WheretheWildThingsAre Analysis

Many of you may be familiar with the tale of Where the wild Things Are. You probably read it at some point during your childhood or you most likely saw the 2009 film. To be sure, it's one of the most popular and beloved children's books to date and is still widely read in many households with young people. This popularity has led to many speculations about the book's nature. Some say there's a deeper meaning that belies the playful adventures of a young boy in a wolf suit. Others say it's nothing more than an entertaining and fanciful tale for youth. However, why would an adult write something as seemingly nonsensical as this? Very rarely is it for "entertainment's sake." Why a wolf suit? Why monsters? Why an island?
In the following text a deeper content of the work itself will be given an in-depth analysis and have some of the more esoteric themes.

The book itself opens up with a small boy by the name of Max who has a liking for causing mischief and wreaking havoc around the house. We notice he has a penchant for running around in a wolf suit. Early on in the tale Max is confined to his room for bad behavior and not allowed to come out.
Notice that the entirety of the book takes place in Max's room. The entire time he is on the island, cavorting with the monsters, and sailing away in his boat, he is never truly away from his room. The room itself represents Max's repressed feelings of being an only child of a family that doesn't understand him. It is the pent up frustration and anger of youth that is still so prevalent even into today's culture.
He can run and dream yet he can never truly escape from his "room" aka feelings of pent up anger and frustration and thus he is a prisoner to these feelings.
The room, in a sense, also symbolizes childhood depression and feelings of loss and isolation. Max wants to escape from these feelings and his sense of loneliness so he dreams himself a dream of another world and imagines himself going there and having fun with the inhabitants, whom he gets along with wonderfully. We can infer from this that in real life, inside and out of the room, Max has no true friends and the closest he has to that is the dog we see him terrorizing earlier in the book and he runs rampant about the house causing mischief. The monsters serve as Max's "imaginary" friends and serve as a sort of substitute for real ones, seeing as he is unable to make them in real life. This could either be due to his feelings of inadequacy and depression or resulting directly from said feelings. The question itself is up for further debate.

Another way to see the room and "imaginary world" may not be due to depression and feelings of childhood angst at all. In fact, it could be something slightly less common and far more sinister in nature. Max could, in fact, be a lone, sexually abused child in a house full of anger and resentment, often sent to his room with no way out. The room could be seen as the place where "everything" happens to Max and as Max is continually abused by his unseen parents in the book, he is forced to make-believe an imaginary land with monster friends as his only means of escaping his despicable family situation. The monsters could also symbolize those who antagonize Max in real life or how sexually and physically abusive parents and Max visualizes himself as a "king" of their island in hopes of deluding himself into believe that he is truly in control of his situation and that he is not indeed suffering at the hands at the ones supposedly most dear to him. The fun and harmony  that he supposedly has with the monsters could also be visualized as a sort of "perfect family" picture that so many children yearn for yet never truly receive, as Max yearns for but never truly gets due to his isolation and the abusive nature of his parents. In reality, the monsters are not his friends at all. Max is as far from control of his situation as a small child could possibly be and he is left to suffer cruelly at the hands of an unseen force.
Notice at the end of the book, the story is concluded with Max seemingly being "let out of his room" and given a supper still "hot." The hotness of the supper itself can be seen as a metaphor for Max still being in hot water, ex. the abusive situation with his parents. His parents may have let him out of the room, pretending the abuse never happened and giving him "supper" and "forgiving" him for his "mischief" to pretend to glaze the portrait of the "perfect family" over the grim reality, but it does not change the fact that Max is still in an incredibly dark and foreboding family situation in which the unseen parental figures hold the dark reins and he is left to their devices and still remains under their control, unable to escape. By punishing Max for his supposed "mischief" the parents are able to distort the reality of the situation and effectively coerce the young child into believing that he, not the parents, either deserves the abuse or is the subsequent cause, thus justifying the horrid and adverse treatment of their son.

Another analysis could be drawn from the wolf outfit Max is so fond of wearing.
Why a wolf outfit, of all things? Why not a Zebra, or a duck? Why a wolf, a seemingly terrifying animal that most children his age should fear?
For starters, in the beginning, it was earlier mentioned in this piece that Max was chasing around a small dog with a fork in his hand, still wearing the same wolf suit.
It could be inferred that this same dog was Max's earliest and only encounter with an animal. Other than his dog, he has nothing else to chase. Max grows bored of being in the body of a small boy and projects a vision of himself into something larger. Something somewhat larger and more ferocious than a dog. In other words, a wolf. Max visualizes himself as the predator and his dog as the prey. Likewise,
he also assumes an alpha male position with the monsters of the island. He is hardly ever seen outside his suit and even begins to take on the traits of the very animal he desperately attempts to embody, reacting angrily when his mother advises against it.
What one can infer from this is that Max, young enough to be partaking such actions, yet old enough to be "discovering himself" for the first time yet old enough to "know better", we may infer that Max may be in the process of gradually "discovering himself" as a possibly future zoophile. Or, at the mildest, a furry. The "wild rumpus" he is seen having with the monsters can be seen as a sort of abstract metaphor for a sort of beastial orgy or possible even the act of masturbation itself.
Max is still too young to realize this yet he engages in such acts regardless. The fact he is "alone in his room" with parental supervision also further enables him to continue this fantasy guilt-free. In it he feels no shame and also feels a sort of newfound "liberation" in these acts, as can be seen by the "crown" he later wears and his newfound status as "king of the monsters." Max feels in charge of his budding feelings and in control of his situation. He enjoys the liberation that only being in a fursuit can provide and the fantasies it further allows him to enact. His parents may or may not be completely aware of the situation but this is of no consequence to Max. He is free to do as he pleases in his own little room, on monster island, and that is all that matters to him. He is Max. He is Boy. He is Wolf. And in his world, he is King.