1. In Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, a little boy named Max, after dressing up as a wolf and causing trouble, is sent to his room without supper by his mother. Max dreams that a forest and an ocean have materialized in his room, and he proceeds to sail for “almost over a year” until he encounters an island full of wild things (Sendak). There, he becomes the beasts’ ruler, but loneliness and the smell of food eventually call him back to his room, where he finds his dinner waiting for him on the table.
In this story, Sendak incorporates a variety of psychoanalytic concepts, including Sigmund Freud’s theory that the unconscious mind is divided into three competing drives: the id, ego, and superego. In particular, Max’s wolf suit, and the wildness that overtakes him while he wears it, are emblematic of the id, which represents humans’ animal instincts. For instance, wolf-Max wreaks havoc gleefully and unabashedly without giving societal norms a second thought, and he also fixates on food––a picture in the book depicts him chasing his dog, fork raised, and to his mother he proclaims, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” (Sendak). Put simply, the wolf costume is a visual indicator that Max’s id has overtaken his psyche and rendered him a “wild thing,” intent on satisfying only the most basic of desires (Sendak).
Where the Wild Things Are also …show more content…
Frog and Toad are Friends, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel in 1970, chronicles the relationship of best friends Frog and Toad via several unrelated episodes. In one such episode, entitled Spring, Frog shows up at Toad’s house intent on celebrating the arrival of spring (he wants to “skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river”) but Toad is lying in bed, hell-bent on sleeping through the entire month of April. Toad tells Frog to return in May, so Frog changes Toad’s calendar to read May and promptly wakes him up. The story ends with the two amphibians walking together along a snow-covered
In this story, Sendak incorporates a variety of psychoanalytic concepts, including Sigmund Freud’s theory that the unconscious mind is divided into three competing drives: the id, ego, and superego. In particular, Max’s wolf suit, and the wildness that overtakes him while he wears it, are emblematic of the id, which represents humans’ animal instincts. For instance, wolf-Max wreaks havoc gleefully and unabashedly without giving societal norms a second thought, and he also fixates on food––a picture in the book depicts him chasing his dog, fork raised, and to his mother he proclaims, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” (Sendak). Put simply, the wolf costume is a visual indicator that Max’s id has overtaken his psyche and rendered him a “wild thing,” intent on satisfying only the most basic of desires (Sendak).
Where the Wild Things Are also …show more content…
Frog and Toad are Friends, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel in 1970, chronicles the relationship of best friends Frog and Toad via several unrelated episodes. In one such episode, entitled Spring, Frog shows up at Toad’s house intent on celebrating the arrival of spring (he wants to “skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river”) but Toad is lying in bed, hell-bent on sleeping through the entire month of April. Toad tells Frog to return in May, so Frog changes Toad’s calendar to read May and promptly wakes him up. The story ends with the two amphibians walking together along a snow-covered