Dr. Seuss is the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 - September
24, 1991). He was a famous American writer and cartoonist best known
for his children's books.
Life and Work.
Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He graduated from Dartmouth
College in 1925, where he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, the
Casque & Gauntlet Society, and wrote for the Jack-O-Lantern humor
magazine under his own name and the penname "Seuss". He
entered Lincoln College, Oxford, intending to earn a doctorate in
literature. At Oxford, however, he met Helen Palmer, married her
in 1927, and returned to the United States.
He began submitting humorous articles and illustrations to Judge (a
humor magazine), The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Vanity Fair, and
Liberty. One notable "Technocracy Number" made fun of Technocracy,
Inc. and featured satirical rhymes at the expense of Frederick Soddy.
He became nationally famous from his advertisements for Flit, a common
insecticide at the time. His slogan, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" became
a popular catchphrase. Geisel supported himself and his wife through
the Great Depression by drawing advertising for General Electric, NBC,
Standard Oil, and many other companies. He also wrote and drew a short
lived comic strip called Hejji in 1935.
Even at this early stage, Geisel had started using the pen name "Dr.
Seuss". His first work signed as "Dr. Seuss" appeared
six months into his work for Judge. Seuss was his mother's maiden name;
as an immigrant from Germany, she would have pronounced it more or
less as "zoice", but today it is universally pronounced in
Americanized form, with an initial s sound and rhyming with "juice".
The "Dr". is an acknowledgment of his father's unfulfilled
hopes that Seuss would earn a doctorate at Oxford. Geisel also used
the pen name Theo. LeSieg (Geisel spelled backwards) for books he wrote
but others illustrated.
In 1936, while Seuss sailed again to Europe, the rhythm of the ship's
engines inspired the poem that became his first book, And to Think
That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Seuss wrote three more children's
books before World War II (see list of works below), two of which are,
atypically for him, in prose.
As World War II began, Dr. Seuss turned to political cartoons, drawing
over 400 in two years. Dr. Seuss's political cartoons opposed the viciousness
of Hitler and Mussolini; some depict Japanese Americans as traitors.
One such cartoon appeared days before the internments started.
In 1942, Dr. Seuss turned his energies to direct support of the US
government's war effort. First, he worked drawing posters for the Treasury
Department and the War Production Board. Then, in 1943, he joined the
Army and was sent to Frank Capra's Signal Corps Unit in Hollywood,
where he wrote films for the United States Armed Forces, including "Your
Job in Germany" a 1945 propaganda film about peace in Europe
after World War II, "Design for Death" a study of Japanese
culture that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1948, and
the Private Snafu series of army training films. While in the Army,
he was awarded the Legion of Merit. Dr. Seuss's non-military films
from around this time were also well-received; Gerald McBoing-Boing
won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Animated) in 1951.
Despite his numerous awards, Dr. Seuss never won the Caldecott Medal
nor the Newbery. Three of his titles were chosen as Caldecott runners-up
(now referred to as Caldecott Honor books): McElligot's Pool (1947),
Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1949), and If I Ran the Zoo (1950).
After the war, Dr. Seuss and his wife moved to La Jolla, California,
a small community forming part of San Diego. Returning to children's
books, he wrote what many consider to be his finest works, including
such favorites as If I Ran the Zoo, (1950), Scrambled Eggs Super! (1953),
On Beyond Zebra! (1955), If I Ran the Circus (1956), and How the Grinch
Stole Christmas! (1957).
At the same time, an important development occurred that influenced
much of Seuss's later work. In May 1954, Life magazine published a
report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children
were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly,
Seuss's publisher made up a list of 400 words he felt were important
and asked Dr. Seuss to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using
only those words. Nine months later, Seuss, using 220 of the words
given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat. This book was a tour de
force - it retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the
imaginative power of Seuss's earlier works, but because of its simplified
vocabulary could be read by beginning readers. In 1960, Bennett Cerf
bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he couldn't write an entire book using only
fifty words. The result was Green Eggs and Ham. Curiously, Cerf never
paid him the $50. These books achieved significant international success
and remain very popular.
Dr. Seuss went on to write many other children's books, both in his
new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as "Beginner Books")
and in his older, more elaborate style. The Beginner Books were not
easy for Seuss, and reportedly he labored for months crafting them.
At various times Seuss also wrote books for adults that used the same
style of verse and pictures: The Seven Lady Godivas, Oh, The Places
You'll Go!, and his final book You're Only Old Once, a satire of hospitals
and the geriatric lifestyle.
Following a very difficult illness, Helen Palmer Geisel committed
suicide on October 23, 1967. Seuss married Audrey Stone Diamond on
June 21, 1968. Seuss himself died, following several years of illness,
in La Jolla, California on September 24, 1991.
Dr. Seuss did not like publicity. This may have been due to his German
ancestry; as a schoolboy during World War I, his classmates used to
nickname him "The Kaiser".
Dr. Seuss's Meters.
Dr. Seuss wrote most of his books in a verse form that in the terminology
of metrics would be characterized as anapestic tetrameter, a meter
employed also by Lord Byron and other poets of the English literary
canon. (It is also the meter of the famous Christmas poem A Visit From
St. Nicholas.) Abstractly, anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic
units (anapests), each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong,
schematized below:
x x X x x X x x X x x X.
Often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable
is added at the end. A typical line (the first line of If I Ran the
Circus) is:
In ALL the whole TOWN the most WONderful SPOT.
Seuss generally maintained this meter quite strictly, up to late in
his career, when he was no longer able to maintain strict rhythm
in all lines. The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks;
the many imitators and parodists of Seuss are often unable to write
in strict anapestic tetrameter, or unaware that they should, and
thus sound clumsy in comparison with the original.
Seuss also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of four
units each with a strong followed by a weak beat:
X x X x X x X x.
An example is the title (and first line) of One Fish, Two Fish, Red
Fish, Blue Fish. The formula for trochaic meter permits the final
weak position in the line to be omitted, which facilitates the construction
of rhymes.
Seuss generally maintained trochaic meter only for brief passages,
and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter:
x X x X x X x X.
which is easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in Bartholemew
and the Oobleck make their first appearance chanting in trochees
(thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth):
Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff.
then switch to iambs for the oobleck spell:
Go make the oobleck tumble down.
On every street, in every town!.
In Green Eggs and Ham, Sam-I-Am generally speaks in trochees, and the
exasperated character he proselytizes replies in iambs.
While most of Seuss's books are either uniformly anapestic or iambic-trochaic,
a few mix triple and double rhythms. Thus, for instance, Happy Birthday
to You is generally written in anapestic tetrameter, but breaks into
iambo-trochaic meter for the "Dr. Derring's singing herrings" and "Who-Bubs" episodes.
Dr. Seuss's Art.
Seuss's earlier artwork often employed the shaded texture of pencil
drawings or watercolors, but in children's books of the postwar period
he generally employed the starker medium of pen and ink, normally using
just black, white, and one or two colors. Later books such as The Lorax
used more colors, not necessarily to better effect.
Seuss's figures are often somewhat rounded and droopy. This is true,
for instance, of the faces of the Grinch and of the Cat in the Hat.
It is also true of virtually all buildings and machinery that Seuss
drew: although these objects abound in straight lines in real life,
Seuss carefully avoided straight lines in drawing them. For buildings,
this could be accomplished in part through choice of architecture.
For machines, Seuss simply distorted reality; for example, If I Ran
the Circus includes a droopy hoisting crane and a droopy steam calliope.
Seuss evidently enjoyed drawing architecturally elaborate objects.
His endlessly varied (but never rectilinear) palaces, ramps, platforms,
and free-standing stairways are among his most evocative creations.
Seuss also drew elaborate imaginary machines, of which the Audio-Telly-O-Tally-O-Count,
from Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, is one example. Seuss also liked drawing
outlandish arrangements of feathers or fur, for example, the 500th
hat of Bartholemew Cubbins, the tail of Gertrude McFuzz, and the pet
for girls who like to brush and comb, in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish,
Blue Fish.
Seuss's images often convey motion vividly. He was fond of a sort
of "voilà" gesture, in which the hand flips outward,
spreading the fingers slightly backward with the thumb up; this is
done by Ish, for instance, in One Fish, Two Fish when he creates fish
(who perform the gesture themselves with their fins), in the introduction
of the various acts of If I Ran the Circus, and in the introduction
of the Little Cats in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Seuss also follows
the cartoon tradition of showing motion with lines, for instance in
the sweeping lines that accompany Sneelock's final dive in If I Ran
the Circus. Cartoonist's lines are also used to illustrate the action
of the senses (sight, smell, and hearing) in The Big Brag and even
of thought, as in the moment when the Grinch conceives his awful idea.
Recurring images.
Seuss's early work in advertising and editorial cartooning produced
sketches that received more perfect realization later on in the children's
books. Often, the expressive use to which Seuss put an image later
on was quite different from the original. The examples below are from
the website of the Mandeville Special Collections Library of the University
of California, San Diego.
An editorial cartoon of July 16, 1941 depicts a whale resting on the
top of a mountain, as a parody of American isolationists. This was
later rendered (with no apparent political content) as the Wumbus of
On Beyond Zebra (1955). Seussian whales (cheerful and balloon-shaped,
with long eyelashes) also occur in McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Circus,
and other books.
Another editorial cartoon from 1941 shows a long cow with many legs
and udders, representing the conquered nations of Europe being milked
by Adolf Hitler. This later became the Umbus of On Beyond Zebra.
The tower of turtles in this editorial cartoon from 1941 prefigures
a similar tower in Yertle the Turtle.
Seuss's earliest elephants were for advertising and had somewhat wrinkly
ears, much as real elephants do. With And to Think that I Saw it on
Mulberry Street (1937) and Horton Hatches the Egg (1940), the ears
became more stylized, somewhat like angel wings and thus appropriate
to the saintly Horton. During World War II, the elephant image appeared
as an emblem for India in four editorial cartoons. Horton and similar
elephants appear frequently in the postwar children's books.
While drawing advertisements for Flit, Seuss became adept at drawing
insects with huge stingers, shaped like a gentle S-curve and with a
sharp end that included a rearward-pointing barb on its lower side.
Their facial expressions depict gleeful malevolence. These insects
were later rendered in an editorial cartoon as a swarm of Allied aircraft
(1942), and later still as the Sneedle of On Beyond Zebra.
Adaptations of Seuss's work.
For most of his career, Dr. Seuss was reluctant to have his characters
marketed in contexts outside of his own books. However, he did allow
a few animated cartoons, an art form in which he himself had gained
experience during the Second World War.
In 1966, Seuss authorized the eminent cartoon artist Chuck Jones,
his friend and former colleague from the war, to make a cartoon version
of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. This cartoon was very faithful
to the original book, and is considered a classic by many to this day.
In 1971, a cartoon version of The Cat in the Hat was made as well,
but it was considered less successful.
Toward the end of his life, Seuss seems to have relaxed his policy,
and several other cartoons and toys were made featuring his characters,
usually the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch. When Seuss died of cancer
at the age of 87 in 1991, his widow Audrey Geisel was placed in charge
of all licensing matters. Since then, Audrey Geisel has become a controversial
figure among many of Seuss's fans, seen as being far more liberal in
permitting commercialization of her husband's characters and stories.
She approved a live-action film version of "the Grinch" starring
Jim Carrey, as well as a Seuss-themed Broadway musical called Seussical
(both released in 2000). A live-action film based on The Cat in the
Hat was released in 2003, featuring Mike Myers as the title character.
Dr. Seuss' books and characters also now appear in an amusement park:
the Seuss Landing 'island' at the Islands of Adventure theme park in
Orlando, Florida. Product tie-ins (cereal boxes, and so on) have also
been implemented.
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