Where Have All the Wild Things Gone?

 

 

Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are is an unimprovable corroboration of Freudian theories of repression and introjection. In "Creative Writing and Daydreaming," Freud posits a link between dreaming, daydreaming, and the process of writing in that all three are essentially exercises in wish fulfillment. I believe that this story, for all its innocence, is a perfect example of psychological and cultural conditioning insofar as its wish fulfillment has been tempered or rather blunted by the unacceptability of the wish expressed therein; hence, the wish's inadmissible, unallowable nature is masked behind the disparity between the story's content and its underlying thought as well as in its apparent structure. Its very innocence engenders its tendentiousness.

Society creates repression of our desires and performs this feat in such a manner as to cause us to desire that repression. We first experience repression through a parent or parent figure. Through oedipal conflict, we introject the repressive parent as an ego ideal. We desire the parent and therefore desire repression. By so doing, we truly enter society. We now find it our duty as members of society to repress others, for example, our children, who in turn introject us and continue this cycle of desire and repression. Escape from this cycle is impossible; all that can be changed is the nature of that which is repressed. Were one to introject a Hell's Angel, one would merely appropriate and disseminate a different cultural discourse with correspondingly different values and taboos.

******************

Max performs actions that are unacceptable to society. His mother serves as a symbol for parental authority (she is both mother and father), and thus she calls him a "WILD THING"; Max replies by telling her "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" He is sent to bed without eating anything. He sleeps and dreams of a forest--a nonenculturated space--and then sails across a conveniently located ocean "to where the wild things are." They display "terrible," aggressive behavior. Max assumes the role of parent by telling them to "BE STILL!" and displays no fear of them. They are frightened and make him their parent, or "king of all the wild things." He has begun the process of introjection within himself and orders them to "let the wild rumpus start!" By commanding and allowing a wild rumpus, he disallows and represses his mother's societal order. The next few pages of the book, which I, alas!, cannot reproduce here, illustrate this dionysian frolic--that is, a dionysian frolic suitable for a children's book. Max orders the wild things to stop and shifts gears, as it were, by telling them to go to bed without their supper just as he had been ordered earlier. He grows lonely because his society of wild things is, after all, only a wish-fulfilling fantasy; as well, the nature of his mother's society demands gregariousness by the nature of the introjective cycle. As Grace Slick could have sung, Don't you want somebody to introject? This sense of loneliness is followed by his smelling food. He gives up being king. His wild subjects do not like this and cry, "Please don't go--we'll eat you--we love you so!" Max refuses, and despite the fierce show of nonenculturated behavior given by the wild things, he leaves them and finds himself in his room "where he found his supper still warm and it was still hot."

Max has cathected both freedom and his mother. Mother provides him with food, and so food serves both as a metaphoric displacement for mother and as a metonymic condensation of society in its capacity as caretaker and nurturer. He tells his mother all-too-prophetically, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"; that is, "I'LL INTROJECT YOU!" By acting as parent of the wild things, he represses them. Because he is not afraid of them, they perceive his repression as wildness, as freedom. This is analogous to our childhood perception of adults as both wielders (insofar as they are privileged) and repressors of freedom; parents act in ways that seem to us to be unrepressed by larger forces, and yet their freedom is not shared with us. We do not realize then that their repressive nature is the result of their own repression by internalized forces. After Max allows the wild things to have a rumpus, he mimics his mother's repressive act: Just as his mother provides him food in the same way that society provides us with a framework within which to live and can deny it punitively, he denies the wild things supper. This logical inconsistency on Max's part is an indication of the conflict going on inside him. His cathexis to the mother and all she represents is proving stronger than his cathexis to freedom. He is lonely; he wants "someone to love him best of all"; he wants someone to repress him. This cathexis is present in the story as "smelling good things to eat." The wild things awake and have now introjected Max as an ego ideal, just as Max has introjected his mother. Not surprisingly, they mimic Max's earlier retort to his ego-ideal-to-be. This further reinforces the link between mother and food, made explicit by the wild things' claim that they "love him so." Clearly, to eat is to love. Mother and food are, taken together, society; to have them, to be a part of society, is to be loved, to belong, to escape the ultimate loneliness of freedom. Max returns home and is now consciously prepared to adopt his mother's repressive code of behavior; he can eat his supper, and it's still hot, or potent.

All children wish for omnipotence, freedom, and revenge against repressive forces. Society works through Sendak to keep him from ending the story with Max and the wild things leading a life of Edenic anarchy on the island. Instead, Max's wish (which is Sendak's and yours and mine as well--I mean, I love making That Which Provides Food take dictation for this Web site of his, but I would much rather be eating strawberries right now) is shown to be societally unacceptable and isolating. In addition, our own societal implants cause us to approve of the story as it is and cluck our tongues at the cuteness of it all. Max must leave the island, just as we would have to were we in his place; he has no concrete representation of the ego ideal to love and emulate. His is a particularly God-like position, and it is interesting to note that Christianity solves the problem of God's solitude by providing Him with a son and by positing the love between these two entities as a third entity, the Holy Spirit. Of course, God is not subject to repression and represses us, if at all, only to better or punish us. This is society's excuse for repression as well. In this sense, I suppose one could paraphrase another song: You always repress the one you love.

© 2001 Gregor Everitt

 

 

Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are is an unimprovable corroboration of Freudian theories of repression and introjection. In "Creative Writing and Daydreaming," Freud posits a link between dreaming, daydreaming, and the process of writing in that all three are essentially exercises in wish fulfillment. I believe that this story, for all its innocence, is a perfect example of psychological and cultural conditioning insofar as its wish fulfillment has been tempered or rather blunted by the unacceptability of the wish expressed therein; hence, the wish's inadmissible, unallowable nature is masked behind the disparity between the story's content and its underlying thought as well as in its apparent structure. Its very innocence engenders its tendentiousness.

Society creates repression of our desires and performs this feat in such a manner as to cause us to desire that repression. We first experience repression through a parent or parent figure. Through oedipal conflict, we introject the repressive parent as an ego ideal. We desire the parent and therefore desire repression. By so doing, we truly enter society. We now find it our duty as members of society to repress others, for example, our children, who in turn introject us and continue this cycle of desire and repression. Escape from this cycle is impossible; all that can be changed is the nature of that which is repressed. Were one to introject a Hell's Angel, one would merely appropriate and disseminate a different cultural discourse with correspondingly different values and taboos.

******************

Max performs actions that are unacceptable to society. His mother serves as a symbol for parental authority (she is both mother and father), and thus she calls him a "WILD THING"; Max replies by telling her "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" He is sent to bed without eating anything. He sleeps and dreams of a forest--a nonenculturated space--and then sails across a conveniently located ocean "to where the wild things are." They display "terrible," aggressive behavior. Max assumes the role of parent by telling them to "BE STILL!" and displays no fear of them. They are frightened and make him their parent, or "king of all the wild things." He has begun the process of introjection within himself and orders them to "let the wild rumpus start!" By commanding and allowing a wild rumpus, he disallows and represses his mother's societal order. The next few pages of the book, which I, alas!, cannot reproduce here, illustrate this dionysian frolic--that is, a dionysian frolic suitable for a children's book. Max orders the wild things to stop and shifts gears, as it were, by telling them to go to bed without their supper just as he had been ordered earlier. He grows lonely because his society of wild things is, after all, only a wish-fulfilling fantasy; as well, the nature of his mother's society demands gregariousness by the nature of the introjective cycle. As Grace Slick could have sung, Don't you want somebody to introject? This sense of loneliness is followed by his smelling food. He gives up being king. His wild subjects do not like this and cry, "Please don't go--we'll eat you--we love you so!" Max refuses, and despite the fierce show of nonenculturated behavior given by the wild things, he leaves them and finds himself in his room "where he found his supper still warm and it was still hot."

Max has cathected both freedom and his mother. Mother provides him with food, and so food serves both as a metaphoric displacement for mother and as a metonymic condensation of society in its capacity as caretaker and nurturer. He tells his mother all-too-prophetically, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"; that is, "I'LL INTROJECT YOU!" By acting as parent of the wild things, he represses them. Because he is not afraid of them, they perceive his repression as wildness, as freedom. This is analogous to our childhood perception of adults as both wielders (insofar as they are privileged) and repressors of freedom; parents act in ways that seem to us to be unrepressed by larger forces, and yet their freedom is not shared with us. We do not realize then that their repressive nature is the result of their own repression by internalized forces. After Max allows the wild things to have a rumpus, he mimics his mother's repressive act: Just as his mother provides him food in the same way that society provides us with a framework within which to live and can deny it punitively, he denies the wild things supper. This logical inconsistency on Max's part is an indication of the conflict going on inside him. His cathexis to the mother and all she represents is proving stronger than his cathexis to freedom. He is lonely; he wants "someone to love him best of all"; he wants someone to repress him. This cathexis is present in the story as "smelling good things to eat." The wild things awake and have now introjected Max as an ego ideal, just as Max has introjected his mother. Not surprisingly, they mimic Max's earlier retort to his ego-ideal-to-be. This further reinforces the link between mother and food, made explicit by the wild things' claim that they "love him so." Clearly, to eat is to love. Mother and food are, taken together, society; to have them, to be a part of society, is to be loved, to belong, to escape the ultimate loneliness of freedom. Max returns home and is now consciously prepared to adopt his mother's repressive code of behavior; he can eat his supper, and it's still hot, or potent.

All children wish for omnipotence, freedom, and revenge against repressive forces. Society works through Sendak to keep him from ending the story with Max and the wild things leading a life of Edenic anarchy on the island. Instead, Max's wish (which is Sendak's and yours and mine as well--I mean, I love making That Which Provides Food take dictation for this Web site of his, but I would much rather be eating strawberries right now) is shown to be societally unacceptable and isolating. In addition, our own societal implants cause us to approve of the story as it is and cluck our tongues at the cuteness of it all. Max must leave the island, just as we would have to were we in his place; he has no concrete representation of the ego ideal to love and emulate. His is a particularly God-like position, and it is interesting to note that Christianity solves the problem of God's solitude by providing Him with a son and by positing the love between these two entities as a third entity, the Holy Spirit. Of course, God is not subject to repression and represses us, if at all, only to better or punish us. This is society's excuse for repression as well. In this sense, I suppose one could paraphrase another song: You always repress the one you love.

© 2001 Gregor Everitt

 

 

Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are is an unimprovable corroboration of Freudian theories of repression and introjection. In "Creative Writing and Daydreaming," Freud posits a link between dreaming, daydreaming, and the process of writing in that all three are essentially exercises in wish fulfillment. I believe that this story, for all its innocence, is a perfect example of psychological and cultural conditioning insofar as its wish fulfillment has been tempered or rather blunted by the unacceptability of the wish expressed therein; hence, the wish's inadmissible, unallowable nature is masked behind the disparity between the story's content and its underlying thought as well as in its apparent structure. Its very innocence engenders its tendentiousness.

Society creates repression of our desires and performs this feat in such a manner as to cause us to desire that repression. We first experience repression through a parent or parent figure. Through oedipal conflict, we introject the repressive parent as an ego ideal. We desire the parent and therefore desire repression. By so doing, we truly enter society. We now find it our duty as members of society to repress others, for example, our children, who in turn introject us and continue this cycle of desire and repression. Escape from this cycle is impossible; all that can be changed is the nature of that which is repressed. Were one to introject a Hell's Angel, one would merely appropriate and disseminate a different cultural discourse with correspondingly different values and taboos.

******************

Max performs actions that are unacceptable to society. His mother serves as a symbol for parental authority (she is both mother and father), and thus she calls him a "WILD THING"; Max replies by telling her "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" He is sent to bed without eating anything. He sleeps and dreams of a forest--a nonenculturated space--and then sails across a conveniently located ocean "to where the wild things are." They display "terrible," aggressive behavior. Max assumes the role of parent by telling them to "BE STILL!" and displays no fear of them. They are frightened and make him their parent, or "king of all the wild things." He has begun the process of introjection within himself and orders them to "let the wild rumpus start!" By commanding and allowing a wild rumpus, he disallows and represses his mother's societal order. The next few pages of the book, which I, alas!, cannot reproduce here, illustrate this dionysian frolic--that is, a dionysian frolic suitable for a children's book. Max orders the wild things to stop and shifts gears, as it were, by telling them to go to bed without their supper just as he had been ordered earlier. He grows lonely because his society of wild things is, after all, only a wish-fulfilling fantasy; as well, the nature of his mother's society demands gregariousness by the nature of the introjective cycle. As Grace Slick could have sung, Don't you want somebody to introject? This sense of loneliness is followed by his smelling food. He gives up being king. His wild subjects do not like this and cry, "Please don't go--we'll eat you--we love you so!" Max refuses, and despite the fierce show of nonenculturated behavior given by the wild things, he leaves them and finds himself in his room "where he found his supper still warm and it was still hot."

Max has cathected both freedom and his mother. Mother provides him with food, and so food serves both as a metaphoric displacement for mother and as a metonymic condensation of society in its capacity as caretaker and nurturer. He tells his mother all-too-prophetically, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"; that is, "I'LL INTROJECT YOU!" By acting as parent of the wild things, he represses them. Because he is not afraid of them, they perceive his repression as wildness, as freedom. This is analogous to our childhood perception of adults as both wielders (insofar as they are privileged) and repressors of freedom; parents act in ways that seem to us to be unrepressed by larger forces, and yet their freedom is not shared with us. We do not realize then that their repressive nature is the result of their own repression by internalized forces. After Max allows the wild things to have a rumpus, he mimics his mother's repressive act: Just as his mother provides him food in the same way that society provides us with a framework within which to live and can deny it punitively, he denies the wild things supper. This logical inconsistency on Max's part is an indication of the conflict going on inside him. His cathexis to the mother and all she represents is proving stronger than his cathexis to freedom. He is lonely; he wants "someone to love him best of all"; he wants someone to repress him. This cathexis is present in the story as "smelling good things to eat." The wild things awake and have now introjected Max as an ego ideal, just as Max has introjected his mother. Not surprisingly, they mimic Max's earlier retort to his ego-ideal-to-be. This further reinforces the link between mother and food, made explicit by the wild things' claim that they "love him so." Clearly, to eat is to love. Mother and food are, taken together, society; to have them, to be a part of society, is to be loved, to belong, to escape the ultimate loneliness of freedom. Max returns home and is now consciously prepared to adopt his mother's repressive code of behavior; he can eat his supper, and it's still hot, or potent.

All children wish for omnipotence, freedom, and revenge against repressive forces. Society works through Sendak to keep him from ending the story with Max and the wild things leading a life of Edenic anarchy on the island. Instead, Max's wish (which is Sendak's and yours and mine as well--I mean, I love making That Which Provides Food take dictation for this Web site of his, but I would much rather be eating strawberries right now) is shown to be societally unacceptable and isolating. In addition, our own societal implants cause us to approve of the story as it is and cluck our tongues at the cuteness of it all. Max must leave the island, just as we would have to were we in his place; he has no concrete representation of the ego ideal to love and emulate. His is a particularly God-like position, and it is interesting to note that Christianity solves the problem of God's solitude by providing Him with a son and by positing the love between these two entities as a third entity, the Holy Spirit. Of course, God is not subject to repression and represses us, if at all, only to better or punish us. This is society's excuse for repression as well. In this sense, I suppose one could paraphrase another song: You always repress the one you love.

 

© 2001 Gregor Everitt