Political Impact On Seuss' Works

7 Pages 1700 Words

Single Author: Dr. Seuss

The Changes in the Writing During the Fighting
How Dr. Seuss’ Writing was Influenced by WWII

“I had no great causes or interest in social issues until Hitler,” Theodor Geisel told biographers (Morgan and Morgan 13). It’s true: the works he wrote after the war are quite different from those written prior to it. Dr. Seuss’ experience as a cartoonist for the newspaper PM had a tremendous effect on his later career as a writer of children’s literature. As a matter of fact, Seuss’ works seem to be written for children, but often have a much deeper adult theme.
Long before Theodor Seuss Geisel became the Dr. Seuss famous for The Cat in the Hat and over forty other children’s books, he was a successful advertising artist and – for just under two years—a political cartoonist. In 1940, Dr. Seuss was best known for his “Quick Henry, the Flit!” advertising campaign (for Flit bug spray) and was just starting to build his reputation as an author of children’s books. At the time he had published only four: To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, The King’s stilts, and Horton Hatches the Egg. His next, McElligot’s Pool, did not appear until 1947, because his concerns about the rapidly expanding world war had begun to simmer. Convinced that the United States would be drawn into the wars in Europe and the Pacific, he feared that American isolationism left the country vulnerable. In late January 1941, he expressed his frustration by sending a sketch of Mussolini’s chief propagandist, Virginio Gaydo to the independent New York paper PM, where both the cartoon and his letter were printed on January 30th. Less than three months later,

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Seuss began his twenty-one month career as a political cartoonist, dramatically changing his children’s books for all the years after.
Dr. Seuss’ books prior to the war viewed leaders as imperfec...