Reading Between the Rhymes

I am a huge fan of children’s literature. My wife and I often joke that I could get a PhD in the topic because of how often I analyze books I read to our kids, the type of literary analysis in which an MFA might engage.

For instance, I’ve examined the psychology of the boy in Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak. I’ve pontificated about the comedic structure of Green Hat, Blue Hat by Sandra Boynton. Recently, I spent a good chunk of a road trip digging into the many reasons why Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad stories are masterworks of storytelling.

Yet there is one children’s book that rises above the rest: a lesser known work by Dr. Seuss called I Had Trouble In Getting To Solla Sollew.

This 1965 gem is, in my mind, his magnum opus (tied with The Sneetches). But unlike his more popular stories, I’m willing to bet virtually all of you out there haven’t heard of Solla Sollew.

There’s one particular part of this book that occupies a special place in my heart and mind, because it uses wit to explain some of the most important lessons of human psychology I know.

Before I describe it, a word of caution: The scene in question takes place at the climax of the story. If you don’t like having the endings spoiled of Dr. Seuss books written six decades ago, do not read on!

Searching For Paradise

Our unnamed narrator lives a pretty good life. Things are going his way.

But then one day, he stubs his toe on a rock. And out of the blue, a strange animal bites his tail. And then, wouldn’t you know it, other animals start biting him from above and below. Well, this guy certainly is in a rut.

That is, until he learns of a city called Solla Sollew, a city “where they never have troubles, at least very few.” Sounds like just the paradise he needs. So he sets off to find it.

The book tells of the narrator’s horrible journey in getting to that magical city. Rather than reaching it easily, things just get tougher and tougher. His camel gets sick, the bus stops running, he’s caught in a bad storm, he’s drafted into a war, he’s lost in an underground tunnel… This truly is an all-time awful streak of bad luck. But it’s all for good reason! One day, he’s bound to reach that Eden of Solla Sollew. Right?

Sure enough, he does reach it. Cue that brilliant ending I alluded to:

The city of Solla Sollew is surrounded by a wall. And to get in and out of it, you just have to go through a single door. The narrator approaches that door, where he meets the kind doorman, who welcomes him to the wonderful place.

The doorman just has one bit of bad news. He can’t open the door.

A creature called a Key-Slapping Slippard moved into the key hole. And so every time the doorman tries to put the key in and unlock it, the Key-Slapping Slippard knocks it away.

And that means the doorman can’t open the door to paradise anymore. He explains:

So the narrator leaves, and he and we never get to enter the city of Solla Sollew, for paradise is elusive, if it exists at all.

What great lessons in that one scene. Tons of parallels to life packed into a few short rhyming lines:

• First off, the achievement of creating the perfect place is destroyed by, of all things, superstition.

• The doorman’s incapability of weighing the relative importance of things is so on point of human psychology. Sure the entire town is being destroyed… but how dare you suggest I harm this Slippard!

• Is there such a thing as perfection? I suppose by some measures, Solla Sollew wasn’t perfect at all if it could so easily come crashing down.

• What bad timing this narrator had! To show up right when the “town’s gone to pot.” But on the other hand, if the journey to get there had been easier and he’d gotten there earlier, he’d now be stuck inside the city, unable to escape. Maybe his horrible journey was for the best. Sometimes bad things happen for good reason, it seems.

• How about the fact that paradise, once cut off from the rest of the world, ceases to be paradise? Maybe we do need each other after all.

• Or how about the fact that the most insignificant thing (in this case a Key-Slapping Slippard) can cause such a wonderful achievement to come toppling down?

That last point reminds me of my recent article about how entropy governs our lives. Once more, it’s really hard to create and so easy to destroy.

I’m a big fan of wit, and this book has a lot of it. And despite the many pages of pessimism, the story does end on a positive note, with another wonderful lesson.

But for that one, I’ll keep you in suspense… until you go read the book yourself.