Green Eggs and Ham (Review)
Green Eggs and Ham (Review)
oke up this morning wondering what I could review. I’m still working through Reamde, all 1042 pages of it (you can use this book to chock the wheel of your car if you need to change a flat). And then this Seuss classic popped into my mind and I figured, “Why not?”
So, Green Eggs and Ham is a story about choice and acceptance of new experiences, in this case the titular foods, both shown as nauseating and possibly dangerous to ingest. The protagonist, an unnamed sort of man/canine hybrid, seems to view himself as his own worldview center; he takes great exception to Sam, a smaller canine creature who seems also comfortable with a less-stringent view of the world as he declares self and soul on his series of signs.
This proceeds to the famous pursuit, of Sam dogging the protagonist, attempting to get him to try this strange cuisine. The rhyming couplets come faster and faster as Sam attempts to assuage the protagonist’s open rejections by proposing various settings (houses and boxes) and various dining companions (mice and foxes) where the meal might be sampled. And so it goes on, faster and more frenetic as the velocity of the action and rhymes come quicker.
I remember, as a child of five, being quite concerned in a railroad that would allow their passenger trains to fly across bridges seemingly incomplete. From all that my father told me about trains, it seemed like (literally) a bad way to run a railroad. And once the horrific train/boat collision of over and the survivors have dragged themselves to the shore, we see the protagonist’s reluctance faulter in the face of Sam’s unbounded determination. So, does he eat the plate of green breakfast victuals? I do not wish to spoil the ending; you’ll have to get it for yourself. But across the works of the Doctor, I’d have to say that this was one of my all-time favorites.
Get it. Five green eggs!