Where the Wild Things Are

**Theme for this week was on Depardon: People and the Land**

When I was little, my mom assigned my siblings and me the worst chore ever imagined- the compost bucket. We called it the "yucky" bucket, and would conveniently forget to dump it until threatened with groundings, revoking of playdates and Christmas being cancelled. Unfortunately, it seems like each time we remembered, nighttime had already fallen. This meant that whose ever turn it was had to go outside, to the edge of the forest, and dump it.



I would freak out every time it was my turn. It terrified me; stories of what happened in the forest after dark would run rampant through my mind, and I would force my little brother to hold a flashlight for me while we went, hoping that maybe if something attacked us, it would eat him first. One time a friend of mine told me her cat got had been eaten by a fishercat, and for weeks I pictured myself being devoured by a man-eating fishercat while dumping the yucky bucket.

In the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Max imagines a world he can escape to, where monsters live and call him their King. Unlike most children, Max dreams of a wild, untamed world where monsters rule the land. Never is he afraid of being eaten by them.

Monsters can be found almost anywhere; in the desert, swamps, forests, and of course, the sea. One of my favorite monster lairs is that of the demon Grendel's mother, in Beowulf. She lives at the bottom of a deathly lake; the water is scalding hot and poisonous. The lake is so deep that no one has ever reached the bottom, and other sea monsters inhabit it with her.



Monsters have fascinated humans for as long as we've been here. They permeate the scriptures as allegorical representations of life without order, a life without God. Death and Hell are often referred to as Monsters, and they represent Chaos- a life outside of the realm of God's love. Maybe what we're truly afraid of is Anarchy.



Max prefered his monster world to the real one, because he understood it and had control. The real world was what was savage to him. He had no control over his environment, and did not understand why things happened the way they did. Max understood monsters, but could not understand humans because their actions made no sense to him. They were truly wild. Why did the monsterous Wild Things even initially let Max, a human, be their leader? He convinced them to be, and they threw a wild rumpus, but maybe the real reason is because they recognised that Max was truly the wildest of them all.