Blog Post 6: “Wild” Literature and “the Wild” in Literature

When comparing and contrasting Hemingway’s The Good Lion and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are there are some similar and different meanings of “wildness”. The Good Lion features a lion with wings who traveled to Africa and lives with the other wild lions there. He describes them as “bad” lions because they eat meat and humans and have an animalistic and carnal way of behavior. He sees himself good lion because he does not eat humans and has more polished behavior than the other lions. Hemingways describes the bad lions as, “..[roaring] with laughter and [eating] another Hindu trader and their wives would drink his blood, going lap, lap, lap with their big tongues”. In this particular paragraph of the piece, Hemingway describes the wild in the eating styles of the bad lions and shows the carnal desire of hunger and for food coming out in the behavior of the animals. By describing the movement of the animal’s body parts, he shows how desperate they are for food, in turn showcasing the “wild animal” inside of them. Maurice Sendak showcases the “wild” in a similar way by showing a story about a boy who takes a magical sort of journey to a place where a lot of wild things are. He is crowned king of the wild kings but gives up his throne when he smells dinner coming from his room. When he first reaches the land of the wild he describes the creatures there who were, “[roaring] their terrible roars and [gnashing] their terrible teeth’. Similar to the Good Lion, Sendak shows the wild and scary side to the animals by describing their physical characteristics and actions. By describing their teeth and sounds, he showcases the wild as untamed and scary. There is also a similar theme of the carnal desire of hunger and how that plays into wildness shown by how the boy leaves the wild animals because he smells good food.