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Putting the 'I' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror Phil Fitzsimmons
Abstract: Recognized as arguably one of the most engaging and internationally the best selling, Maurice Sendak's picture book trilogy of 'Where the Wild Thing Are', 'In the Night Kitchen' and 'Outside Over There' is also recognized as being the most darkest in children's literature. Unintentionally intertextual, Sendak readily acknowledged that his work in general and this trilogy in particular was "colored with memories of village life in Poland, never actually experienced but passed on to me as a persuasive reality by my immigrant parents". While acknowledged but not explored by researchers, these texts also represent a visual representation of the psychological phenomenology of how children understand the concepts of fear, horror and terror. The latter point was a personal realization years after these texts had been published when it was pointed out to Sendak how similar his texts were to elements of his own childhood. While using all three texts in the previously mentioned trilogy, this paper focuses on the last in the series, Outside Over There, reputedly the darkest, most esoteric and the most symbolic. Using a transtextual approach in tandem with the 'Red Thread' reader response framework this paper unpacks possible meanings of Sendak's pictorial subtext and how they form a transcultural underpinning of how children understand, relate to and deal with fear, horror and terror. Key Words: Deformed discourse, 300, monster theory Dreamscapes and Nightmares: Forces and foci This paper began after an initial analysis of Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. Using the tools of visual literacy, this analysis revealed the psychological depth that childrens picture books contain. Childrens literature, and in particular the works of Sendak, not only floats on a sea of talk, but on ocean of mindscape that is at once not only sufficiently shallow enough for children to paddle in, but for adults to dive into and not touch the bottom. While arguably one of the most analysed of all chidlrens books, Where the Wild Things Are still holds research depths not yet plumbed. However, in the literature review that was undertaken ex post facto so as to direct theoretical sampling already undertaken, 1 a second issue that arose. 1

Putting the 'I' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror 2 While it is often acknowledged that Where the Wild Things Are is part of a trilogy that includes successive publication of In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There, little analysis has been undertaken in regard to the hypotextual, archertextual or paratextual links that one would assume to operate amongst and between these texts. In particular it would appear that with the exception of Kushners analysis, little attention has been paid to the last of the books in this series. Even in this analysis the focus is on the art of Sendak and not the relationship between text and the illustrations, or the polyvalent issues that are embedded in this text. Reputed to be the most difficult of his books2 this picture book story of a little girl Ida, whose sister is captured goblins and place an ice baby in her place. Her search for her missing sister is pictorially represented by illustrations that are hyperreal in their intensity; rich, densely coloured, mysterious, engaging, and urgent, theyre like photographic dream plates. .. so strong they seem to menace the very text theyre meant to illuminate.3 While Kushner offers provided greater insight into the relationship between Sendaks context of situation and the latter text of the trilogy than other commentaries such that of Lane, it would appear that because of Kushners friendship with Sendak he skirted key issues. Kushners use of summaries, excerpts from Sendaks journal and interview transcripts as an evidentiary warrant tell a much deeper story than the scope and depth provided in the commentary. In spite of this, as any text without context is pretext, the following section is grounded in his analysis and other interview data so as to provide a platform of insight that underpinned the connection between Outside, the frames of Sendaks emotions and his psychological state of mind. 2 The Authors Context of Situation Sendak created Outside with the intention of developing a text that contained psychological depth far beyond anything as yet crafted in childrens literature. While the two previous texts in the trilogy represented a dark departure, this text was an even more shadowy turning point. While it had an incubation period of at least three years its final development occurred during a period in Sendaks life in which he suffered from depression. He later admitted that the actual authoring of this text caused him to go back to therapy. Also, during the completion of the final drafts he was also suffering a serious throat infection, was severely stressed due to overwork, was giving up smoking and taking misprescribed medication for insomnia.

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On a short holiday he showed the drafts to friends who advised him not publish this text. Now slipping into further despondency and an abject fear of failure, though sheer determination that only a workaholic can muster the book was finally finished in 1979. The dark facets that underpin this book are further revealed in the dedication, where Barbra Brooks is the dedicatee. She died before the book was published and was Sendaks lone supporter in his personal psychological struggle and doubts as to whether he should continue to write this text. Despite these personal issues, Sendak claims that there were several conscious elements of subtext that he placed into this text. The first was a national outrage that occurred in his early childhood. Although only four years of age at the time, the Lindberg abduction of 1932 and ensuing nationwide horror was a personal fixation for Sendak and the entire Sendak family. In his journal, Sendak links the death of baby Charlie Lindberg to his own intense dislike of his mother. The illustrations of the goblin abduction of the baby in Outside are a representation of this aversion to his mother and are also a key subtextual element of Wild Things and paratextual element in Night Kitchen. In a journal entry where he discusses the Lindberg abduction, Sendak writes in the first person and equates himself with the ice baby left behind in his illustrations. I was dead in my mothers womb, I was the ice baby and my mother didnt notice that Id been replaced. 4 Sendak also attempted to build this narrative around several other interconnected beliefs that were also linked to events in his childhood. Perhaps the key element of this connection was his deep seated conviction that children have a primal fear of being separated from mummy and daddy the fear of being lost. The safest children in the world have that fear.5 Linked to this notion, he also deliberately focused this text on death, a question that every child worries about.6 In his own autobiographical writing, it is clear that he asked if his father was ever going to die to which his father fobbed him off with a curt response of no. From the tenor of this description it is clear that he also felt isolated from this father and the issue of death was never resolved within the family circle. Even in the cursory summary of Sendaks context of situation and culture provided in the previous paragraphs, it is understandable that his writing habitus as one that leant to the production of deformed discourse. As Kushner points out the illustrations in Outside are not only dark and unforgettable but also frightening, menacing and blood chilling. Yet, in the same breath admits that after reading the book to a child you find that,

Putting the 'I' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror 4 the same child you thought youd traumatized, addicted to working through the terror it elicits, the guilty desires it solicits, and the dream of valour it elicits7. Given that Sendak cloaks his spectres from the past in a new identity8 and that Sendak himself believes that there is a great deal of material that has been unconsciously inserted, the questions remain, what does this text tell us about Sendaks fears and terrors and what are the implications? As a means of answering this question the concept of methodological appropriateness demands that the tools of investigation in this case were to be based in the visual literacy elements of the Red Thread. In particular the basic premise of the blue page formed the foundation for this paper. The blue page is that page or cluster of illustrations that form the darkest or most calamitous section of the text9 Again using the guidance of Kushner, the most frightening and unforgettable illustrations in this text are those that depict the abduction of the baby by the goblins and where Ida falls backwards out of a window into the menace of the Outside. Having identified the central darker area, the Red Thread analysis can be carried out using a more focused elucidation through the identification of iconic forms and associated tools of visual literacy, and the hidden aspects of mind, metaphor and culture can be teased out. 3 Themes of Fear and Streams of Childhood Terror The first of the blue pages contains a scene is a bedroom in which the viewers eye is immediately drawn to the screaming baby being taken out of the window by two hooded goblins that have no visible face. Playing her wonder horn, Ida has her back turned and an ice baby has been set in the place of the crib that is now overturned. Drawn as photographic dream plates the meaning would appear to be simple enough except when the viewer-reader understands the allegoric nature of the visual elements in this single page and the symbolism their linkage suggests. The major vector, or line that the eye is immediately drawn to is the wall panel at the back of this imaginary room. The only full panel that can be seen, it has as a decorative feature a circle hung from two draped lines. This is the fundamental clue as to the meaning of the overall visual facets. The circle has a polyvalent meaning of perfection completion and divine order. In this text it has also been drawn in the same fashion as the ancient symbol of the hanging mistletoe, itself linked to the notion of perfection as it represents the divine mind or divine reason. This could be argued that that is a random act of the author

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illustrator if it were not for similar relationships to other symbolic elements. The panel itself draws the eye down into the actual focus of the page and divides the main characters of the narrative, which are Ida, the doll like ice baby and the goblins climbing out of the window with the kidnapped child. While as discussed previously, this is representative of the Lindberg kidnap, it also has all of the characteristics of the mistletoe diorama used in Europe and in particular England. Under the mistletoe, it was often customary to place dolls in a manger scene. While it was representative of the Christian saviour this static mistletoe scene also is a vestige, or a cultural icon, leftover in the shift from Druidism to Christianity. In this more ancient enactment or scenario, the mistletoe scene was a binary opposite. While the manager with the single doll represented atonement and reconciliation from the mother-creator caregiver, the entire narrative was also linked to a parallel narrative of twins who were cast out into the forest by uncaring selfish parents. This in itself gave rise to the babes in the wood folktale. Many instances of this twin narrative have morphed into scenarios similar to Cain and Able, or at least having plot line with an existential or messianic overtone in which the evil twin kills the good. To the left of the panel Ida can be seen playing what Sendak has termed in the accompanying text, her wonder horn. Her back is turned to the departing kidnappers and her eyes in a firm gaze into the unknown distance. The horn is a symbol of salvation in Jewish mythology as well as the concept of judgment. Similarly, in other cultures it is representative of the eye, or the all seeing eye, or as in the Celtic translation it simply means the Shepherd. To Idas immediate left, and seen through the bugle is a sunflower. In mythological terms this represents constancy revealing a link to the flowers ability to turn its flowering head during the day to face the suns movement across the sky. Also realized in the standing stone monuments in the United Kingdom, is again a symbol of the Christ figure and the transcultural messianic or hero codes of ancient Greece. To the right of the illustration, overlooking all of this action is a reflection in a mirror of an elderly mother figure. Her gaze is directed towards the ice baby figure but appears cold and uncaring. Archetypically, the mirror is symbolic of a door or entrance in which the unconscious discloses it its primary nature or focus. As Perls has suggested we can also find our own image in an artistic reflection of the illustrated mirror.10 In a more holistic sense, as can be clearly seen in this one page illustration, the figures and emblems are all situated within a single room. As Coomsamawary has pointed out, the house itself, and in particular a room, has a long history in art as being representative of the universe and the means by which

Putting the 'I' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror 6 an individual is sheltered in their path of becoming who they are.11 This latter notion of becoming leads to the point of the illustrative subtextual themes contained in this page. All of the elements deal with not so much with becoming, but the fear of becoming and of becoming nothing. 3 Implications and Associations While Sendak clearly underpinned his text with a series of visual facets that he believed metaphorically represented his childhood fears, it would appear that he also inserted a network of themes grounded in nihilism. As such this text is a visual autoethnography or an illustrative case study of not only Sendaks childhood fears but a psychological echo of all childhood fears and notions of horror. While the most basic fears are loneliness, dread of abandonment and death, Sendak not only inserts reflections of his childhood in regard to these elements but through the use of archetypical structures reveals their depth and connectedness. While this text is often refereed to as being Freudian in nature, the visual metaphors employed reveal their true phenomenological connections and have an echo with elements of Kellys Personal Construct Theory and Karen Horneys notion of the Ideal Self.12 However the elements in the Blue Page reveal that Sendak had no concept of self or a personal construct. Although surrounded by parents and siblings, he had made no emotional contact with them and came to experience a profound sense of loss revealed in the abduction of the baby. The replacement of the child with the ice baby reveals the possibility that this could also be engendered in the feeling of entrapment. While Sendaks felt the emotional loss or distancing from his parents, this also acted as a binding agent. He was unable to find a genuine vision of his true self, as he was unable to escape the vision his parents had of him, and so he substituted into the physical place in which he should have felt the safest an emotional place. He became a false, cold and disconnected other. Thus his greatest fear and horror became the entrapment of his life and familial history. However, this belief had a ripple effect in which his sense of alienation and helplessness grew into a fear of abject hopelessness. Without familial love he developed a kind of substitution-projection process in which his fears developed into an overwhelming sense of alienation and belief that life itself was meaningless. As a natural extension of this his illustrations reveal a dread that life after death was a false hope. Just as he was captured and replaced by an inanimate replica, and taken outside over there, so too death was the end of life, and in his case a futile existence. Thus as represented in the mask like face of the

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ice baby he wore a mask. However, masks have a way of sticking to our faces when wear them to long.13

Notes
1 2 3 4. 5. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Strauss and Corbin 1990 52 A Hastings, Maurice Sendak (b. 1928), July 17 2007, viewed June 13 2007, http://www.norhtern.edu/hastings/sendak.htm. T Kushner , The Art of Maurice Sendak 1980 to the Present, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003, p. 24. Kushner, ibid., p. 24. M Sendak, Visitors from My Childhood, in Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children, W. Zinsser (ed),Houghton Mifflen Books, New York, 1998, p. 32. Sendak, ibid., 32 Kushner, op. cit., p. 22 Sendak, op.cit., p. 3 Mem Foxthe darkest or most calamitous section of the text F Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim., Lafeyett, Real People Press, 1969. R Coomsamwary, The Door in the Sky, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997, p. 202. K Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth, Norton, New York, 1950. G Kelly, The Language of Hypothesis: Mans psychological instrument, in Clinical Psychology and Personality: Selected papers, B Maher (ed), Wiley, New York, 1964148)

Bibliography . Coomsamwary, R., The Door in the Sky, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997. Hastings, A., Maurice Sendak (b. 1928), July 17 2007, viewed June 13 2007, http://www.norhtern.edu/hastings/sendak.htm Horney, K., Neurosis and Human Growth, Norton, New York, 1950. Kelly, G., The Language of Hypothesis: Mans psychological instrument, in Clinical Psychology and Personality: Selected papers, B Maher (ed), Wiley, New York, 1964, p. 137-152.

Putting the 'I' Back Into Being: Maurice Sendak's Exploration of Childhood Fears and Terror 8 Kushner, T., The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the present. Harry M. Abrams, New York, 2003. Perls, F., Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Lafeyett, Real People Press, 1969 Sendak, M., Visitors from My Childhood, in Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children, W. Zinsser (ed),Houghton Mifflen Books, New York, 1998. Strauss and Corbin 1990.