Essay Questions

Some of the illustrations and text act together to become a little sketch telling an often strange story. What is odd about the two almost identical yellow guys talking on the phone to each other?

Remember, that this book is a celebration of all the different kinds of “fish in the sea.” It is commemoration of what makes every one of us unique. This unique quality is not always presented as an irrefutable positive; some of the depictions are less than desirable. And then some just go to show that people are, by and large, pretty weird. For instance, this image (found on page 52 in the original published hardback version) has the guy on the left doing the whole commercial thing of “can you here me now?” The guy on the right is answering that he cannot hear the other guy—which is perfectly normal—but he then goes on with phone still in hand to explain why he cannot hear the other fellow. It is because—as illustrated, a mouse has cut the line. The weirdness that sets these two part is constructed of levels: on the phone despite standing back to back, looking identical except for a slight variation in height, and explaining that the line has been cut while on the phone with a line that’s been cut. It’s a great big world out there, indeed.

How does Seuss briefly use the game of “Did You Ever?” to strengthen the message of his themes?

One of the rhetorical devises the narrator engages to get across his point that life is interesting because not everybody is the same is to propose a question of possibility which neither requires nor expects an answer. You know: a rhetorical question. This is also an example of parallelism because the questions spread across two pages are semantically identical: “Did you ever?” prefaces inquiries about flying kites in bed, walking with cats on one’s head and milking a strange kind of cow. The answer obviously no, but that’s not the point. The point is included in the last lines on the page:

“If you never did,

You should.

These things are fun

And fun is good.”

Fun is good thus becomes a thematic subset of the overarching theme celebrating variation among people. Seuss is selling kids on the idea of diversity by linking it to greater opportunities for fun and enjoyment.