Abstract :
While Where the Wild Things Are may be Maurice Sendak’s most popular
book, In the Night Kitchen is arguably the greater work. Though his journey in Wild
Things shares many of the elements of Mickey’s adventure in Night Kitchen—swinging
between the protagonist’s initiatory verbal assertions and silent, completely pictorial
spreads that indicate his eventual dominance over his environment—Max’s story is
ultimately only a narrative of the self. Where the Wild Things Are is a beautiful
exploration of how Max (the maximum boy) is able to use an imaginative journey to
create an individual personality that fills the world around him. But Mickey must
confront something more than merely a projection of his own desires. Mickey, unlike
Max, is diminutive in his fantasy world, and his adventure is a true dream shaped willynilly
by his lived experience, not a daydream tailored to defend the ego. The story told
as Mickey learns to navigate the Night Kitchen is essentially a social narrative—more
realistic, more challenging, and with greater overall dividends than Max’s adventure.
We can see this in the ways In the Night Kitchen combines four sorts of
ingredients—Sendak’s own life, the psychology of dreaming, popular culture, and the
immigrant experience—into a subtle, captivating tale of the self and society.
