If Only I Were King:
A Review of Where the Wild Things Are
by S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.
In 1963 Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated a 338-word, ten-sentence children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. It was hailed as a groundbreaking work in children’s literature because it seriously explored a child’s deep feelings of anger, rejection, and loneliness. Since its publication, the book has been made into an animated film, an opera, and now, through the wizardry of director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), a major motion picture. 
Since the book is only 338 words and the movie is 101 minutes long, we assume that Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers have expanded the story a great deal, but the basic premise remains intact. Nine-year-old Max (Max Records) is dressed in a wolf suit, upsetting his home by engaging in all kinds of mischief. In the book, he is trying to entertain himself with a hammer and nails and chasing the family dog with a fork. In the film version, he builds an igloo and challenges his teen-age sister and her friends to a snowball fight. When they destroy his igloo and leave him alone, Max responds to this desertion by storming into his sister’s room and tearing in pieces a valentine that he had given her. The movie interjects into the plot that Max’s father is no longer living with his family, and Max is dealing with issues of abandonment, having a great need for attention, which neither his mother nor sister seem able to provide. As his mother is trying to develop a relationship with another man, Max goes into a rage, becoming so uncontrollable that when his mother tries to hold him still, he bites her. Although in the book, Max does not bite his mother, when he is sent to his room as punishment, he does threaten his mother that he will eat her up.
In the film version, after Max bites his mother, he runs away and eventually comes to a seashore, where he finds a boat and sails to a land where the wild things are. In an interview with Ramim Setoodeh and Andrew Romano of Newsweek, Maurice Sendak said that this was one addition to his story that he didn’t really like, for in the book, his mother calls him “wild thing” and sends him to bed without any supper. Rather than running away, Max creates the world of the wild things in his own room through the power of imagination.
As in the movie, Max sets sail in a boat where he travels over a year to a place where there are huge wild things that have terrible teeth, eyes and claws. Spike Jonze and his film crew, in conjunction with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, created huge animatronic suits for the wild things that look exactly like the drawings in Sendak’s book. Their facial expressions were produced by means of computer generated imagery. Though in the book the wild things have no names, in the film they are called Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), Alexander (Paul Dano), Judith (Catherine O’Hara), Ira (Forest Whitaker), Douglas (Chris Cooper), and KW (Lauren Ambrose). As Max arrives on the island, he finds Carol, who appears to be the alter ego of Max himself, engaged in acts of destruction, throwing a tantrum much like Max’s earlier in the film, because he feels that KW has rejected him in favor of new friends she has found. As the wild things threateningly surround Max, he convinces them that he is a king and that he can make things as they should be. Like many children, Max believes that if only he could be in charge, he would know how to heal broken relationships and how to make himself and others happy. 
In ways that mirror Max’s own family, the wild things on the island are in conflict with one another and have difficulty being a real community. They place their confidence in Max, hoping that he will be the kind of king that will show them how to live in harmony. Carol, like Max, wants the island “to be a place where only the things you want to happen would happen.” Unfortunately, Max, thinking as a child, believes that the solution to their problems can be found through fun and games. In Sendak’s book, the most important section is the “wild rumpus,” a time of carefree frolicking that Max institutes as his first official act as king. In the film version, the wild rumpus does provide a temporary respite from their problems, but eventually, the interpersonal conflicts begin to arise, with Max himself being at the center of them as the wild things begin to doubt his abilities to be a king. Again, as a solution to their problems, Max suggests a “playful” fight with dirt clods. While the game starts out as fun, it eventually degenerates into an activity that hurts others, just as Max’s earlier snowball fight had done. Finally, the wild things become disillusioned with Max, and he realizes that his solutions have failed: he cannot make things as he wanted them to be, even though he is king. In Sendak’s book, Max has become the parent, an ineffective one at that, who sends the wild things to bed with no supper, just as his mother had dealt with him.
In the book, Max begins to feel lonely on the island of wild things, and he wants to be with someone who loves him “best of all.” He gives up being king, sails back home, and finds his supper waiting for him. Spike Jonze’s vision of Where the Wild Things Are is much darker. If someone thinks that Sendak’s book is rather gloomy, the film version amplifies the feeling. Sendak said, “We don’t want children to suffer. But what do we do about the fact that they do? The trick is to turn that into art. Not scare children, that’s never our intention” (Setoodeh and Romano). The character of Max in the film version is a little older than in Sendak’s book, and we have the feeling that Max is at that age when he realizes that childhood dreams don’t always come true, and childhood solutions to complicated problems are powerless to alleviate our emotional pain. Disillusioned with himself and his abilities, Max returns to his home to find his mother waiting for him.
It is easy for both adults and children to identify with Max. We believe that if we could be in charge, we would know how to make things work out perfectly. In one scene, Carol tells Max, “This is all yours. You’re the owner of this world.” Max’s fantasy is our own, one that we usually do not leave behind in childhood. Unfortunately, when we try to implement our solutions, we find that they are often just as childish and ineffective as those of Max. Political leaders, educators, social workers, and religious leaders often think that they could solve the world’s problems if people were only made to submit to their ideas. Eventually, we discover that we are “wild things” trying to help other “wild things,” all of us finding it very difficult to tame our destructive behaviors.
To say that this film has received mixed reviews is an understatement. Some people have praised this movie as an instant classic, while others have said that it is so boring that both children and adults fall asleep while viewing the film. Much like another film released this year, Shane Acker’s 9, Where the Wild Things Are has a difficulty finding an audience, looking like a children’s movie with animatromic suits and computer generated imagery, but dealing with some very complicated human problems and philosophical concepts. Since this film is based on a children’s book, many adults assume that it is a children’s movie. Spike Jonze said in a recent interview he had set out, not to make a children’s movie, but rather, a movie about childhood (Setoodeh and Romano). This movie deals with the sadness, fears, and disappointments of childhood, giving it a melancholy atmosphere. Expressing his appreciation for Jonze’s film version, Sendak said, “Children’s movies bore me to death. With Spike, I found a genuine, fierce little artist. It’s not cute and cuddly! It’s a real movie” (Timberg).
Though Sendak grew up in Brooklyn, he had eastern European relatives who were killed during the Holocaust. Consequently, he has always had to wrestle with the danger of wild things, the fears and anger that we experience as children and adults, and our ineffectiveness to deal with the wildness in ourselves and others. Max finds out that he does not have the solutions for complicated problems. The best we can do is cherish the love that others are capable of showing us.
But even love is complicated. Though our need for love and harmony is great, we cannot make others love us the way we want to be loved, nor can we make others love one another. Max cannot heal the relationship between his mother and father any better than he could mend the relationship between Carol and KW. Both the book and the film demonstrate that our need for love can be so all-consuming that it becomes destructive. Like Max, we complicate matters by lashing out in anger when our own demands for love are not met, the way he tore the valentine he had made for his sister. Max’s mischief stems from his need for love, the kind of need that eats others and ourselves. Just before Max runs away, he stands on the kitchen table, looks down defiantly at his mother and commands her, “Woman, feed me,” a request that is an appeal for much more than food. In the land of wild things, Carol’s destructiveness stems from his feeling that KW does not show him the love that he needs. In Sendak’s book, when Max is leaving the island, the wild things beg him to stay, saying that they love him so much that they will eat him up. Our need to love and be loved becomes wild in its obsession to be satisfied. Nevertheless, Max discovers that though the love that we look for others to show us can never be adequate to fulfill all our needs, unconditional love, like that of a mother for a mischievous child, provides us with the only real comfort we can have in this world of wild things.
Works Cited
Setoodeh, Ramim and Andrew Romano. “’Where the Wild Things Are:’ Let the Wild Rumpus
Start.” Newsweek. 9 Oct. 2009. 3 Nov. 2009. http://www.newswekk.com/id/216997.
Timberg, Scott. “Maurice Sendak Rewrote the Rules with ‘Wild Things.’” Chicago Tribune.
11 Oct. 2009. 30 Oct. 2009.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/la-ca-sendak11-2009oct11,0,7808912.story?obref=obnetwork
