I never imagined I'd have much competition when it came to allegorical readings of Eric Carle's
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but I do, over at Bark. A contributor named jason, averse to capital letters, has
a post up under the tag "unnecessary reviews":
these collages were lovingly created, layered, and labored over. this was the work of an artist passionate about his vision. the second thing i noticed about this book was that it was a striking metaphor and symbol for america, and a poignant foretelling not only of our excesses as a nation, but also our insistence on fairytale delusion when confronted with the cold hard fact of our sad gluttony. i love this book.
Funny. In
Moby-Duck, in a section discussing Eric Carle's
Ten Little Rubber Ducks and the tradition of "it-narratives" (about inanimate objects) in children's lit, I write the following:
Carle has always preferred allegory to realism. Think of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, his best-known book, the protagonist of which, a gluttonous larva with eyes like lemon-lime lollipops, is an entomological embodiment of childish appetites. He's born on a Sunday, binges for a week, and then the following Sunday nibbles contritely on a leaf, in reward for which penance, he pupates, abracadabra, into a butterfly, an angelic butterfly. It's a Christian allegory with which any American child can identify, an allegory about conspicuous consumption: The Prodigal Caterpillar, Carle might have called that book, or The Caterpillar's Progress.
In his Ten Little Ducks, on the other hand, there are no choices, no consequences. There is only chance...Carried along by ocean currents, rather than by the lineaments of desire, [the toy ducks] drift passively about, facial expressions never changing. (Moby-Duck, 18)
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