we go now to our secret cave

Typing here yesterday about hubris, oobleck came to mind.  My imagination visualized hubris as oobleck -- thick, sticky, green.







"Now, what made me think of it that way?" I wondered.  But it turns out, it makes total sense -- if you review the children's book Bartholomew and the Oobleck, by Dr. Seuss, you realize the story is about hubris, totally.  Published in 1949 by Random House, it's an allegory -- the king's "thing" is, he gets bored, he starts thinking about how great he is, and he demands different weather.  It's like he thinks he's God, now:


"This snow!  This fog!  This sunshine!  This rain!  BAHH!  These four things that come down from my sky!"
-- "But, King Derwin," Bartholomew tried to calm him.  "You've always had these same four things come down."
-- "That's just the trouble!" bellowed the King.  "...I want something NEW to come down!"


Bartholomew Cubbins, the page boy, is startled by this power overreach:  "That's impossible, Your Majesty.  You just can't have it."


Don't tell me what I can or cannot have! -- I'm the King!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Hubris-mode.



So the king wants different weather, they get oobleck (the green stuff pictured in top illustration), and then the king has to realize he was wrong to want something different, something more, & wrong to think he was All-powerful.  And he has to say he's sorry.


-------------
But in the meantime, earlier in the book, the king is trying to figure out how to get his way, & "a strange wild light began to shine in his gray-green eyes."  He tells Bartholomew, "Blow my secret whistle!  Quick!  Call my royal magicians!"


"Your magicians, Your Majesty? Oh, no, Your Majesty!  Don't call them!"


But the king insists Bartholomew blow the "secret" whistle, to summon the magicians.  The kid takes the secret whistle from its secret hook.  He blows "a long, low blast down the King's back secret stairway."


[And to me, this passage is one of the most affecting in children's literature anywhere, because it's spooky and funny and creepy all at the same time.  Terribly intense.]


[excerpt] ---------------- And a moment later he heard them coming!  Up from their musty hole beneath the dungeon, up the empty midnight tunnel to the royal bedchamber tower, came the magicians on their padded, shuffling feet.  Up and right into the room they came chanting:


"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff.
Fista, wista, mista-cuff.
We are men of groans and howls,
Mystic men who eat boiled owls.
Tell us what you wish, oh King.
Our magic can do anything."


"I wish," spoke the King, "to have you make something fall from my skies that no other kingdom has ever had before.  What can you do?  What will you make?"


For a moment they stood thinking, blinking their creaky eyes.  then they spoke a word . . . one word . . . "Oobleck."  ["Plastics." ...]


"Oobleck . . . ?" asked the King.  "What will it look like?"


"Won't look like rain.  Won't look like snow.
Won't look like fog.  That's all we know.
We just can't tell you any more.
We've never made oobleck before."


They bowed.  They started toward the door.


"We go now to our secret cave
On Mystic Mountain Neeka-tave.
There, all night long, we'll work for you
And you'll have oobleck when we're through!"


"They'll do something crazy!" whispered Bartholomew.  "Call them back, Your Majesty!  Stop them!"
-- "Stop them?  Not for a ton of diamonds!" chuckled the King.  "Why, I'll be the mightiest man that ever lived!  Just think of it!  Tomorrow I'm going to have OOBLECK!"


...There was no sleep for Bartholomew, the page boy.  All night long he stood in the King's window, staring out at the Mystic Mountain Neeka-tave.  Somewhere up there, Bartholomew knew, the magicians were working their terrible magic. ----------------- [end excerpt]







Nothing sillier.


Nothing scarier.


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