Analysis Of Theodore Geisel's How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Holidays celebrate an area’s culture and/or the day(s) it commemorates with various festivities and traditions. In Theodore Geisel’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas, the light-hearted denizens of Who-Ville are preparing to celebrate Christmas. For the Whos, it is a time of fun and merryness, in which they sing and play with one another. This is a time of camaraderie and fellowship between everyone in the town. Apart from this is the antagonist, the Grinch, who dreads the holiday along with the singing, feasting, and other festive activities that the holiday inspires. As an outsider of the society, the Grinch doesn’t understand the celebration and resents it as a result, and it quite peeved by the inescapable uproar that it brings. Christmas

The narrator foretells of how the Whos will wake to their yearly Christmas routine of getting up early and rushing for toys. The narrator also claims, “Oh the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That’s one thing he hated!”(6). From this the reader is able to gather that the uproar created by the Whos is one of several characteristics of Christmas that the Grinch loathes. To his dismay all of the Whos adore their toys and making noise. The Whos even enjoy doing this together so much that they recreate their form of celebrating every year. Being an outsider of the community and the activities, the Grinch has no way to comprehend the pleasure they find in Christmas

In doing this he thought Christmas would not come and all of the Whos would be upset. This, however, is disproved by the singing in Christmas spirit that the Whos performed. Perplexing the Grinch, “he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore… “Maybe Christmas… doesn’t come from a store… perhaps… (Christmas) means a little bit more!””(39). This revelation alters the Grinch’s perception of Christmas vastly. By allowing himself to make an effort to understand Christmas he embraced the Who culture. The Grinch was then able find why the Whos valued Christmas and enjoy the the holiday as displayed by him smiling while carving the Christmas roast