green eggs & ham: a sempiternitous masterpiece
Written By Joshua Chuah
Everyone has read Green Eggs and Ham at some point in their lives. Perhaps it was read to you as a child. Perhaps you heard Ted Cruz’ famous filibuster where he read Green Eggs and Ham. We have all had different experiences with the book, but one thing unifies every experience, and that is that we have probably read it once and never put much thought into it. I did though, and I found that Dr. Seuss’ 1960 classic is a brilliant social commentary for the ages.
The book begins with Sam-I-Am dashing past Guy-Am-I. Guy-Am-I responds to this with a bitter response. Right from the start of the story, Seuss has given us a metaphor for the modern dynamic between the young generation and the older generations. Guy’s attitude towards Sam represents the strained relationship between the old and the young. While it may seem that blaming the youth is a relatively new phenomenon, it has been happening for a very long time, with even the 1st century Roman poet Horace criticising the ‘beardless youth who squander their money’. After this, Sam presents his signature dish to Guy; green eggs and ham. Guy responds bluntly, refusing the dish as he does not like green eggs and ham. In the book, Guy is drawn as if he is too good for the green eggs and ham—a perfect metaphor for the exact same skepticism shown towards the ideas of the youth by older people. The bashing and major distrust of the younger generations, millennials in particular, is a serious issue now, with bitter politicians rejecting the idea of climate change action reminiscent of how Guy rejects the green eggs and ham. Even though climate change would not become a recognised issue until decades after Green Eggs and Ham was published, Dr Seuss has shown us that his metaphor still stands today, from a crazy meal to climate change action.
After Guy’s initial rejection of the green eggs and ham, Sam continues to bother Guy about trying them in different situations. While it is not relevant to this essay, Dr Seuss’ brilliant use of literary techniques in this part of the book should be noted. For example anaphora: the repetition of words at the beginning of clauses. Having rejected the green eggs and ham multiple times, Guy becomes increasingly upset with Sam, but Sam continues to ask him to try them. This is another key theme of the book, the importance of consent and the understanding that ‘no means no’. Unlike climate change, rape and institutionalised violence against women was an issue in the 1950s, and it was around the same time that women’s activism and the anti-rape movement started to pick up. Dr Seuss teaches us that it is important to be able to step away and take ‘no’ for an answer, which is as important a lesson now as it was sixty years ago. We are currently living in a society with a pervasive rape culture where sexual violence is normalised, victims are blamed, and sexual assault is normalised. Dr Seuss does a good job at showing the effects of not understanding consent by making Guy become increasingly angrier with Sam.
At the end of the book, Guy-Am-I finally tries the green eggs and ham, and in a surprising twist (if you’re four years old), enjoys the odd-coloured Seussville delicacy. Dr Seuss caps off the main conflict of his book in a peaceful, non-confrontational manner. This also rounds off the central theme in the book of the old-vs-young dynamic and the general close-mindedness of old people towards the ideas proposed by the global youth. By writing Guy as an eventual green eggs and ham enjoyer, Dr Seuss emphasizes the importance of keeping an open mind to new, foreign concepts even if they seem to be threatening or unsettling at first. Of course, keeping an open mind does not extend to things that are so morally wrong, like sexual assault, crimes against children and other crimes against the person but rather issues like racism, sexism and climate change among many others. Seuss reminds his readers, especially the parents reading Green Eggs and Ham to their children, to drop their prejudices and keep away from rejecting things based on those prejudices. The importance of rejecting prejudice was as significant to Dr Seuss back then as it is to many people now, as Seuss himself was a vocal critic of the Nazis during the build-up to World War II. He drew countless political cartoons mocking Hitler and the Nazis, before eventually switching to children’s books where he inserted lasting morals, like he does in Green Eggs and Ham.
The timelessness of this ‘simple’ highlights the genius of Dr Seuss and his capability of writing a beautiful poem from a fifty-dollar bet between Seuss and his publisher. He transformed that bet into a political allegory following the likes of George Orwell’s Animal Farm with an emphasis on prejudice rather than the flaws of communism and authoritarianism. Seuss uses his limit of fifty unique words to create a poem that is read as much today as it was six decades ago, which manages to present the issue of the older generations’ deep-seated prejudices but also the neglect of consent in our world. Dr Seuss combines his unique art style with clever writing to produce a piece that children can not only understand the meaning of but also enjoy. At the end of the day, if you don’t want to read too far into the book, Green Eggs and Ham is still a fun book to read with beautifully flowing rhymes and a simple moral, great for reading time with a younger sibling. Even now, Green Eggs and Ham is still found lining library bookshelves and bookstores - a true testament to the book’s ability to remain a timeless classic.
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