![]() ![]() Let’s dwell, just for a moment, on the C in the H’s behavior. The un-Cat in the Hat, who’s feline nature is never revealed in the text or imagery, is not misidentified in this title. ![]() Personally, I think my daughter has stumbled onto a more appropriate title: Thing One and Thing Two Go Bump. She calls the book One and Two, referring to the Cat and the Hat’s partners in mayhem, Thing One and Thing Two. ![]() I noticed this after my toddler quickly picked up on the narrative misdirection. Seuss chose the words cat and hat because he knew that toddlers could pronounce them and then just drew whatever he wanted to draw. The Whatever-It-Is in the Hat has small ears, round eyes, no snout to speak of, only a handful of whiskers, and long snaking tale. ![]() Seuss’s motives won’t address the most problematic thing about The Cat in the Hat, namely that the Cat in the Hat is not a cat.Īnatomically, this should be obvious. These are all interesting points and the book warrants a close-reading, but insight into Dr. Seuss noted that he intended for the Cat in the Hat to represent a kind of revolutionary spirit and scholars have posited that Cat in the Hat represents Geisel himself. Reaching for a list of easy-to-learn words, Geisel grabbed “cat” and “hat” and was off to the blue-haired, red-suited races. Seuss himself, created The Cat in the Hat in response to boring grade-school books like Dick and Jane. ![]()
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