Cat And The Hat Themes

The Cat and the Hat by Doctor Seuss and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn both have the theme that man creates there own problem. In The Cat and the Hat, an anthropomorphic cat shows up at the house of two children, Sally and her unnamed brother, one rainy day when their mother is away. Ignoring repeated objections from the children's fish, who can also talk, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. In the process he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two, wreck the house. The children and the fish become more and more alarmed until the Cat produces a machine that he uses to clean everything up. He then says his goodbyes and disappears just before the children's mother walks in.

Everything in the premise of The Cat and the Hat is the same with what Ishmael tells us is going on with humanity. In Ishmael, the talking gorilla Ishmael tells the narrator that there are two kinds of people Takers and Leavers. Sally and her

In the Takers and Leavers’ story this is mother culture, and in The Cat and the Hat this is the Cat with Thing One and Things Two. For the Takers mother culture influenced some leavers to become takers, this was the agricultural revolution and that this starts the down fall of man Ismael says. Here the narrator is reciting what Ishmael has just taught him about the agricultural revolution, “It didn’t end. It just spread. It’s been spreading ever since it began back there ten thousand years ago.” (Quinn 153). Ishmael says that if the agricultural revolution is bad it should spread, but it has it made the life of people much easier. Sally and her brother experience this too. The cat acts as mother culture and the agricultural revolution, the cat makes their lives easier and more fun as destroying the house and not caring is easier than being good and