Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak's Masterpiece Interpreted

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"Where the Wild Things Are" is one of the most popular picture books of all time exemplifying Sendak's incredible knowledge of the textual narrative through illustration. The cover of this book is interesting for it does not show the protagonist at all but the wild things slumbering with a ship in the background.

Within picture books covers are privileged information such that in a good story they will tell the readers what the most important part of the book is. Although when the book is first read the readers do not start out understanding Sendak's cover the choice of this cover alludes to the moment when the main character of the story Max leaves the wild things sleeping in order to return home. It is this choice, to leave his wild fantasy and return home to where his mother loves him that is the point which Sendak's story has built up to.

The readers first introduction to the main character Max is of him stalking some monsters across the title page, his eyes mischievous and mean hearted, while the monsters despite their huge size look afraid as they attempt to stalk away.

This is the first double page spread and the only one for a long time, in this book Sendak uses the double page spread to indicate that Max is at his most wild. The double page spread can also be said to show the dream world in which Max rules.

By having the double spread on the title page before the story begins we are left to wonder how often Max enters his wild dream world. For although the first picture is of Max in his dream world, the book itself starts with him outside of his dream world, causing his mischief in the real world.

As the story goes on however the pictures (on page right) will grow and grow, as he gets closer to his dream world where the wild things are.

Further allusions to Max's constant forays into the dream world are found in the second picture where he is seen to chase a hapless dog with a fork. In the background is a crude child's drawing by him of one of the wild things, letting us know that these creatures are indeed in his imagination prior to the event depicted within the book.

For chasing the dog among other things Max is of course sent to his room. Although his mother is never visually depicted the text indicates that Max threatens to eat her up when she sends him to his room. It is this childish behavior that makes Sendak's book so believable, Max is indeed a little boy, with random threats, and chaotic dreams.

Once sent to his room we see for the first time Max truly isolated. For the picture is now much larger, though not yet taking up the page it has grown large enough at this point to show the walls of the room in which Max now finds himself imprisoned.

But in this picture book there is no prison but ones own selfish thoughts and so Max is able to escape his room by imagining a forest growing in it, until he is able to stalk off into the dark woodland night. He then sails away on the ocean with the woods disappearing onto the right edge of page left as the whole of page right becomes dominated by Max's imaginary world.

And so Max sails on into the land where the wild things are, and in so doing the illustration finally becomes a full double spread.

On arriving in to where the wild things are Max is greeted by the wild things who try to scare Max, but he tames the wild things, scaring them into submission and then becoming their king. As he does this we see the white space for the text at the bottom of the pages shrinking until at last it along with the text vanishes completely.

So for three double spreads Max and the wild things howl and wail at the moon, play in the trees, and finally Max rides on the shoulders of the wild things as their king. Then however as the wild things go to sleep the text reappears along with the white space on the bottom. The pictures from this point on begin to shrink again.

It is through this shrinking pictures as will as text and visual narrative that Sendak is letting us that Max is growing bored with his dream, and that the smell of food is calling him out of his dream. So he sails away from the wild things, back into his own room, which again is enclosed, but on the table in the corner we see Max's supper waiting for him. Letting us know that outside of the wild worlds of our mind there are those who love us.