This weekend I had a very special experience: I got to introduce The Cat in the Hat to my two granddaughters. I’m here to report that it’s a really, really good book.
Of course, you already knew that. Still, I hadn’t looked at Seuss’s breakthrough classic for so long that I’d forgotten how gripping it is. And at times, how disturbing.
Basically, the drama is about the alter egos or shadow projections of the narrator and his sister running wild when parental authority steps out. The cat is an anarchistic fantasy and then he doubles the intensity by bringing in Thing One and Thing Two. The three of them trash the house. Then, however–in a concluding wish fulfillment–order is miraculously restored. There are no bad consequences.
Actually, parental authority doesn’t entirely step out. The mother’s internal voice remains within the room in the figure of the fish. “He should not be here when your mother is out,” the fish insists. After the narrator manages to net Thing One and Thing Two, the fish orders a sad and bedraggled cat from the house. It’s an uncomfortable scene.
But the cat returns with a bright and sunny disposition. I suspect that bouncing back from his scolding is as comforting to child audiences as his miraculous pick-up-the-mess machine.
To explain the story’s power, I turn to a theory by film scholar Rick Altman about why Hollywood genre movies engage us. Altman says that we are drawn to transgression, and each popular genre specializes in a special type of transgression. In gangster movies we root for the gangsters, in monster movies we root for mayhem and destruction, in comedies we root for confusion.
Or at least we do at first. Then, however, our inner fish begins complaining. We start feeling guilty at having our dark desires satisfied. As the mayhem grows more intense, our titillation at transgression is countered by painful anxieties at seeing authority overthrown. The pain finally tilts the scales and we want to return to our initial static state—which in the case of the narrator and his sister involves sitting at the window and looking out at the rain.
Put another way, we’ve had fun vacationing in Vegas but start longing for a restoration of order. We want the criminal to be apprehended, the monster to be defeated, the slacker to grow up and get married.
The Cat in the Hat indulges the child’s rebellion against the well-ordered house before offering comfort with the return of parental order. It does so with memorable images and punchy rhymes. My granddaughters loved it.