Wild Things Project

In both Hemingway’s The Good Lion and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, wildness is portrayed in the form of short stories which can be interpreted by both children and adults. In Hemingway’s written piece, the theme of domestic vs wild is embedded through the tail of a “good lion” who has a more sophisticated, civilized taste compared to the “bad lions” living in Africa who are deemed as savage. The first writer used the word “wicked” in describing the African lions who like to kill and eat animals/humans rather than pasta and wine. In one instance, Hemingway describes the lioness “who was the wickedest of them all” as a savage hunter with “yellow eyes..[and] blood caked on her whiskers.” These beastly characteristics “frightened the good lion very much” and evoke the sense of fear from the audience regarding the bad lions. This use of descriptive imagery paints wickedness to be synonymous with untameness and savagery- something that is seen as less civilized compared to other beings. In similar light, Sendak uses the word “wild” to describe abnormal, strange beasts that the main character discovers after sailing to an imaginative place. The wild things “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth,” depicting the savagery of the beasts the young boy had encountered. The repetition of the word “terrible” suggests that these beasts are not friendly, and things that should be feared. This use of the word “wild” in Where the Wild Things Are is most similar to the uncivilized use of “wicked” in The Good Lion. On the other hand, Sendak describes the young boy as a “wild thing”,  in addition to the beasts, after causing trouble in his home. This use of the word takes on a meaning that is closer to a theme of good vs evil rather than domestic vs wild. In this case, a well-mannered child would be considered normal/good whereas a child chasing the family dog or hammering holes into the wall (pictures from the book) would be described as “wild” and bad. This definition is slightly different than the savagery and uncivilized meanings “wildness” takes on in both short stories.

Vivian Nguyen

Where The Wild Things Are and The Good Lion are completely different stories, yet they kind of have the same themes. Where the Wild Things Are kind of focuses on one’s imagination and one’s ability to think abstractly. In the book, it takes on a journey through the protagonist’s eyes into the wild with wild animals. The Good Lion focuses on the wild in Africa. It talks about the differences in culture between Africa and Italy, as the wild lions in Africa eat humans, while the Good Lion is outcasted because of his wings and food choice of pasta and scampi. These stories are similar in the fact that they both have a lot of personification and symbolism. They are also similar because they both have this underlying idea of being away from home, or “in the wild.” The Good Lion literally travels away from his home in Venice, while the protagonist in Where The Wild Things Are figuratively travels away from home in his imagination. 

One line I chose from The Good Lion that illustrates being away from home was, “They all roared in African Lion dialect. Then the good lion circled higher and higher and set his course for Venice.” The first sentence represents the wildness of Africa, and the wild nature of the lions in Africa, as they all roared together trying to get the good lion. The good lion then used his magical wings to escape this wild place and head back home.

One line in Where the Wild Things Are that illustrates the wild place away from home was, “Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye… and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him.” He was forced to leave his wild imagination and his wild animal friends in his imagination as shown in the first sentence. The second sentence illustrates the reality of being present minded in his home, as his dinner was ready.

-Major Wheless

A recent ‘wild’ song that I’ve heard is ‘The Rumbling’ from the band SiM. The band is composed of Japanese musicians and singers and mostly performs heavy metal and rock songs. The TV edit of the song was released last month on 10 January 2022 and the full version is now available on spotify since 7 February 2022. The TV edit of the song was also used as the opening theme for the final season of the currently airing hit anime called ‘Attack on Titan’.‘The Rumbling’ is a hard rock/metal song with english lyrics, which is rare for japanese bands. It ranked No. 1 at the US Hot Hard Rock Songs chart and brought this band to the limelight for a lot of people in the west.

The reason I think the song is wild is not because of the lyrics by themselves but from the conjunction of the lyrics and events taking place during the final season. The lyrics provide a new perspective to our protagonist, Eren Jaeger’s tumultuous and eventually flawed way of thinking. Since the last season of the show, we’ve seen Eren progress from the relatable protagonist to an insensitive monster. The lyrics ‘All I ever wanted to do was do right things, I never wanted to be the king’ show us that even when committing atrocious crimes like genocide, Eren thought that he was doing right by his people. This way of thinking is just unthinkable and ‘wild’. The later lyrics ‘If I lose it all, slip and fall. I will never look away’, given context from the show, seem to denote that even if Eren loses himself, his family, and his humanity trying to save his people by committing more atrocities, he won’t budge from the path he has adopted. That kind of determination, even if it is for all the wrong reasons, seems ‘wild’ to me. The metal/rock genre, along with the lyrics and visuals of the video make it a truly ‘wild’ experience for me.

For the topic of wild sports, I wanted to talk about Cricket, which I grew up with. Cricket is like a souped up version of baseball that goes on for longer and is much more physically taxing. It’s a bat and ball game where one team gets to bat and score as many runs as they can without getting ‘out’ while the bowling team throws the ball at the batsman in hopes of hitting the wicket behind him and getting the player ‘out’. The teams consist of 11 players on each side and the roles are decided by a coin toss. In addition, there are commentators and  an umpire in the field who works as a mediator between the teams and gives the green signal on whether the batsman was ‘out’ or not. The amazing thing about cricket is that it isn’t divided based on socio-economic backgrounds at all. That means the game is unanimously enjoyed by everyone. The roots of cricket though, have been defined by male dominance. Called the ‘Gentleman’s Game’, cricket is heavily saturated by male players and even though women’s leagues exist, they are often overshadowed by men’s cricket. Regarding my chosen video that highlights a male player, Yuvraj Singh, scores six sixes in an over, even though everyone playing in the field is a man, the crowd is a mix of all kinds of people – men and women. My view about playing sports and gender in cricket is that even though women’s cricket may not be enjoyed by the masses, atleast men’s cricket isn’t undergoing gatekeeping and is enjoyed by men and women alike. In my opinion, cricket is literally the definition of the phrase ‘crowd going wild’. As you can see from the clip, cricket isn’t a contact sport like football so wild encounters among players are rare. But the crowds watching the big cricket matches are some of the loudest, craziest, and yes ‘wildest’ people I have been around. I think that the wildness in cricket doesn’t come from the players but from the cheers of the crowd itself.

The “Wizard of Oz”is a story written by the author L. Frank Baum and published in 1900. The book features a young girl named Dorthey who is lifted up into a tornado and transported to the land of Oz. There she meets a lion, a tinman, and a scarecrow who all decide to travel together to see the wizard to ask for their desires. Frank Baum communicates this story to children but gives an underlying message for the adult audience. The story presents a fantastical world for children to read but conveys to adults a commentary on American Politics at the time. The wizard behind the curtain in the story represents how leaders and politicians are really not doing anything to help the people and are just hiding the truth behind closed doors. The Wizard of Oz is certainly written as a children’s story and is targeted to them as the audience due to the nature of the story and how the book itself is written but it gives a deeper message for adults who are also reading the book to pick up on. 

The word “wild” in the Wizard of Oz is used mainly in relation to nature and wild animals. Frank Baum uses the word “wild” in the book multiple times “full of bogs and marshes and covered with tall, rank grass…But here the country seemed wilder than ever”. In this quote, the author uses the word “wild” to describe the landscape. He uses the word to describe how disorganized, uncivilized, and untamed the area was. This word is used to describe how far away from civilization and how fantastical the land of Oz is. 

-Stephanie Wilhite

New Attempt

The Wizard of Oz is written by Frank Baum who communicates his messages and ideas through the narration of the main character Dorothy. Reading the introduction of the Wizard of Oz yields some insight into Frank Baum’s motivation for writing the story. He discusses the joy and wondrous nature of children and his desire to “please children of today” by providing a story that does not include the scary and negative parts of other fairy tales. In obvious terms it seems that Baum chose to write for children; however, closer analysis and examination of the different themes present in the story reveal ideas that a more mature age group could grasp. The messages the story emparts regarding appreciating where you are and seeing the good in people apply to all as timeless lessons. 

In chapter 21, The Lion Becomes the King of Beats, Baum chooses words filled with imagery to allow the reader to visualize what Dorothy and her companions are seeing. In this passage the word wild is used to depict wilderness and untamed land. The imagery of “tall, rank grass” occurring in a “disagreeable country” supports this definition of wild. With this being the opening of a new chapter, the reader can immediately picture the setting of the story as the journey continues. A careful selection of words can do this expertly and makes reading a story such as this quite enticing. This definition of wild is common in many languages other than English especially when used to describe wild animals. 

The Wizard of Oz, a story communicated by author L. Frank Baum in a third-person point of view manner, entails the story of a girl who gets stuck in the middle of a tornado which ends up taking her to the land of Oz. Along her way, she encounters different people being a lion, tinman, scarecrow, and witch along with magical events giving this experience a dream-like feeling. Although this appears to speak to a younger audience and comes across like a children’s book, once analyzed and paid attention to, this story has deeper meanings and messages which speak to an older audience and can be considered an adult story.

In chapter 18, they use the word wild to refer to a beast. ” I am really a wild beast,” says the character and, throughout the other chapters as well, wild is used when describing animals which would be in a way dangerous since they have not been tamed and act to survive. Similarly, in another case, the author writes “wild crows”. In this paragraph, we can see logos when they say “there are wild beasts in the woods” since the woods can be seen as a dangerous place that contains dangerous animals, and in this place that would be beasts. We see ethos because himself the character is saying “I am a wild beast” so we know he is a credible source.

The Wizard of Oz is an interesting novel because it’s usually considered a children’s story due to the funky characters and magic, even though some believe the story actually alludes to further hidden meanings that only mature adults can comprehend. The communicator of this piece would be the author, Frank Baum, because he is using third-person point of view to narrate this story. The audience to which this book is marketed towards would be children because of the whimsical characters, however, this piece speaks to mature adults on a deeper level through its hidden metaphors and symbolism. 

A passage in this novel that contains the word “wild” would be the second paragraph in chapter 6. Here, the author is describing Dorothy’s and her friends’ journey through the woods as they walk along the yellow brick road. They hear sounds of various animals and the narrator notes, “But now and then there came a deep growl from some wild animal hidden among the trees. These sounds made the little girl’s heart beat fast, for she did not know what made them; but Toto knew, and he walked close to Dorothy’s side, and did not even bark in return.” In the context of this sentence, the word “wild” is describing animals that reside in the woods as untamed and ferocious. The rhetorical appeal of ethos is used when Dorothy’s small dog, Toto, is given credibility in knowing that the wild growls they heard belong to larger, more dangerous animals. The rhetorical appeal of logos is also used when Toto relies on reasoning and decides to not mess with the unknown beasts by barking back at them. Finally, the rhetorical appeal of pathos is also seen in this passage when Dorothy’s feelings are clearly portrayed as her heart starts to beat super fast because she is afraid of the wild animals.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

The Wizard of Oz is a popular classic novel written and published in 1900. It features a young girl who gets stuck in a tornado that takes her to the land of Oz. In Oz, the girl gains several friends and companions in her adventure. The communicator of this novel is the author of the book, L. Frank Baum. Baum is best known as a popular author for children’s books at this time. I believe that the audience of this book can be a number of people. At the surface level, the story is appealing to children as the main character is a child and features many themes (magics) and characters (witches and wizards) that are common in children’s stories. Though the story may seem childish, the deeper recurring themes and allegorical significance of the Wizard of Oz make it a story for adults. The story features many themes about the state of American politics at the time which could only truly be understood by an adult. 

A passage in the novel that contains the word “wild” in it is at the beginning of Chapter 6 when The Cowardly Lion is introduced into the story. The word is used when Dorthy, Toto, and the Tinman are walking through the woods and she hears the sound of a wild animal in the bushes. This sound scares Dorthy and she describes her heart racing and her fear for Toto, her dog as she walks through the words. In this passage, wild means something animalistic and dangerous is there. This is further exemplified by describing Dorthy’s emotional reaction to the sound and appealing to the reader’s pathos.