First Lessons in Government with Lobel's Grasshopper on the Road
Arnold Lobel had a knack for subtle social criticism
For some inexplicable reason, dear son number 1 has taken an interest in asking all about the government—Is it bad? Is it big? Does it drive a really big truck (because of how many people are in the government — this was actually a question of dear son number 2)? Does it do anything good? Are there any Christians in the government? Are there any Christian governments? Etc. Etc.
While my in-laws, bless their hearts, would surely see in these questions of innocent children the decisive influence of their mother, I can neither confirm nor deny it, to quote one of our own fixtures of Government (although by far not our brightest), Anthony Weiner.
The simplest explanation that I can give for what the government is like is to point my dear young sons to the character of the mosquito in Grasshopper on the Road. In this story, a traveling Grasshopper comes to a puddle of water that he must cross in order to continue his journey. Just as he is about to hop over it, a little mosquito troubles to inform him it is a rule that he must use the mosquito’s boat to ferry across the water.
“But sir,” said Grasshopper, “I can easily jump over to the other side.”
“Rules are rules,” said the mosquito.
Poor Grasshopper, like all innocent creatures unaccustomed to the irrationality of bureaucracy, retorts that the mosquito’s boat is too small for him. “Rules are rules,” said the mosquito. “You must get into my boat!”
Grasshopper tries again in vain to get the mosquito to think rationally. He tells the mosquito that he is too big even to fit in the boat.
“Rules are still rules!” shouts the mosquito.
Clever Grasshopper—wouldn’t that we all could handle bureaucrats so deftly—says that there is only one thing to do, and he picks up the boat and carries the boat, mosquito and all, across the puddle.
As I wrote this, I could not recall off the top of my head a specific incident in which we explained Government to the kids with this story, so I asked my dear son to please remind me of a time we had to deal with the government.
“Oh we’ve had to deal with the government all the time,” he exclaimed. “The airport!”
Ah yes, TSA. How could I forget! It was fresh on all of our minds after our recent cross-country trip. How could I forget the angry TSA woman who, after confiscating the small bag of homemade play-doh I’d brought for the toddler, insisted that “moldables are not allowed.” And then demanded that my husband get molested by another TSA agent for the trouble she had to take in inspecting our moldable.
“You can’t bring this, you have to do that,” my son says. That’s right. No water bottles, no shoes, no dignity.
Infant sippy cups and bottles must go through the magical machine that detects the presence of evil, etc.
Why do you have to remove your shoes but we don’t, the kids ask? Why do people with little dogs not go through that big machine? Why can’t we bring our yogurt into the airport? Why does the baby have to have her blanky taken away?
Because rules are rules, children, and this here TSA is the mosquito. Now, let us cross the puddle kids.
The funniest part of Lobel’s story is probably the blissful obtuseness of the mosquito. He blithely tells Grasshopper that he is lucky to be with him on the voyage, for he has been sailing back and forth for many years. He knows “more about sailing than anyone else around here,” he tells Grasshopper.
After another step, Grasshopper is at the other side. He kindly thanks the mosquito, who tells Grasshopper that he was “glad to do it.”
The beauty of this story is its simplicity and universality. Anyone who has ever dealt with bureaucracy of any kind can surely relate to Grasshopper.
We have all, at one time or another, tried to reason with the mosquito—remember Covid? What is more mosquito-like than being told that you must stand 6-feet apart and wear your homemade cotton diaper over your face to prevent the spread of a plague that escaped a bioweapons lab across the globe? That’s right, dear reader, nothing.
Recall the masked grocery-story worker policing the entrance of the store, insisting that even though we are not sick (and may even have a gaggle of unmasked children in tow) we put on our masks because, after all, rules are rules.
“The Journey” is particularly near and dear to our family because my husband and I happen to loathe most of what the government does, and to be able to compare it to a blood-sucking insect is, to say the least, satisfying. The charm of it, though, is that the mosquito seems to have been chosen by pure happenstance, so subtle and deft is the hand of children’s author Arnold Lobel. He does not beat us over the head with the idea that bureaucratic-type rules are invariably enforced by parasitic creatures. But the image is there for those who wish to see it.
I have found that, when it comes to complex, grown-up topics or ideas, the best that we can do by way of explanation is to point to an image or to tell a story. This is similitude. “This is like that.” Christ did it constantly. In fact, similitude was his main pedagogical tool for the crowds who listened to him. How to describe an ineffable truth and reality? A parable. Christ decided that story does a fine job.
Behind symbols and stories are entire realities that make themselves known only through that particular medium. Ever enjoyed a meme? (To give you some idea of my “problem”, I gave up “meme-ing” for Lent last year, and let me tell you, I felt the pain.) A meme tells an entire story in one image and scant text. It contains within it cultural allusions and morphs as it acquires new cultural significance. Memes are so effective because with few words they can convey what would otherwise require a long-winded explanation. Such an explanation would end up obfuscating the truth that must be conveyed. The truth of a meme is unmediated. The image and simple text cut straight to the truth by going straight into the visceral imagination.
An Arnold Lobel story such as this one works on the same plane. What is bureaucracy? It is the “rules” that the mosquito must enforce no matter what. It is not rational to the ordinary human mind that encounters it, and yet we must work around it nonetheless. It may have come about for some “rational” reason, but to the person who must now deal with it, there is no rationality behind it. All that we can do is cope with it, as Grasshopper does.
This story also conveys the idea of limits in life, which is anathema in modern stories, which love the platitudinous “the sky’s the limit” and other such claptrap. “The Journey” teaches us that inevitably we will encounter unpleasant and seemingly unfair obstacles. Grasshopper teaches us that we need to find ways to respond to and work around the obstacles rather than curse the “unfair” nature of existence or pretend that those obstacles don’t exist.
I find myself bringing up images like this one when I have to explain something complex or otherwise indescribable to the young minds of my children. Grasshopper’s story conveys the truth of different sorts of bureaucracies or otherwise inexplicable rules to them in a holistic way rather than a truncated and abstract rationalistic way.
“The Journey” is a story about the bureaucratic mindset, something that our children will, sooner or later, encounter. Better we are prepared to remind them that sometimes we must find creative ways to deal with the pesky mosquito who would stand in the way of our own journey.
Kafka 4 Kids!