The Task
The task at hand for Horton is difficult enough as it is: he is gargantuan and ungainly and the egg is small and fragile. The use of imagery soon adds one full degree of difficulty to that task. What could make the job of hatching an egg even less suitable for an elephant? An uncooperative Mother Nature:
“And he kept the egg warm…
And he sat all that night
Through a terrible storm.
It poured and it lightninged!
It thundered! It rumbled!”
A Sudden Change in Tone
The story has set up a certain tone of lightness even as describing the abandonment of a child-to-be by its mother and unpleasant circumstances making Horton’s life less than satisfying. Suddenly into this basically lighthearted set-up is introduced a very clear and present darkness in the arrival of what is always a danger to animals in stories such as this. Ever since Bambi’s mother had her unfortunate meeting in the woods, the arrival of men into the world of characters like Horton has never gone well. And always for exactly the same reason:
“He heard the men’s footsteps!
He turned with a start!
Three rifles were aiming
Right straight at his heart!”
The Twist
The major plot twist in the story is that men with guns don’t shoot Horton. Instead, they take the Skull Island approach and with dreams of money from turning the sight of an elephant hatching an egg coloring their sense, Horton is captured and on his way to becoming a circus attraction. The full magnitude of this trip is conveyed efficiently through imagery:
“Up out of the jungle! Up into the sky!
Up over the mountains ten thousand feet high!...
Out over the ocean…
And ooh, what a trip!
Rolling and tossing and splashed with the spray!...
After bobbing around for two weeks like a cork,
They landed at last in the town of New York…
Still on his perch,
Tied onto a board that could just scarcely hold him…
Bump!
Horton landed!
And then the men sold him!”
The Hatchining
The story can lead to only one satisfying climax, of course. The title clearly spells that climax out: it is Horton who will have been the parental figure that brings the hatching process to its inexorable conclusion. The hatching of the egg must be satisfying to read or else the author runs the risk of the disappointment that comes when a terrific story ends in a less than satisfying way. Everything rides on making the moment that egg breaks away become a surprising reveal rather than the mere follow-through of what should be expected. Typical Seussian imagery is engaged to commence the long final scene in which the ending is actually a surprise:
“There rang out the noisiest ear-splitting squeaks
From the egg that he’d sat on for fifty-one weeks!
A thumping! A Bumping! A wild alive scratching!
`My egg!' Shouted Horton. `My egg! Why, it’s hatching!'”
