This time around, I felt like I understood the book in a new -or at least, different- light, due to my time here at the ranch. I was never sure why Max, after having such a great time with his imagination and his monster friends, decided to get mad at them and tell them to stop playing.
"'¡Basta ya!' gritó Max y ordenó a los monstruos que se fueran a la cama sin cenar. Y Max el rey de los monstruos se sintió solo y deseó estar en un lugar donde hubiera alguien que lo quisiera más que a nadie."
("'Enough!', shouted Max, and he ordered the monsters to go to bed without dinner. And Max the king of the monsters felt alone and wished to be in a place where someone loved him more than anyone"...this is the direct translation back from the Spanish. It might be a little more blunt than the original, which also helps with interpretation...)
Anyways, in his imagination, Max reenacts the same scenario that had happened with his Mother, except this time he was in the position of power. But it doesn't make him happy to do it, and afterwards, he realizes that all he wants is be loved (or maybe its through the reenactment that he's able to realize?). That need to replay or reenact your experience on someone else is so interesting though-- I don't know why we do it...
What's good about the book is that Max does this in his imagination, and not (at least as far as we know) to anyone in real life.
1. I love the translations of "roared their horrible roars and gnashed their sharp teeth and looked at him with their glowing eyes and showed him their terrible claws," or however it is. (I can't find my copy in English -- only the one in Spanish: "emitieron unos horribles rugidos y crujieron sus afilados dientes y lo miraron con ojos centelleantes y le mostraron sus terribles garras.")
ReplyDelete2. I still haven't seen the movie of this.
3. This reminds me of that essay by Freud, "Remembering, Repeating, Working Through." Yeah?