In 1950, Dr. Seuss published If I Ran the Zoo in which a young boy declares that if he were in charge of the zoo, he would let loose all the conventional animals found there and instead populate with a collection of fantastical and imaginative creatures. The book was a declaration of independence of sorts by Seuss that he had grown weary of working within the conventional expectations of children’s literature, a genre he’d been enjoyed success within since the late 1930’s. The books that Seuss published in the 1950’s represent a significant leap forward creatively, but also thematically. In famous titles like Yertle the Turtle and Horton Hears a Who, Seuss began cleverly inserting subtle political messages aimed toward adults that allowed him to disguise very sophisticated social allegories as simple books of rhymes to bed to kids at bedtime. The turtle stacking imposed by the dictatorial Yertle is a metaphor for fascist authoritarianism awhile Horton saving the Whos speaks to post-war treatment of a small vanquished island nation. And The Cat in the Hat Comes Back?
Like a film released just two years earlier, it can be equally interpreted in two distinctly oppositional ways. The story revolves around the central incident which occurs as a result of the Cat in the Hat making a return visit to the home of the two kids he originally terrorized. While the parents are away and the youngsters are charged with clearing the snow from house, the Cat blithely proceeds to enter uninvited and eat a cake in the bathtub, the frosting of which winds up creating a stain which must be removed. The efforts at removal comprise the bulk of the narrative and it is the color of the stain which is of utmost important from a political perspective.
It is not white frosting or yellow or blue or green. It is pink, which is a shade of red. And in the world of the 1950’s America, there were simply no colors and shades more controversial than red and pink. They signified communism and one of the most loaded insults one person could direct toward another was to call them a “red” or “pinko.” In fact, just the being associated with the stain of accusations of being a “red” or “pinko” could literally destroy careers and ruin lives. Thus, the eradication of the stain of pink which makes up the plot of the book can be viewed from one of two interpretative perspectives. Either the book is about trying to cleanse one of the accusations of being a communist or it is about trying to cleanse American society of the dangerous influence of communist ideology.
Or, more likely, it is about how both communism and the fear of communism had revealed themselves to be two sides of the same coin, capable of instilling the type of overreaction which fuels the situation inside the house to the point where a bomb-like machine called the Voom is thought to be the only means possible for returning the winter wonderland outside back to its natural pristine whiteness. A situation which, in reality, could have been less peacefully accomplished simply by waiting for the pinkened snow to melt away.
