Monday, February 20, 2006
a little joke, then a much longer and less funny one
Ad lib during the visit to the family:
Grandpa: Do you know who’s on the $10,000 bill?
Grandson: No.
Grandpa: Salmon P. Chase.
Grandson: Who’s that?
Chuckles: Some guy who used to run around after fish urine.
ba-dum. I’ll be here all week, folks. Which is to say, I start back to work tomorrow. God knows if I’ll have any time to write or post as I dig out of 5 weeks of emails and re-embrace the application process which by now should be in full swing. Therefore, I tremble with hesitation to present to you, in the extended entry, a very long analysis of a very short book. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Hello, Moon: A Very Careful Reading of a Deceptively Complex Book
I did not grow up reading Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, first published by Harper Collins in 1947), or having it read to me. It was, therefore, an unexpected discovery for me to learn, as I began to read it to Zachary every night at bedtime, that it was not a typical childrenÕs book. That is to say, on one level, it is pretty typical, especially in the ÒlapÓ version weÕve got, with its oversized board pages big enough to use as a tv tray. But as I read it, and re-read it, and read it again, each time I saw a little more depth in it, and it seemed to have a bit more to say. While other wonderful childrenÕs books have rather worn out their fascination for me over the months, Goodnight Moon just keeps getting denser and more meaningful every time. And since reading it has taken up so much of my time and mental energy over the past six months, I eventually decided to sit down and analyze it. That analysis has turned out to be rather more elaborate than IÕd intended it to be. And here it is.
The first page is a panoramic view of the ÒGreat Green Room,Ó in which almost all the ÒactionÓ (such as it is) occurs. It is seen partially, with several of its key components: one window, the fireplace and mantle, two framed pictures on the walls, two clocks, a telephone, a table with a lamp and some other ordinary objects (a comb, brush, and bowl of mush), a small bedside dresser with a book on it, a zebrastripe rug, a red balloon, a young bunny in pajamas, and a small mouse. The text identifies the room itself, and starts to list its contents, beginning with the telephone and the balloon. The scene is colorful, with reds and greens dominating. Stripes on the curtains and rug suggest a duality yet to be articulated more fully; stripes on the bunnyÕs nightclothes suggest this may have something to do with the schism between wakeful and dream realities. The bunny is looking directly at the reader, breaking instantly (but for the only time in the book) the Òfourth wallÓ separation between subject and observer, and drawing us into his reality. His bedside book is Goodnight Moon Ð the very book the reader is beginning to read. Has he just finished it, or is it only set-dressing? The mouse, sitting by a tender full of wood for the roaring fire, implies a vast potential that suggests, in turn, that the bunnyÕs book, like the readerÕs, has not yet been consumed. The telephone mentioned in the text is the first named object in the room and immediately invokes a sense of other realities Ð a place beyond this place, with which communication or communion might be possible given the proper conditions. And that balloon Ð it floats up out of the frame, perfectly round, mysterious and fragile, rising above and therefore not of this earth (as represented, as we will see throughout the volume, by the Great Green Room itself). It bridges the gap between realities, and foreshadows the bookÕs further blurring of boundaries between worlds. The text also begins to identify one other item in the Great Green Room Ð a picture Ð but withholds revealing which of the two is meant with an elliptical phrase that cuts off in the middle, raising again the uncertainty and duality that will develop into a central theme of this book.
Pages 2 and 3 are in black and white and grey, underscoring the differences between realities Ð greytones being a more polarized manner of depiction and a less realistic one, indicating that the values of the perspective, if not the perspective itself, have changed. This pattern of alternating color and greytone images continues through the book, tossing the reader back and forth between modes, between depths, and between realities. These two pages each contain an image of a framed picture on a blank background, pulled from the milieu of the Great Green Room in general, and each one a classic of childrenÕs literature Ð the cow jumping over the moon (suggesting the possibility of breaching terrestrial limitations, and by extension, the very limitations of reality) and three bears in chairs (which I interpret as a scene from Goldilocks, the motto of which seems to me to be that incursions into this depicted reality will present the reader with choices, but that the middle road or most ÒcomfortableÓ choice will lull you to sleep only to allow you to be eaten alive). It bears mentioning that the ÒbearÓ picture shows the three bears in a room furnished only with the chairs on which they sit, and a picture on the wall Ð a picture of the cow jumping over the moon. Thus, though these pictures stand here starkly before us as imagined iconic images, totally isolated from their surroundings and thereby with heightened symbolism, the bears themselves are shown being urged to exceed their own limitations and to Òjump the moon.Ó Surreality is itself being challenged.
Pages 4 and 5 are another full color spread showing the left and center parts of the Great Green Room, but not the bunny, its bed, or the nearby furniture. Revealed for the first time in this image are two kittens, a drying rack with socks and mittens pinned to it, a bookcase with books and toys, a rocking chair occupied only by an unfinished knitting project, a toy house brightly illuminated from within, and a second window, outside which the moon is just beginning to appear. The text identifies more of the roomÕs contents: the kittens, mittens, toy house, and the mouse - who has stepped aside, wisely, to watch the cats. Fifty-nine books are clearly depicted on the shelves, but the only legible title is ÒThe Runaway BunnyÓ Ð perhaps a marketing tool for one of the authorsÕ other books, but more significantly, an indication that the bunny whose room this is, faces an adventure that will entail separation from familiar realities. Those familiar realities are, perhaps, represented by the cozy, realistic toy house that we on the outside can clearly see is merely a representation of reality, a figuration and a plaything, though it maintains a coherent illusion of truth. The implication, of course, is that the Great Green Room is no more a ÒtrueÓ reality than is the toy house; and by extension, the reader is drawn to question the verity of the Great Green Room itself. Unfinished knitting suggests an ongoing effort to create order and structure, but a structure of knots in which linear values (thread or yarn) are pulled from an orderly skein to be woven into and out of themselves Ð a variegated, synthetic reality rendered all the more starkly by being placed on the empty seat of the rocker, a piece of furniture that blends solidity and variability. The kittens, black and white, appear simple and unaware of any of these complexities, nor of the mouse. The pattern of overlaid and mutually ignorant truths is being richly constructed with every item.
Pages 6 and 7, in greytones again, show two vignettes from the room, two irregularly-shaped portions of the total view, against a white background. The first is the bedside table with the comb, brush, and bowl of mush, all illuminated by a lamp that casts its light exactly to the edge of the table; these quotidian objects represent the surface reality of the material world, in which order can be imposed on chaos (comb and brush), or chaos can at least be contained within order (bowl of mush), and all can be illuminated clearly and plainly and with exactitude. The second vignette focuses on the rocking chair, which is suddenly no longer vacant Ð it is occupied by the ÒQuiet Old Lady Whispering Hush,Ó a rabbit in a housecoat who has taken the knitting up on her lap. Where did she come from? Why is she telling us to be quiet? I cannot answer the first of these questions, but as for the second, I suggest that she is asking the bed-bound bunny (and the kittens, the mouse, and the reader) to calm the questioning mind. Answers and peace ensue, not from argumentation and analysis, but from peaceful openness. She appears out of nowhere to tell us to stop asking and start listening. She will rock and knit (that is to say, she will move between relativistic realities and will construct a new one), if we can calm ourselves and let her.
Pages 8 and 9 show the whole room for the first time, in color. Overall, the room is a bit darker than previously depicted. The little bunny is in bed on his back, under the covers. The lamp is more clearly seen throwing cones of light up toward the ceiling and down to the floor in a pattern reminiscent of the light-cones that, in relativity theory, define relatable events. The mouse alertly watches the kittens, who are playing with the yarn and have become entangled in it Ð in other words, the simple creatures have assayed to manipulate the threads of reality, but without the Quiet Old LadyÕs wisdom, skill and tools, have become overwhelmed and confused. A third picture is now seen on the wall above the bookshelf for the first time Ð a scene from ÒThe Runaway Bunny,Ó in which a mother rabbit has assumed the guise of a fisherman to keep tabs on her errant offspring, who has assumed the guise of a fish; she stands thigh-deep in a river, fishing for her baby with a carrot on a fishing pole and a net, or, symbolically, she withstands the onrushing changes which rivers objectify, seeking to rescue and retrieve her child (i.e., her quintessence) from a mercurial reality of which the child appears to be unaware despite being nearly submerged in it (for it is the wise fish who knows it is wet), a reality in which the only constant is change. The moon continues to rise in the window over the drying rack, which is a linear structure designed to eliminate the water (now seen to symbolize lability and unreliable forms of reality) from mittens and socks that insulate and separate us from the world in which we live. The text is simply, ÒGoodnight room.Ó This farewell is global, but will be further refined and made specific as the text progresses.
On pages 10-11 we see, again in greytone, two more vignettes with undulating, irregular outlines. First, a portion of the wall with the Òmoon window,Ó and the full moon risen three-quarters above the sill; then, an almost identically-shaped portion of the picture of the cow jumping over a jagged crescent moon, eliminating the landscape beneath her. This is the only instance of Òidentical vignettageÓ in the book, suggesting a unique and important parallel between the images. The Òmoon windowÓÕs draperies are only vaguely suggested; the cow picture is darker in the center and more faded at the periphery. These two images clearly reflect each other and both overtly blur the edges of reality. I believe we are being led to see the rising moon as a real-life analogue to the imaginary cow and her lesson of supercession over terrestrial limitations, and that we are urged to take these ideations, not in context with clearly defined boundaries and environs, but as freestanding, self-sufficient and complete in themselves. The moon, and the jumping over thereof by a cow or anything else, are not oriented by relation to the window frame or picture frame. They are, rather, concepts, to be addressed purely on their own merits. The further analysis of these concepts will be the focus of the remainder of the text.
Pages 12-13: We see most of the Great Green Room, in color, but still darker than before. Our angle of view has raised up sufficiently to reveal the top of the balloon for the first time, and both windows can be seen in their entirety. The full moon is almost wholly risen above the window sash, and the bunny is in bed but craning back to look at the ÒbearsÓ picture overhead. The mouse has climbed atop the drying rack to look at the same picture from across the room. This depictive choice leads me to identify the mouse with the reader him- or herself, actually in the room with the characters of the story and experiencing it with them, in a brash collapsing of the dichotomy between book and reader (echoed in CalvinoÕs modern masterpiece ÒIf On A WinterÕs Night A Traveler,Ó in a more opaque, less graphic manner). The text offers goodnights to the light, the red balloon, and the painted bears as well as the chairs on which the bears are seated. Here, a parallel is drawn between light (a wave-particle radiation, or perhaps, ambiguously, just a table lamp, either or both of which can stand for the illumination of wisdom), a balloon (its mystery deflated, so to speak, with its full depiction, but still analogous to the celestial and unknowable moon in the window with all its aforementioned symbolism), and images that are shown in context to be purely fictive, contained as they are in a picture frame on the wall. Yet, it is these fictive phenomena to which the bunny and mouse are actually seen offering their good-nights, a reaffirmation that this book is blurring the lines between realities. The picture of the cow that hangs on the wall of the bearsÕ room is now illegible, and the copy of Goodnight Moon on the bedside table is not visible. The left side of the room, including the Quiet Old Lady, are not seen at all. The things that have been obscured or omitted therefore also include the innocent kittens, the reality-warping woman, the tertiary image (the cow picture in the bears picture in the primary image of the room), and the Escher-like reflection of the subject book in itself. These omissions justify me in thinking that this portion of the text is meant to be taken on its own terms, and not questioned as if by an omniscient observer. We are entirely mired in the surrealities of the Great Green Room.
Pages 14-15 feature two vignettes in greytone, of dissimilar shape: goodnight kittens, and goodnight mittens. The kittens are shown without the entangling yarn; the mittens, without the socks that should be pinned next to them. Are they really thus isolated from the objects to which theyÕve been linked? I would suggest that they are not. Rather, these images show an atomized reality, in which specific items are treated individually rather than in context. The cats- the simple black and white creatures that cannot navigate the complexities of relativistic phenomena Ð seem to float in space; the mittens dangle from the rack but still lack connection to the room at large. We are saying goodnight to these things, yes, but we are also separating out pieces of the universe for focused attention in a way that overtly denies the connections already established. Continuing the theme introduced on the prior pages, the objects of inquiry are being addressed purely on their own merits, and the breach this causes with the sense of a coherent and congruent world is something of our own construction. We are, in effect, being asked to divorce reality from itself. No greater existential demand could be made.
Pages 16 and 17 are another two-page spread, in color, and once again, a bit darker than before. This change is made more evident by the ever-increasing intensity of the light cones emerging from the lamp, casting two zones of lucidity in the deepening murk of the room Ð a room that contains increasingly complex symbolism and is therefore growing denser the longer we stay there and the more closely we look at it. We see most of the room, except for the foreground items - the toy house and the zebra rug. The moon is fully risen; the kittens lounge amidst the yarn; and the Quiet Old Lady raises a paw as if to whisper ÒhushÓ as the mouse peers down on her from atop the bookshelf. The bunny is crouched in bed, hugging knees to chest as if about to slip under the covers. The drying rack is once again populated with both mittens and socks, which have reappeared in such short order as to arouse curiosity where they had been on the immediately preceding page. The text says goodnight to the socks and clocks but the words cover up the red balloon, obscuring the mystery that has been debunked. Socks: the humblest, most pedestrian of habiliments, the merest protection against the hard world beneath oneÕs feet; clocks: the manmade analogue of an outmoded Cartesian cosmology, the objectification of a universe in which cause and effect are linear and predictable and perfectly ordered. And now we say goodnight to them. That is to say, as the bunny (an apparent ego symbol) puts itself into bed, a remissive space, and allows itself, per the Quiet Old LadyÕs admonition, to be hushed, and as the kittensÕ playtime becomes quiet and calm, we are asked to cast off the concrete connections and causalities that are part of our lives in the Great Green Room. Our link to (and shield against) the material world is being discarded, as is the mechanism for tracking the progress of that world and our relationship to it. As the fire rages in the hearth, we are being set free from objective reality.
Pages 18-19 feature two vignettes, in greytones on a white background. We bid goodnight to the little house (again, retrieved from the limbo of absence from the preceding page, as realities ebb and flow within the room), and goodnight to the mouse. The role of the toy house as a symbol of the fragility of our constructed or perceived reality has been previously discussed; this interpretation is underscored here by the unusual nature of this vignette: it is the only instance in which an object within the room, called out in isolation for specific attention, rises out of and above the grey blot in which it appears. More typical is the appearance of the mouse on the next page, which is entirely surrounded by its grey background as if floating in a dark void. The house, though, sits on top of its patch of background color, here resembling more of a lawn around it. This depiction invokes a 3-dimensionality for this object. The toy house therefore presents itself, distinct from the other objects, as a real house, even though we know it (by its very name) to be a fiction. Its illusory reality is so rich as to have fooled itself. The mouse, in its tiny circle of grey, sustains no such illusion, appearing as clinically isolated as a lab rat, fragile and small. If we are intended to identify with it, this image diminishes us by diminishing the mouse. It is even less substantial than the toy house. We are, by this image, advised to take ourselves, especially in our role as observer of ourselves, much less seriously. Say goodnight to the mouse. Or, as Krishnamurti would analogize, shut off the reflection of the reflection, and simplify the process of observing and being observed.
Pages 20-21 show us another double-spread of color pages as the Great Green Room continues to grow darker. We see the right side of the room, but not the kittens, the Quiet Old Lady, the bookshelves or the toy house. The bunny is turned toward the table with the comb and brush, and the text tells us we are saying goodnight to these items; the mouse sits before the bright red fire, brighter than anything except the stars outside the windows. The moon can barely be seen as a sliver in the left window and the red balloon is not visible at all Ð mystery and inattainability have been removed from our view. The comb and brush to which ÒgoodnightÓ is being said are the simplest sorts of means for straightening and separating threads of reality. The highly personal nature of the reality being sorted and separated for any given individual is evidenced by the bunnyÕs name (or generic equivalent thereto) being inscribed on the brush, but once again, we are letting go of these tools and resolving to proceed without them into a reality unordered and chaotic. The mouse staring into the blazing hearth can be read as the reader, once again, but this time captivated not by order and constructed truth but by chaos, entropy and destruction. Finally, we are quieting our minds and taking leave of the Great Green Room altogether. The untamed fire stands in direct contrast to the hypercivilized influences of the comb and brush.
Pages 22-23 present two more vignettes, or maybe one, depending on whether a blank page is counted. These are the pages that first suggested to me that this book was deeper than I had anticipated. First, a page thatÕs completely blank except for the words Ògoodnight nobody;Ó then, Ògoodnight mush,Ó with the bowl and spoon against a typical grey blot. We are saying goodnight to nobody? This is an explicitly existential act. We might be speaking to a specific ÒnobodyÓ like an imaginary friend, or to a general non-entity being used as a proxy for all beings not present in the room, or perhaps to a state of being or perception in which the absence of self is itself being relinquished. It is, however, most telling that this ambiguous ÒnobodyÓ is mentioned, for the only time in the book, in the midst of the Òconcrete triadÓ of comb, brush, and bowl of mush. We are disabusing ourselves of the belief that chaos can be tamed and contained like so much oatmeal. WeÕve already given up structure and order, and the illusion of a single reality, and the mystery and illumination of the moon and the elucidation provided by the received wisdom of the pictures on the wall and all the named objects in the room (except the telephone and the balloon, which seem to form a link to the reader in the former case and an importation of significance into the room in the latter), and now we are finally giving up the very idea of a tidy, manageable chaos Ð but even before that, we are giving up (at least for the night) the luxury of non-existence itself. We have, by the end of these pages, given away everything, just as the ascetic Buddha did before achieving enlightenment.
Pages 24-25: A color doublewide spread of almost the whole room, except for the toy house and balloon. Colors are dark and muted, even down to the light still filtering out from the lamp. The only vivid colors are in the sky, moon and stars outside the windows, and the fire on the hearth Ð suggesting that the true reality (or realities) are to be found beyond the wan illumination of our little table lamp, outside the cozy confines of the Great Green Room, or in the chaos of the entropic inferno. The bunny is supine under the covers, and the kittens sit attentively before the old lady, extricated from their tangle of yarn. The mouse is on the bedside table, peering into the bowl of mush to which we have just said goodnight, perhaps lingering over this farewell. And on her rocker, the old lady has gathered up her knitting, done for the evening with her syncretism. She continues to hold a paw to her lips to hush us down, but the action is almost superfluous Ð the room and its contents verge on dormancy. The text says goodnight to her. Yes, even she, who has orchestrated this reality while weaving a new one for herself, is being dismissed.
Pages 26-27: the bookÕs only two-page spread in black and white, or more accurately, grey and white Ð a long undulating horizon line, white below like drifted snow, and faintly grey above, spangled with stars. Most of the stars are pinpoints or little asterisks, but a few are much larger, with curious shading that reveals them to have shapes that defy Euclidian geometry, with edges and surfaces that intersect and connect to each other in incomprehensible patterns. This is also the only image in the book that has no reference whatsoever to the Great Green Room, not even to the extent of a window sill or mullion against which the scene might be framed. It is austere, serene, pure. The earth is wiped clean and the heavens sparkle with impossible designs. The text says Goodnight to the stars and to the air, two items not previously mentioned in the book. Having breached the boundaries of the Great Green Room, we are confronted with a greater, pre-existing reality, a world beyond our world in which there is nothing to comfort us, to protect us, or even to which we can relate. And even this limitless realm in which our rules do not apply and our referents are absent, is being dismissed. Not just the stars, either; the very air is going away. Invisible, omnipresent, essential Ð the air that filled the balloon, that fueled the fire, that is a precondition to all life, gets its goodnight. Without it, there is nothing, and without the stars overhead, it is a nothing within a nothing. Existentialism has given way to non-existentialism. Truly, less cannot be described in pictures or in words.
Pages 28 and 29 are the final pages of the book, and offer a double color spread of the whole Great Green Room. The lamp is extinguished. The fire is dying down. The bunny is asleep. The toy house, missing from most of these panoramas, is brightly lit from within, but the rest of the room is dark. The Quiet Old Lady has gone away, silently and without ado, and the kittens are cuddled on her seat, absorbing her warmth, taking her place physically but without her capacity to bend and twist reality, their impotence underscored by their having assumed her throne. The full moon is high in the sky outside the window and the mouse gazes upon it, silhouetted against the vibrant night sky, a fascinating dyad of unattainable mystery and experiential reality objectified. It is a quiet, peaceful scene in which the artifacts of our reality are blunted and the analogies between realities are sharpened (by the illuminated toy house and the kittens slumbering on the now-stilled rocking chair). The text, the last words in the book, tell us, ÒGoodnight noises everywhere.Ó I find this phrase richly ambiguous. Are these some sort of specific Ògoodnight noisesÓ that we can find everywhere? I prefer to interpret the line as a form that parallels the rest of the book: we say goodnight to noises that are everywhere. All realities have been debunked; the concrete verities of the Great Green Room have, one at a time, been cast away. All that is left is the empty vastness outside the room, or perhaps that is the true reality behind the room once its illusory contents and nature have been discarded, and when no thing is left, only the echoing emptiness of nothing remains, a sound of silence, so to speak, to which a final farewell is now offered. The nothingness itself has been emptied. The universe is washed completely clean.
Only one other image demands explication: the cover illustration. It is a color image of a portion of the Great Green Room, including the left window (with full moon risen), flamboyantly striped and billowed drapes, and the hearth and mantle, and the cow-moon picture above it. This perspective is never repeated in the book itself. On analysis, it is the prospect afforded from the seat of the rocking chair. The front cover, therefore, is the only image explicitly taken from the viewpoint of the Quiet Old Lady. She who warps and toys with reality Ð it is her vision that the book depicts on the face it shows the world. She who appears and then disappears as if an uncaused cause, the only truly transitory and supercessive aspect of the Great Green Room, is the one whose perspective we as readers are asked to assume, initially and ultimately. As the cover contains the book, this viewpoint contains the theme.
So why is it not called ÒGoodnight Room,Ó rather than ÒMoonÓ? Perhaps we are being encouraged to think outside the room, to see the text as reaching out beyond those green walls and into a more elevated sphere. Or perhaps it is so that we can achieve the anagram, I MOO DONG-THONG. I say we ask that rabbit woman. She seems to have some interesting answers.