Outside Over There---3: Goblinland and its Rules

The place the book Outside Over There that is called "Outside Over There" I shall here call Goblinland for convenience. The conflation of a (vague) place in the story with the the story itself is a Sendak signature, as we shall see. We are already disoriented, our attention misled, and floating backwards like Ida.

In the framing story, the father and mother are perhaps the most signficant characters, the way the court characters are in say, A Midsummer Night's Dream. But let's take a different view  Let's suppose that even within the context of the story (Ida-centric), that a framing story of papa and mama is equally fantasy? Ida is running two concurrent fantasies, or one within another. I think we can take that interpretation. We are invited to do this by Sendak I think because the extreme fantastical level of Goblinland which carves out a broad space in which a more conventional parallel once-upon-time story papa-was-at-sea story can take place, and the two levels of fantasy interact with each other. 

In the framing story, the characters and story obey human rules. But in Goblinland, the rules are unfamiliar to us. We have to be taught them explicitly. But somehow we feel like we ought to know these rules already, like what goblins look like and how to drive them away. There is a sense of humiliation in being unfamiliar with the rules of Goblins, even the fact that they look like babies. I certainly didn't know that. Of course it's all made up, one says, but that is beside the point. The point is that feeling of disorientating and humiliation that we ourselves experienced as children, and still often do as adults, when we don't know the rules but somehow feel like we ought to already know them. Everyone knows about goblins, silly! As children we often feel as if someone did not give us the memo we were supposed to have. As adults we know this is simply how the world works. One learns to shrug it off. But as children we don't necessary know that it is ok not to know something. This is maybe why children tease each other when they see someone ignorant of certain rules---because ultimately it feels like a matter of luck whether one has learned certain rules by the time one encounters the situations in which one needs them.

It is the interaction between the Goblinland story and the framing story that drives the forward the plot and resolves it. One leaks into the other. It is Ida's learning of the rules of Goblinland that lets her escape with her sister. This feels elusive in me, but somehow very tangible--this sensation of trying to understand the fules of the world, and adopting a shadowy subset within an imaginary world to play them, tinker with them, until one is tuned appropriately to the demands of the world. In this case, the framing story provides the resolution and lesson in the form of a tautology---for important rules, it is important to know the rule in advance. This can require adult foresight to teach kids. Once Ida knows what she is supposed to do, both in Goblinland and the rule world, she had no problem following through on it. Her learning of the rules regarding protecting her sister flow from the dynamic back-and-forth between the two fantasies. 

When I first read the story I was ashamed somehow that I didn't already know about goblins and what there rules were. I missed out on my goblin lore, and Sendak is going to educate me. This shame is exactly what I felt like as I child when I didn't know the rules I was supposed to play by, because I was never taught them. I say taught them, because as a child I could learn anything that was taught to me, but learning things on my own, things I didn't even know I was supposed to know, was what caught me in snares. All of that came back as I was reading the book.