[Repost] Revisiting a Six-Year-Old Boy’s Analysis of “Where the Wild Things Are”

This is a casu­al chat with a moth­er via email. For the pre­vi­ous top­ic, please refer to the pre­vi­ous arti­cles of “Mud Life”.Orig­i­nal address:Revis­it­ing the Six-Year-Old Boy’s Analy­sis of Where the Wild Things Areauthor:-Mud life-

[Mud Life] Spe­cial Issue

Jan­u­ary 9, 2014(Total Issue 12)

Text: Argen­tine Primera División

Hel­lo, blue sky, sea and for­est!

Thank you for shar­ing such a near­ly per­fect sto­ry! I’m once again amazed by the many times Ursu­la (Sendak’s edi­tor) has expressed her admi­ra­tion. She often mar­vels at how chil­dren under ten can often respond cre­ative­ly to the works of genius! Tong­tong’s inter­pre­ta­tion tru­ly pen­e­trates Sendak’s heart—in com­par­i­son, we adults are tru­ly ashamed.

You should find the movie “Where the Wild Things Are” and watch it with your child. He will com­plete­ly under­stand it. Of course, he may have a “dis­like” reac­tion, but he will def­i­nite­ly under­stand it bet­ter than us adults.

Film­ing for the film Where the Wild Things Are began when Sendak was around 80 years old and was­n’t released until he was 81. He’d actu­al­ly been think­ing about the idea since he was in his 60s. Direc­tor Spike Jonze was hes­i­tant to take it, and the project stalled until 2005. The screen­writer was the young writer Dave Eggers. I met him two years ago when Dave vis­it­ed Chi­na. He said the writ­ing was dif­fi­cult. Sendak kept urg­ing them to “make it dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous, as dan­ger­ous as pos­si­ble” in order to make the film’s sto­ry more thrilling, but Dave pre­ferred the orig­i­nal pic­ture book. Sendak was involved in near­ly every aspect of the film, from plan­ning and writ­ing to cast­ing, rehearsals, and film­ing. Sendak spent the lat­ter half of his career pri­mar­i­ly direct­ing and design­ing stage plays, so he’s quite knowl­edge­able about film.

I’ve said all this to tell you that the main plot of the film is actu­al­ly Sendak’s own rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Where the Wild Things Are. If you look at the plot struc­ture, it’s exact­ly the same as Tong­tong’s inter­pre­ta­tion. Even if Sendak were to make a come­back, it would­n’t be much dif­fer­ent:

Max is indeed a bit piti­ful — he lives with his moth­er and an old­er sis­ter who is much old­er than him. His father is not around and it is unclear whether he is divorced or has passed away.

Max’s favorite thing is a mod­el boat that his father gave him.

Max is very lone­ly — his moth­er is very busy at work and often writes man­u­scripts on the com­put­er at home. Max some­times lies on the ground like a pup­py to accom­pa­ny his moth­er.

Max often had to play by him­self — his sis­ter was old­er and always had boyfriends around her. Max would occa­sion­al­ly pro­voke them, such as attack­ing them dur­ing a snow­ball fight, but once they real­ly came to play with him, Max would “die” mis­er­ably because he was too small.

Max is very imag­i­na­tive — when his moth­er is not work­ing, she lis­tens to Max telling sto­ries, and then types them on the com­put­er and they become sto­ries.

Max’s imag­i­na­tion also makes him extreme­ly sen­si­tive — when he hears his sci­ence teacher say that the sun is in dan­ger of explod­ing, he will feel that the world is com­ing to an end that day.

When Max is extreme­ly lone­ly, he will act crazy — he once destroyed his sis­ter’s room and var­i­ous things; but the most seri­ous time was when his moth­er invit­ed her boyfriend to din­ner at home, he turned into a mon­ster of the end of the world…

In the movie, Max’s imag­i­nary game turned into a real adven­ture. He ran away from home and saw a boat by the water, which might be a gift from his bio­log­i­cal father, so he set sail.

Life is not easy for chil­dren. A part of Max is Sendak him­self.

Sendak also has an old­er sis­ter who is nine years old­er than him. His par­ents main­ly let his sis­ter take him out to play, but his sis­ter is very beau­ti­ful and has count­less boyfriends around her, which makes Sendak have many yo-yos. Because every time his sis­ter wants him to leave her alone, she bribes him with a yo-yo, but he does­n’t real­ly like yo-yos.

Once, his old­er sis­ter was ordered to take his lit­tle broth­er out for a walk, but she met a boyfriend, and as they wan­dered around, lit­tle Sendak found him­self alone on the street. The lit­tle boy cried and called out to the police. He actu­al­ly remem­bered his fam­i­ly’s names and phone num­bers, so the offi­cer drove him home in his police car. But the lit­tle boy con­tin­ued to fret, frus­trat­ing the offi­cer. He said, “If you want him to stop fret, rush home with the sirens blar­ing.” So, with the sirens blar­ing, he tri­umphant­ly returned home, and almost the entire neigh­bor­hood came out to see him. Lit­tle Sendak entered the house and, in full view of every­one, point­ed at his old­er sis­ter and declared, “That’s her! She got me lost on purpose!”—as if he were iden­ti­fy­ing a mur­der­er. If his fam­i­ly had asked him that day, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he would have answered with­out hes­i­ta­tion, “A police offi­cer!”