The first thing I find interesting is about the use of times. The ‘tinies’ are all experiencing near-death, but Edward Gorey uses past times to suggest that, they would not be rescued and that they are meant to die. \u00a0Also, in some of the 26-letter story, the children are not dying, but seem to play for fun without the illustration of the texts below, but for others, it is clear that, they are died in a tragic way.<\/p>\n
I think, the use of 26 letters symbols the situation of the whole society which includes everyone. The names after each letter further support his idea. \u00a0Also, the magic of this story is that, without the texts below, the image cannot be fully understood. For example, for letter Y, it says, ‘Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in.’ The question raised here is who knocks Yorick in and where, because in this image, it is only Yorick standing in front of the wooden-like cylinder, constantly starring at it with curiosity. I guess Gorey here wants to illustrate something that is between children’s book and the adult’s book. Because when it is children who are reading this, they only look at the image, but for adults, because we are always told to read and analysis in class, we will look at the texts first. This difference gives children and adults a completely opposite view of this single image.<\/p>\n
One last thing about his story is that, the children only contain one really tiny part of each image, which sends the messages that, humans are only small parts of the world, but they think of themselves as the ruler. And this is an obvious difference from Gorey’s work and typical children’s books– children’s books are all about the characters’ stories, but Gorey’s work is about the environment that contains the characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first thing I find interesting is about the use of times. The ‘tinies’ are all experiencing near-death, but Edward Gorey uses past times to suggest that, they would not be rescued and that they are meant to die. \u00a0Also, in some of the 26-letter story, the children are not dying, but seem to play … <\/p>\n