Chapter 4
Dr. Seuss: Sneetches and Other singularities
The death of Theodore Geisel, the “real-life” stand-in for the beloved Dr. Seuss, got me to thinking about the amazing contribution this remarkable man had made to liberature. I almost wrote “to children’s literature,” which would have been correct, though understated. I agree with W.H. Auden, who wrote: “There are good books which are only for adults, because their comprehension presupposes adult experiences, but there are no good books which are only for children.”i And certainly Dr. Seuss wrote some good books.
Dr. Seuss is famous for replacing “Dick-and-Jane” readers with books of zany rhymes that take the boredom out of learning to read, and especially out of the method of instruction called “phonics.” But there is much, much more to the Dr. Seuss books than humorous phonics and weird, anatomically incorrect drawings. Many of these works are philosophical by presenting us readers with a thought experiment that provokes reflection
Consider the story, “Too many Daves,” which is included in the collection, The Sneetches and Other Stories.ii The whole story consists of only twelve outrageously rhymed couplets, plus the familiar Seuss-type drawings. The story invites us to imagine a certain Mrs. McCave who “had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave.” The picture of 23 little Seuss creatures all responding at once to the call, “Come into the house, Dave,” makes the simple point that nothing can succeed in functioning as a proper name unless, in suitable contexts, it singles out one person from among others. Thus, although it is true as a philosopher of language might say, that the assignment of a proper name is arbitrary, there are still pragmatic restrictions on what words can function properly as proper names.
Although Dr. Seuss certainly did show himself interested in philosophical questions like “What constraints limit whether some expression can function as a proper name?” he was first, and most of all, a moralist. He clearly wanted to have a significant influence on the moral life of children, as well as, one suspects, the moral life those parents and children who bought his books for their children and, often enough, read them to those children.
The fact that Dr. Seuss was a moralist places him in company with other famous writers of children’s stories that runs back through Hans Christian Andersen and Heinrich Hoffmann (inventor of Struwelpeter) to Aesop and his famous fables. What makes Dr. Seuss stand out from the tradition of moralism in children’s literature is the remarkably way in which he managed to be a moralist without being moralistic.
Heinrich Hoffmann lies at the opposite extreme. His only way of being a moralist was by being moralistic, often manipulatively and even sadistically moralistic.
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How can a moralist avoid being moralistic? Humor certainly helps, especially when the humor is self-mocking. So do zany drawings and ridiculous plots. But the plots need to be wisely ridiculous. In Dr. Seuss the zaniness of the characters and what they say deflates pomposity and earnestness; it cloaks moral seriousness with enough self-ridicule to make it acceptable as the moral seriousness it is.
The title story of the above-mentioned collection, “The Sneetches,” is a good example of Dr. Seuss’s “cool” moralism. The story begins with the add fact that some of the weird creatures called “Sneetches” have stars on their bellies, whereas others have “none upon thars.” Though the stars seem intrinsically insignificant, the star-bellied Sneetches make this odd feature they just happen to have into an important mark of distinction. Their stars are, for them, a matter of great pride and a basis for discriminating against all the clearly less-fortunate “plain-bellied” Sneetches.
Enter the enterpreneur, Sylvester McMonkey McBean. He has a machine for putting stars on erstwhile plain-bellied Sneetches. He is mobbed with customers. With now no obvious mark of their own superiority, the originally star-bellied Sneetches let McBean use another machine to remove the stars they were formerly so proud of. Now, being a plain-bellied Sneetch is “in,” whereas having a star one one’s belly is a mark of inferiority.
What McBean has put on he can also, of course, take off. So, next, the freshly starred Sneetches now want their bellies unstarred. And so it goes – stars off, stars on, with McBean cashing in on the seemingly inexhaustible need of the originally star-bellied group to be obvious in their difference, even if it is only arbitrarily marked, so that they can, in their own eyes, appear superior. Of course, the “out” group also expresses an inexhaustible need to “catch up,” to have whatever it seems to be that currently marks off superiority.
Finally, however, all the Sneetches wise up. There comes a day when they realize
. . . that Sneetches are Sneetches
And no kind of Sneetch is the
best on the beeches.
That day, all the Sneetches
forgot about the stars
and whether they had one,
or not, upon thars.
Shrewdly, Dr. Seuss leaves the application of his fable up to his readers. He even leaves it up to them whether there is an application. This indirection is another way in which he avoids being moralistic. We, the readers and hearers, have to think about the ways that we make invidious distinctions based on wearing the “right” kind of sneakers, getting the “in” haircut, having the preferred color of skin (even if we have to risk cancer to get a good tan), or boasting a “real” American name.
“The Sneetches,” like other stories by Dr. Seuss, can help us to examine the way we lead our lives by getting us to reflect on how “in-group” behavior can lead to ridiculous situations. That reflection can encourage us to ask whether some of our most basic attitudes toward others, toward ourselves, and toward life, are really, in John Wisdom’s useful phrase, “well-placed attitudes” after all.