When I picked this book up, I was
pretty wary of it, once I realized what it was – an adult novelization of the
children’s picture book Where the Wild
Things Are by Maurice Sendak. For one thing, why was the novelization of a
beloved children’s book shelved in the adult section? And for another thing, I
LOVE the original. How much would the author mess with it? I never finished
watching the movie, although what I saw was alright – not great but alright.
Knowing that this was based on the screenplay I kind of knew what to expect.
I read some reviews to prepare
myself, and saw other fans of the original ranting about it, giving it single
star ratings, and berating Eggers for adding so much to one of their favorite
childhood stories. But honestly, the original Where the Wild Things Are is all of three hundred and thirty-eight
words long – shorter than this blog post. I really don’t see how Eggers could avoid adding to it.
But maybe going into it armed with
the complaints of disappointed fans helped in the end. I liked it. Max in many
ways is every child that has ever lived. The way he thinks, how seriously he
takes life, his impulsiveness, unintentional destructiveness, and regret afterwards
are all things I remember from being small myself, and have seen in other
children countless times. From his snowball fight, to his terror over learning
in a science class that the sun will die, Max embodies so much of childhood. He
was very similar to Calvin from the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. I loved him up until the night that ended with
him fleeing to the island of The Wild Things.
Max of the original “made mischief
of one kind and another” and ends by telling his mother “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” for
which he is “sent to bed without eating anything.” I consider this a positive
message. Max roughhouses, mouths off, and is disciplined. Max of this new story
roughhouses, disobeys his mother, runs from her, yells at her, and then when
she catches him, bites her. Does he get grounded? Disciplined in any way? No.
Instead he panics and runs off into the night before she can do anything. This
change really bothered me, not because it is a change from the original, but as
a perfect example of what’s wrong with modern parenting – lack of discipline.
Children no longer face consequences for their disobedience and bad behavior.
When Max runs away, he finds a boat
and sails away until he comes to the island of The Wild Things. Each of The
Wild Things have a name and a personality of their own, and pretty quickly you
realize each one embodies a different aspect of Max’s personality – his
loneliness, his insecurity, his destructiveness, etc. I felt like the creatures
were really close to the spirit of the original. They were each unique and interesting
in their own right. At times, it was terrifying to see a child’s recklessness
in a huge, powerful being. It reminded me of what my uncle has always said: if
that child throwing a tantrum there was six-foot tall and two hundred pounds,
he would kill you. The Wild Things perfectly demonstrate that.
The beginning of the island
sequence as Max begins to get to know them and assumes kingship, was really fun
to read…at first. My enjoyment went
downhill rapidly. At first he enjoys spending time with creatures even wilder
than he is, but over and over things go horribly wrong, people end up hurt, and
Max is back in his pattern of destruction. He blames himself, says wherever he
goes he ruins things, and wants to go back home. So he does. And when he does
his mother has left dinner in the kitchen for him and fallen asleep on the
couch where she was waiting.
See any problems with this?
Not only is there NO discipline,
he’s rewarded for his behavior. That was really hard for me to take. But there
was something that bothered me even more than that – bothered me so much I kept
rereading the last fifty pages over and over, praying I had missed something.
Max starts out the book impulsive
and accidentally destructive. He constantly acts before he thinks, not
realizing the consequences of his actions. He never sees beyond the present
moment. Things that seem like a good idea “at the time,” continually come back
to bite him. And he hates it. He wants so badly to be good, but he keeps
messing up. He knows he’s destructive, calls himself that, wants to be better,
but can’t be. And then on the island it keeps happening that way again. He is
confronted openly with his thoughtlessness and the price he must pay for it.
But he never has a moment of redemption.
He leaves the island with the same mindset he came with. “I’m destructive. I
want to be better. But everything always goes wrong when I’m around. I want to
be better. Why can’t I be better?” He never has a moment of hope or of
realization that he can change and break the pattern. And that was very sad to
me. It’s just another example of the hopelessness of the secular worldview. It
left the book feel pretty unresolved, and that is a pet peeve of mine. I need
an ending. And I spent hours rereading, searching for my ending, my resolution.
It just wasn’t there.
All the same, I liked Max when I
was supposed to, felt bad for him when I was supposed to, and hated him when he
was at his most selfish (which I think
I was supposed to). The book was well-written, and while the broken-family
setting feels pretty cliché to me, it didn’t bother me too much in this one. It
will never be a setting I particularly like, but I’ll ignore it if I like the
story. The creatures became my friends for the course of the book, and I was
sorry when Max had to leave them. Overall, even with my problems with it, it’s
still one I would reread.
I think I figured out why it’s
shelved in the adult section. It’s written with a very nostalgic feel, like an
old man remembering his childhood. And when Max is on the island, it is quite
violent. Not gory, but violent. The monsters rock-fight, roll boulders on each
other, and threaten to eat each other and Max, among other things. It’s violent
enough that it could be disturbing to some children. Other than that though,
there was only one curse word in the entire book, and I would consider it
appropriate YA fiction, as well as adult.
If you go into it with an open
mind, knowing it’s different than the picture book, but still in the spirit of it, and are willing to look
past the lack of punishment for Max’s disobedience, it’s worth a read, simply
because it’s well-written, has good characters, and is just a fun, if
occasionally dark adventure.
My favorite passage of the book is
towards the end:
Max
ran his fastest until he was a few houses away, when he slowed down to a jog,
the a walk. Why did he slow down? It confused Max, too. Perhaps it was the very
weight of being home again. He’d been gone so long. Years, it seemed. And now
he was back, and he was different. Would his mother recognize him? Would
Claire? In some ways he felt too big for this house. But he also felt newly
able to fit within it.
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