Evaluative Essay

In the book, "The Cat in the hat", the characters have structured personalities with three parts. The id or the part of our personality that contains our desire for instant gratification or release. The superego or the part of our personality the conscience , the moral part of us. The ego, which is the part of our personality that mantains a balance between the id and the superego. Each one of these parts of a character's personality is present in a character, but usually one of the parts dominates all the others.
The fish, a main character in "The Cat in the Hat", I believe assumes the role of the superego. The fish shows in many instances that he is the superego as he tried to do the moral thing through the whole story. An example of this is when the fish states, "No!No! make that cat go away! Tell the cat in the hat you do NOT want to play. He should not be here. He should not be about. He should not be here when your mother is out.". This statement clearly show that the fish is the moral or the superego in the story. The fish believes that the cat in the hat will only cause trouble, which means he is labeling him as the id in the story. The fish is tring to get the cat in the hat to leave by tring to sway the opinion of the narrator and sally, the ego. This example also shows how the author, Dr.Seuss, uses speech, a type of indirect characterization in his book to show that the fish is the superego.
The fish also shows that he is the superego through his effect on others, another type of indirect characterization. He states, " Now look what you did! said the fish to the cat. Look at this. Look at that!". This statement made the cat feel unwelcomed and that all he is doing is causing trouble for everyone. This statement is also making the narrator and sally, the ego in the story, think about they should stop the cat in the hat. They were forced to weigh their opitions yet agian by another statement by the superego, the fish. The superego is the opposite of the id, thus it will be tring to get rid of the id through the story.
One of the most important things that is evident in this book that points to the superego being the fish is the looks he gives in the book. The looks at characters is another type of indirect characterization used in "The Cat in the Hat" to show which part of the character's personality is dominate. For example the fish is a character who looks at others in the book with a scowl on his face when he is speaking. This is so he gets his point across that what is happening is not moral and the id is most likely the the instigator. This is consistant with what a superego does in a story, it is the moral, so it always is tring to point out what is moral and what is not. In this story, the fish used many of his looks to point out that things were not moral in order to sway the ego. In the end of the story this finally happened as the ego, the narrator and sally, decided that they had to stop all of what the cat was doing . They decided to go the way of the superego and get rid of the cat in the hat, the id.









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