids just learning to name the things around them, and it challenges their imaginations with images of the creatures that live in that child’s world.
Dr. Seuss himself is an invention of sorts, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel. Called “Ted” as a child he was the son and grandson of German immigrant Brew Masters and grew up during Prohibition, not a good time to be from a family of brewers. His mother helped out in her father’s bakery and often she would memorize the names of the pies on special each day and “chant” them to her father’s customers. Some nights she used these “Pie Chants” instead of stories to lull the young Ted to sleep. As an adult he credited her, and her Pie Chants with the rhythm and urgency of his own poems. .
As a children’s book, The Cat in the Hat is one of the greatest all time of children everywhere. Any young child who sees that iconic red and white striped hat immediately starts looking around for the cat to go with it. Part of its popularity can be attributed to the unusual way it was invented. It started out not as a story, but as a list of words and collaboration between two publishing houses. In 1955 Rudolf Flesh wrote a book entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read and John Hersey published an article by the same title in 1954, both were premised on the notion that “Johnny” could not read was because the books offered to him were basically boring. . In response text book publishing house Houghton Mifflin and Dr. Seuss’s publishing house got together, struck a deal and came up with a list of curriculum words. They gave it to Dr. Seuss to use any way he wanted to create a new style children’s primer, just so long as it was not boring. The Cat in the Hat may be many things, but boring it is not. “The Cat in the Hat catapulted him from pioneer in children’s literature to definitive children’s book author/illustrator, a position he has held unofficially for many decades since.” .
On the young child’s level, it tells an active, imaginative story about two children, alone in a house with only a gold fish for company waiting for their mother to return on a wet rainy day. It is too wet to go outside and play ball, so they sat in the house and did nothing at all. Then the Cat in the Hat shows up on the mat and things start happening right after that. The children just do not know what to say, their mother is out and is gone for the day, but the fish says “No! No! Make that cat go away!” , From there on in things get complicated, the Cat in the Hat makes a mess of things, and the little “Things” that come out of the box just seem to make things worse. Throughout this the children are not amused by the Cat’s antics, or by his Things and the Fish is completely distressed and tells them time and again to make the Cat go away. Finally, at the last minute, the Cat cleans up his mess and the Cat goes away. They are at a loss when the mother comes home and asks what they did that day, and end up questioning the reader “Now, what SHOULD we do? Well what would YOU do If you mother asked YOU?” .
As Louis Menand, observed in his article Cat People published in The New Yorker there are deeper levels of meaning to The Cat in the Hat . The 1950s psychology of transgression and hypocrisy are evident as well as their relation to national security. In the story its self there is a feeling of not having all the information; not just in what the children are not telling the mother, but also in where the mother went when she left her children alone with the door unlocked and just a fish to watch over them. He also reflects on what might Theodore Geisel’s deeper psychological configuration in using this trope to build drama in The Cat in the Hat. In doing so he goes deeply into the relationships between the parents and Geisel as a child. He looks into the personalities of both the mother and father. Then he goes into how they related to Ted as a boy, how they interacted with each other and how they presented themselves and their family to society as a whole. .
Menand uses the term mater abscondita to describe the question of where the mother went, and what drove her to abandon her children to the care of a fish while on her seemingly desperate errand. He turns ns his argument around the “psychic wound” that the children suffer being left alone The children and the fish are concerned about the mother, where she is and when she is coming home. The distractions provided by the Cat are no substitute for knowing about these deeper more relevant issues.
This is reflective of American Society as the whole at that time. Communism was spreading. The Korean War ended in 1953 with the division of Korean into North Korea and South Korea. That same year DNA was discovered, Joseph Stalin died and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage. Those few short years between 1953 and 1955 when Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat also held the distracting media’s attention with the first publication of Playboy, the opening of Disney World and James Dean’s death.
Who is watching the Watcher when the watcher’s away? According to documents released in 2007 it was the NSA. , . This is the same NSA that was involved in the McCarthy era “Witch Hunts,” the investigation into the Nixon Admisistration’s Watergate Cover up, (After all, there was something decided “fishy” about what those men were doing in the Watergate Hotel!) and the suppression of the story until “Deep Throat” made it public by releasing information to the public. . Which brings us all to the present day, for the Watcher’s still watching its not gone away. Richard Snowden called our attention to the present NSA survailance issues, but the problem of surveillance of American citizens is one that started long ago, surfaced periodically and has been ever increasing. The Snowden document release is just one more page in what we now know is a long story of Government surveillance of Americans. . Like the children in The Cat in the Hat Americans also face that daunting question, “What did you do?” . The implication is that a violation of our 4th Amendment Rights is not enough to justify a violation of National Security. . The assumption being that somewhere along the line We have done something wrong to want to avoid surveillance.
So, with advance apologies to Dr. Seuss
I do not like the NSA
I do not like it Sam, I say
‘tho I am doing nothing wrong
I do not like them watching all day long
I do not like them watching me at night
All that watching is not right
They can come in to my house
creeping softly like a mouse
they can listen on my phone
they can see when I’m alone
I do not like it Sam, I say
It is wrong this watching, watching all along
Not in the night - it is not right
Not in my house like a quiet mouse
Not on my phone - when I’m alone
I do not like it Sam, I say
I do not like the NSA
Works Cited
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. "Dr. Seuss Biography." 2013. Dr. Seuss. 13 08 2013 <http://www.drseussart.com/biography.html>.
Granick, Jennifer. "NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor." 14 08 2013. Forbes. 14 08 2013 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennifergranick/2013/08/14/nsa-dea-irs-lie-about-fact-that-americans-are-routinely-spied-on-by-our-government-time-for-a-special-prosecutor-2/>.
Hot Conflict. "Dr Seuss Online Book Reading Wocket in My Pocket Full Text and Review." 2013. Hot Conflict. 13 08 2013 <http://www.hotconflict.com/dr-seuss-online-book-reading-wocket-in-my-pocket-full-text-and-review/>.
Menand, Louis. "Cat People." 23 12 2002. The New Yorker. 13 08 2013 <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/12/23/021223crat_atlarge>.
Nation Security Archive. "National Security Agency Releases History of Cold War Intelligence Archives." 2007. Nation Security Archive. 13 08 2013 <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm>.
National Security Administration - NSA. "American Cryptology during teh Cold War, 1845 - 1989 ." 2007 (Release Date). National Security Administration - NSA. 13 08 2013 <http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_histories/cold_war_i.pdf>.
Rosenberg, Jennifer. "Timeline of the 20th Centur." 2013. About.Com - 20th Century History. 13 08 2013 <http://history1900s.about.com/od/timelines/tp/1950timeline.htm>.
Seuss, Dr. The Cat in the Hat. Random House, 1957 & 1985.
—. There's a Wocket in my Pocket. Random House, 1974.
