Summary
The Waiting Place consists of a bland, mossy landscape and pitch-black sky. A number of people (of all ages) and animals occupy the space, and the narrator explains to us that everyone is in various stages of “just waiting,” whether it be for a bus, a pair of pants, a haircut, a phone call, rain, “Another Chance,” or Friday night.
The boy explores the Waiting Place, and the narrator tells the boy that such a space is unsuitable for him, and that he is destined for “bright places / where Boom Bands are playing.” With this sudden shift in tone, the scenery shifts back to a more vivacious, colorful, and familiar space, one full of musicians playing an array of strange instruments. On the next pages, the elephants from the beginning of the book reappear, and the boy sits on top of one as they confidently march ahead. The next series of illustrations show the boy playing games with people using various balls, hoops, nets, banners, and slides. The narrator triumphantly announces, “Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be, / with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.”
The boy then plays basketball, alone, right outside a rickety, outlandish, multi-storied house. The narrator responds to the boy’s solitude by claiming, “...you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win / ‘cause you’ll play against you.” The boy then finds himself in another disconcerting place: a dark, ominous landscape occupied by dark, leering creatures with piercing green eyes guarding an archway. With his back faced toward readers for the first time, the boy halts right under the archway, unsure of whether to proceed on the street ahead of him. The narrator tells us, “There are some [things], down that road between ether and yon, / that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”
The boy, however, does “go on,” sailing through a creek past several large, wailing grey birds called Hakken-Kraks. Later, he is in a bright orange space, calmly patting a green, feline-like monster. Once again, the narrator asserts his confidence in the boy’s ability to “face up to [his] problems / whatever they are." The following page is completely blank and devoid of illustrations, with the narrator delivering their most important message to readers:
You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
Step with great care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
We see the boy in the middle of a chaotic mess of birds stacked in rows on top of each other. The rows alternate between happy and confidently moving toward the right and slumped, nervous-looking birds moving backward toward the left. We see the boy in a row with the glum, leftward-moving birds—but the next page shows him settled and moving toward the right.
This time, though, the boy is pulling an entire mountain—with castles and livestock and trees—on wheels behind him. The narrator declares that the boy will succeed (“98 and ¾ percent guaranteed”), and one of the final pages in the book mirrors the image of the first page: the boy walking toward the right amid a blank background. The narrator closes the book with a celebration of the boy’s opportunities: “Today is your day! / Your mountain is waiting. / So … get on your way!”
Analysis
In conjunction with the boy’s success and personal triumphs, Seuss introduces several threatening settings in the second half of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! to paint a complete portrait of life in all of its unpredictable glory. In particular, the imagery and the narrator’s description of The Waiting Place illustrate the severe monotony and paralysis of finding ourselves passively waiting for new opportunities. The illustrations show a sea of zoned-out, lethargic people and animals who desire—but do not actively strive for—a change in their circumstances, however big or small. Many occupants of The Waiting Place desire a more trivial change, such as “the mail to come,” while others await for something grander and more consequential, such as “Another Chance.”
The Waiting Place residents either have a blank or a wide-eyed, fearful expression on their faces, connoting a detached, submissive, and anxious relationship with the path their lives have taken. Moreover, The Waiting Place’s black sky highlights the emptiness and hopelessness pervading the space. Through this stark imagery and the repetition of the phrase “Everyone is just waiting,” the narrator characterizes The Waiting Place residents as those stuck in a constant, aimless state of being. In other words, they are simply and wholly defined by their actions—or, more accurately, their lack of actions. They are, as the narrator puts it, “just waiting.” With this, The Waiting Place becomes an allegory for the inevitable periods of stagnancy in our lives.
The narrator praises the boy’s capacity to handle life’s challenges—as embodied by The Waiting Place and various frightening creatures—and place himself back on a progressive, upward trajectory. The narrator emphasizes the themes of autonomy in successfully removing ourselves from unfavorable, fruitless situations. Indeed, the narrator repeatedly emphasizes the boy’s solitude in successfully navigating life’s triumphs and setbacks alike. In one of the opening stanzas, the narrator claims the boy, and only the boy, can determine his future outcomes: “You’re on your own. And you know what you know. / And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” Further, when the boy finds himself in the ominous archway (occupied by the monsters with the leering green eyes), the narrator declares, “Whether you like it or not, / Alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.” Here, the narrator affirms solitude as both a fundamental, unavoidable tenet of life and an opportunity. The boy will inevitably find himself alone in facing adversities, but this affords him to identify and later act in his best interests in the future.
The narrator's contrasting of the boy's solitude with collectivism more sharply unveils the book’s glorification of individualism. Notably, The Waiting Place is the sole diverse, densely populated space in the boy’s journey—at no other point do we see him in the close company or proximity to such a variety of other people and animals. It comes as no surprise, then, when the narrator allegorizes The Waiting Place as the least desirable and productive stages of our lives. The presence of a group or society naturally creates and fosters social and behavioral norms, which subsequently influence individuals within the group to comply with these norms. With its heaps of residents, The Waiting Place normalizes aimlessness, discourages taking risks, and positions individual perseverance as “Other” or subversive.
The occupants' collective paralysis, in turn, impedes the boy’s ability to act out of his own accord. Indeed, the narrator sets the boy apart from The Waiting Place occupants; they confidently claim that the Waiting Place is “not for [him]” and that “Somehow [he’ll] escape / all the waiting and staying.” The boy deviates from the behavioral conventions embedded in The Waiting Place: he moves forward, “All Alone!” Further, he does not rely on any help or support from others to exit a threatening situation at any point in the book. By showing that the boy only needs his “two feet” and “brains” to confront life’s challenges, the book repudiates collectivism and celebrates individualism in the pursuit of our own objectives.
The narrator frequently uses the motif and imagery of right-facing movement to illustrate the role of consistent progress in the attainment of a fulfilling, meaningful life. When the boy is caught in the sea of birds walking on top of each other in the alternating rows, they are symbolically categorized into two different groups: one group is striving toward the right with smiling, cheerful facial expressions, while the other group is soullessly moving leftward with slumped postures and incredulous facial expressions. Here, Seuss associates rightward motion with progress and exploration, and leftward motion with regression. Indeed, whenever the boy preserves through a setback or threatening place, he confidently moves toward the right, prepared for the next milestone in his wondrous journey. With this, Seuss shows that moving backward—or not at all, as in the case of The Waiting Place—defeats the very purpose of our existence: to have new experiences and “go places,” wherever they may be.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the illustration on one of the book’s final pages exactly mirrors the illustration on the first page: the boy, wearing his yellow pajamas and sporting a calm, content expression on his face, is confidently lunging and moving to the right against a blank backdrop. After all of his experiences, the boy is exactly where he started: moving forward. The parallelism between these two images embodies the cyclicality of progress. No matter what goals we reach or adversities we face, we must move forward so we can continuously challenge and discover ourselves and find new meaningful opportunities. Critically, the narrator infuses some ambiguity into the boy’s progress. We never know what “places” the boy is marching toward; we never have a clear sense of the boy’s specific objectives or desired destinations. Through the boy’s nondescript narrative arc and characterization, Seuss both increases the universality of the boy's journey and highlights the necessity of consistent, open-ended exploration. We don’t know what our futures will look like, or what we will discover and have to endure to meet our future goals. Nonetheless, Seuss assures us that we are all destined to “move mountains” and accomplish great things—as long as we identify and mindfully explore our options, make decisions, and proactively carve our own paths.
