On the fifteenth of May, in the jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing…enjoying the jungle’s great joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.
Isn’t it amazing how so many truly great, memorable and profoundly memorable and touching stories begin the same way? A specific time, a specific place, a life-altering event and the introduction of a main character you never quite forget. Every lesson on needs to learn about how to immediately hook a reader into a writer’s world is on display in the first four lines of Horton Hears a Who. Sure, you’re thinking, hey, it’s a kid’s picture book. What about Tolstoy? What about Twain? Stephen King, maybe? All the big name serious writers of literature and all the big name best-selling writers of popular adult fiction can take a back seat to Dr. Seuss. This is the supreme example of how to open a story. The scene is vivid; it is almost impossible not to see it perfectly in one’s mind. And then the capper: establish mystery. What is the small noise? Answer: only everything.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
This is, of course, the most famous line from the story. It is also the moral of the tale; the lesson that is intended to be gleaned. Here is where the children’s story differs from those of Tolstoy and Twain though Stephen King…not so much. This quote is repeated several times throughout the story. Such repetition of a single line is found more often in poetry than prose written for adult audiences, but it is a key element to the success of Seuss. In fact, Green Eggs and Ham is not just about repetition, but dependent upon repetition to make its point. This line does not get repeated as often as the lines in that Seuss tale, but through constant recurrence under varying circumstances it slowly builds its thematic power.
“What rot!
This elephants talking to Whos who are not!
There aren’t any Whos! And they don’t have a Mayor!
And we’re going to stop all this nonsense! So there!”
The Wickersham Brothers are described quite simply as “three big jungle monkeys.” Word has spread through the jungle that Horton has become a crazy elephant seen talking to a flower and insisting that a speck of dust he’s gently placed on it is actually a civilization of very, very, very, very small. Too small to see, certainly, and for the monkeys and the kangaroos and the other animals in the jungle, too small to hear. For all any of the other animals can see, Horton is talking to nothing. A tiny speck of nothingness. Like Cassandra of ancient myth, Horton speaks the truth, but because he cannot prove it, nobody believes it and think he’s crazy. In addition to being a story that speaks to the value of people, no matter how powerless they may be, Horton’s hearing a who is also a story about faith and trust in the goodness and honesty of people who provide no valid reason to be doubted.
