A. Waller Hastings

Northern State University

Creation of Where the Wild Things Are
 

Sendak created the first dummy for the book that would be WWTA in 1956, calling it Where the Wild Horses Are, but set the first version aside because he wasn’t satisfied.  He didn’t return to it until 1963, after he had illustrated 20+ books and written several of his own.

      The new title came about on May 10, 1963 (21), in part because Sendak came to believe he could not draw horses well (23). As Sendak continued to compose the pictures in his head, he realized he needed less text than he initially assumed, and concluded that no words at all were needed to illustrate the wild rumpus at the middle of the book (22).
 

On May 25, he made up a new dummy book, a miniature that included the story in pretty much its final form (22).       Cech suggests that WTWTA reflects the movement in the 1950s “toward a more open, psychologically sensitive kind of children’s book”; despite this movement, though, the book “broke a taboo against the expression of the powerful emotions of childhood” (qtd. in Keeling and Pollard 129).

Critical Comment/Interpretation

      Some early reviewers expressed concern that WTWTA might traumatize children: “…the book’s appreciation of wildness, chaos, anarchy, unmitigated fantasy, freedom, and unregulated behavior instigated controversy” (Keeling and Pollard 129).  Despite these concerns, the book won the Caldecott Medal as the most distinguished picture book of 1963.

      Aidan Chambers says that this book was slow to find an audience in Britain because of concerns that it would frighten children, but "Now we recognise it as the work that most clearly demonstrates the poetics of the picture book as a literary form.  With it, the picture book came of age." (243-44).

      Ellen Handler Spitz says: The text and pictures of WTWTA work together “in complex ways to create crosscurrents that affirm children’s need for fantasy while gently pushing them in the direction of grown-up behavior.” The story takes place in a familiar space, the bedroom, which creates a safe environment for the child’s fantasizing.  Note the shift in balance between verbal communication and picture as the story moves more and more into Max’s fantasy (and conversely as he returns to the “real world”) (123-25).

      Keeling and Pollard suggest that the Wild Things represent an eruption of Max’s “excess energy,” which his mother has tried to contain by exiling him to his room (128). While that energy bursts out in the trip to the place where the wild things are, however, they note that the Wild Things’ force is neutralized by the story’s containment within the child’s imagination, which is at least partially directed by his mother.  The mother, after all, has created Max’s costume and names him a “Wild Thing,” thereby “reduce[ing] him to a safe representation of the libidinal energy that is bubbling out of him” (130).  At the end, “Max’s world does not change; only the positions are shifted.  Max enters the land of the Wild Things and learns something about wielding adult authority.” (138)

      Marcus says that WTWTA is the book in which Sendak first came into his own adult style.  The original pencil studies for the book “show a systematic paring away of scene-setting bric-a-brac” enabling the pictures to focus on Max, and particularly on his facial expressions (“Second Look” 704).  The completed paintings “surprise viewers by the softness and lyricism of the watercolors,” a subtlety that could not be captured by 1960s printing technology but is more easily visible in later editions of the book (705).

      Regardless of specific details of their interpretation, most critics agree on the underlying psychological meaning of the book’s journey: Max needs to tame or control the Wild Things to achieve closure, signified by his return home.

Page-by-Page Analysis

• First picture: Max looks angry in the picture; he wears his "wolf suit" (why?), and is hammering nails into the wall; a teddy bear (or something - maybe a stuffed wolf) is hanging from coat hanger.  Much suggestion of "acting-out" behavior, serious bad actions or psychological disturbance (“He is a little boy at odds with the restrictions of his surroundings….absolutely at war with the civilized aspects of his household” Stott and Francis 225), but the text refers only to "mischief" - perhaps an example of the text contradicting the picture.

• Second picture: Max is chasing the dog (which looks like the hero of Higgledy Piggledy Pop, which was based on Sendak's own dog); the background shows monster picture "by Max" nailed to wall, suggesting earlier instances of "mischief" have made him familiar with the wild things.  Keeling and Pollard propose that Max here “is a would-be monstrous eater, who has targeted the family dog and his mother for consumption” (134). Query: the picture is hung neatly - does this suggest perhaps that his mother has put it up for display?  If so, what are the implications for Max's relationship with his family?

• Third picture: He is closed in his bedroom, still wearing wolf suit, still looking very angry.  The text tells us the anger is directed at his mother, who has called him "Wild Thing" and sent him to bed without supper after he shouted "I'll eat you up!"

• Fourth picture: The forest is growing in Max's room, and Max now appears almost nonchalant.   (The imagery of the forest growing out of the bed room echoes a similar description in George MacDonald's work, which Sendak is familiar with.)

• Fifth picture: The forest grows even more, the bedroom fades into background, and the moon appears brighter.  But the illustration here resembles a theatrical set, perhaps suggesting that the ensuing events are being acted out in the theatre of Max's imagination; note the line across the bottom, just behind Max, as if this were a painted screen.  (Marcus suggests that Max’s costume and the “staged look  of the art” point to Sendak’s later work in the theater (“Second Look” 704).) Max now is smiling and laughing into his hand, enjoying a joke? - no longer angry, but ratheras if he is getting the last laugh on Mom.

• Sixth picture: The bedroom has disappeared; nothing is visible but the forest, and Max has his back to us.  "The walls became the world all around" - the child's imagination converts an unpleasant environment into a world of adventure which he controls, and also literalizes what he feels: when he is confined to his room, the room does become the world all around him, or all the world to him.  The picture now occupies a full page, having grown larger to this point; for the first time in the book, the space devoted to text and the space devoted to picture are in equilibrium.  From here to the book's climax, the pictorial elements will continue to expand at the expense of the text space (perhaps a reflection of the dominance of the imagination); once Max's "wild-thing" energy is spent, the pictures shrink again until in the final spread there is only text, no picture at all.

• Seventh picture: The ocean with the boat appears, and Max looks peaceful, happy.

• Eighth picture: The text (here and on the previous page) suggests passage through time, perhaps evoking the sense that a change in behavior comes with  maturity, achieved through time. Max sees the first "wild thing" and looks worried; he raises hands/paws to fend off the sea creature.

• Ninth picture: The monsters all seem kind of cuddly, with soft edges and friendly expressions, even though the text describes them as terrible in many senses.  Again, there is an apparent contradiction between picture and text.  Max now does not seem apprehensive, but rather angry at them - as we might imagine his mother (never seen) to be with him.  He looks mildly disgusted.  The number of wild things suggests that Max’s imagination has fragmented the aggression they represent, so as better to control them (Spitz 130).

• Tenth picture: Role reversal: Max shouts "Be still" and tames the monsters by facing them directly without blinking.  He acts to them as Mother sought to act to him, but they obey better than he did.  He is in charge, and they look frightened.  Psychologically, this scene represents a mastering of the violent "wild-thing" impulses - we can only deal with these impulses by facing them directly.

• Eleventh picture: The cuddly wild things now bow to him; he appears haughty as he is addressed as "king of all wild things."  He is completely in control, as earlier (in the "real world" of home) he was completely out of control.

• Twelfth picture: This is the first of three illustrations that each occupies an entire two-page spread, with no text.  The imagination has achieved a release as the monsters seem to be playing a game. Max joins in, his mouth open wide, yelling.  They are creating a "wild rumpus" in the forest, which is still his bedroom.

• Thirteenth picture: Max looks happy, with the monsters joining in the fun.

• Fourteenth picture: Triumphant Max, as in the previous two illustrations, is at the center of the two-page spread.  The frame has become almost completely filled with monsters, but they remain benign and under Max's control, as evidenced by his riding atop one of them, wielding his sceptre.

• Fifteenth picture: Max treats the wild things as he was treated, but he is lonely as king of the wild things - for the first time since arriving in this place, he looks sad in the picture.

• Sixteenth picture: The verbal repetition of Max's threat to his mother ("We'll eat you up") is transformed into an expression of  love (consistent with the sometimes over-exuberant behavior of aunts and uncles to a young child, which was one of the models for Sendak's wild things).  To what extent is Max's initial threat also an expression of love?  Max waves back happily as he leaves the wild things for home.

• Seventeenth picture: Max sails home, looking a little sad - contrite maybe?

• Eighteenth picture: Max appears very happy and tired as he arrives home to find his supper awaiting him, and he is already undergoing a transformation back into boy - he has put back the hood of his wolf suit. Critic George Bodmer has pointed out that Max's wolf costume represents a role that he plays; at the end of the book, having slipped out of the role of "wild thing," he also appears for the first time without the wolf suit fully in place.Note that the moon in the window is now full, whereas in the earlier scenes of the bedroom, it was a crescent - thus the illustration suggests that the seemingly fanciful notion of great periods of time elapsing, as Max "sailed in and out of weeks and almost over a year" is perhaps not so fanciful after all.  The full moon is also a symbol of fulfillment or completeness, consistent with Max's apparent integration of his negative impulses through his visit to the wild things.

• No picture: Only text: "And it was still hot."

 Possible reactions:

• Max experiences an emotional firestorm as child. His feelings shift from moment to moment, as shown by the pictures, and he is not in control.  But in the land of the wild things, where he can let the emotions out, he is in control again.
• The child is imaginative.  He turns a place of punishment into a place of adventure, refusing to be imprisoned in his mind. (Perhaps there is an unconscious echo of Lovelace's poem, "To Althea, from Prison," which makes a similar point that one can remain free while one's body is imprisoned, as long as the mind is able to function.)
• The story shows intelligent adult discipline - the time out.  What does that imply?  The child will learn to control himself if he is given time to cool off; the child longs to exert the same authority over others as his mother exerts over him.  But turning it into a parable of good parenting seems to contradict the anarchic energy of the "wild rumpus."

 SOURCES: Barbara Bader, American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within, New York: Macmillan, 1976; George Bodmer, “‘The night Max wore his wolf suit’: Borders between Childhood and the Animal Story,” ChLA Annual Meeting, Roanoke, VA, 23 June, 2000; Kara Keeling and Scott Pollard, “Power, Food, and Eating in Maurice Sendak and Henrik Drescher: Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and The Boy Who Ate Around,” Children’s Literature in Education 30, 2 (1999) 127-143; Leonard S. Marcus, A Caldecott Celebration: Six Artists and Their Paths to the Caldecott Medal,  New York: Walker, 1998; Leonard S. Marcus, “A Second Look: Where the Wild Things Are,” Horn Book Nov/Dec 2003, 703-706; Ellen Handler Spitz, Inside Picture Books, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999; Jon C. Stott and Christine Doyle Francis, “‘Home’ and ‘Not Home’ in Children’s Stories: Getting There – and Being Worth It,” Children’s Literature in Education 24, 3 (1993) 223-233; Roger Sutton, “An Interview with Maurice Sendak,” Horn Book Nov/Dec

On-line resources for Where the Wild Things Are:

• Teacher’s lesson plan for using WWTA in the primary classroom