Wild Things in the Mirror

From Menletter October 2009

By Tim Baehr

In 338 words and a dozen or so pictures, Maurice Sendak created a fantasy world in which young Max, banished to his bedroom for wild behavior, sailed to an island "Where the Wild Things Are" and became king of a bunch of monsters. Spike Jonze's movie version, with Dave Eggers's script, is true to the original theme of the book but with a rich back-story (for both boy and monsters) and a lot of action.

In the movie, some of the Wild Things mirror people in his "real" life (though who's to say what's "real" for a nine-year-old?). Carol, the head Wild Thing, is Max's avatar -- wild, sometimes tantruming, but also in need of love and attention. KW, a female Wild Thing, has at first exiled herself from the group, and especially from Carol, in a way that Max may feel that his mother has become alienated from him.

Various episodes on the Wild Things' island mirror happenings in Max's other life. Max's igloo is trashed and destroyed by his sister's friends. Max retaliates by trashing his sister's bedroom and smashing a crude valentine he had made for her. On the Wild Things' island, Carol trashes and destroys his companions' huts. Max joins in, becomes the king of the Wild Things, and leads them on a wild, destructive rumpus.

Two crude valentines appear on the island, one scratched into a log by Carol, with an M in the middle, and one constructed of sticks by Max, with a C in the middle. A snowball fight that gets out of hand in the "real" world has its counterpart in a dirt-ball fight on the Wild Things' island in which some of them are hurt. Many other parallels occur between Max's two worlds; the genius of Jonze and Eggers is that they create not perfect mirror images but darkly seen and sometimes distorted reflections, the way the unconscious shows itself to us through imagination.

On the island, Max and Carol have a falling-out, leading Carol to further destruction. Max is unmasked as just a little boy in wolf pajamas and not the king of the Wild Things. Max has not managed to rule the Wild Things, but conversely they have not killed and eaten him, as they were fully capable of. Max says it is time for him to leave.

The wild companions help Max find his boat, and he sets sail for home. KW goes nose to nose with him and says "I'll eat you up, I love you so." Doesn't that resonate with what a parent might tell a child? And just as the boat gets underway, Carol (having found Max's valentine) rushes to the shore to reconcile with both Max and KW.

A hot supper is awaiting Max upon his return.

Jonze and Eggers also hold up their dark mirror to their film audience. If we choose to, we can see ourselves in both Max and his wild friends. To some extent, we all have a transgressive side, a destructive side. However "civilized" we may think we have become, our wildness lurks just under the surface. Sometimes it comes out in inappropriate or even destructive ways -- as a too-hard swat at a misbehaving child, an undeservedly harsh word, rash decisions, risk-taking, speeding, even criminal acts. Sometimes we suppress our "good" wildness -- assertiveness, zaniness, creativity -- to such an extent that we become neurotic or even physically ill. It turns out that if we kill our wildness, or if our wildness kills us, we are less than fully whole.

Max went home with two great gifts. One, he found that his wildness and destructive wishes couldn't destroy love. He experienced this love both on the Wild Things' island and at home. Two, he found reconciliation, perhaps integration, between his wild side and the rest of his being.

Those gifts are available to all of us; the journey to discover them is often difficult and life-long.

For now, however, the outcome for Max gives me great hope.