Yertle The Turtle Analysis

“And tosay the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.” This is the last stanza in Dr. Seuss’ children’s book “Yertle the Turtle.” Dr. Seuss was an imaginative man, and he decided that his fictional books, writing for children, should have messages in them that mirrored historical events. For example, “Yertle the Turtle” is based off of none other than Adolf Hitler and the end of his fascist reign. This method of using the genres of fantasy and fiction have proven to be successful when attempting to tackle daunting social issues. This technique has been used by artists, across all mediums, in attempt to …show more content…
The Shape of Water presents the ever present issue of sexuality and the right to be able to love who you love through fantastical events that take place in the film. The fantastical element of the story allows the explicit message to be conveyed to the audience implicitly; avoiding the possibility of the message to feel forced. Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, co-writer of the film, chose to battle this social issue with a story that revolves around a mute woman, an outcast of society, falling in love with a mythical creature, an outcast of humanity, best described as a fish man who is reminiscent of the comic book character, Swamp Thing.
An overarching through line is it’s time period, and how the morals of the time are still alive today. The film takes place in the heat of the Cold War. Not only does the time period address the clear issue of foreign relations but also includes: individuals battling to be accepted for their sexuality, overt and covert racism, the treatment of females in the workplace, and sexism. Del Toro and Taylor address these issues delicately, but still head-on. A particular instance of this subtlety is when Michael Shannon’s character, a white man, says to Octavia Spencer, a black woman, that God is