Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [91]
In Horton Hears a Who! we have a story of a mindful elephant whose conscientiousness (and big ears) allow him to be aware of very small persons that others are not aware of at all. Because he alone can hear them, he makes a promise to protect them. One day as Horton is taking a bath in a pond, he thinks he hears a call for help. No one is around, but a small speck of dust, or rather someone on it, seems to be the source, “Some sort of a creature of very small size, Too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes . . .” (Horton). Horton thinks this person is afraid of being blown into the pool, and so he carefully places the speck of dust on some clover. It would seem Horton is a good Kantian: he is treating another person as an end in himself or as having infinite worth: “A person’s a person no matter how small” (Horton). In trying to protect the speck from the other incredulous and careless animals, Horton hears the Whos—for that is what they are—tell him he saved a whole town, Who-ville. “You’ve saved all our houses, our ceilings and floors. You’ve saved all our churches and grocery stores” (Horton). Horton replies, “You’re safe now. Don’t worry. I won’t let you down” (Horton). But keeping this promise turns out to be quite difficult. Devious monkeys, the Wickersham Brothers, steal the clover and give it to Vlad Vlad-i-koff, an eagle, who flies away with it. Horton laboriously follows only to see it dropped in a field of clover. But he goes through it, clover by clover, until he finds the Whos on the “three millionth flower.” Who-ville has been badly shaken; everything needs repairing. But Horton promises, “Of course I will stick. I’ll stick by you small folks through thin and through thick” (Horton). But the animals—including all the Wickersham relatives—find Horton, threaten to tie him up, and boil the clover. Horton pleads for the Whos to make as much noise as they can in order to prove they exist. They try but do not succeed in making themselves heard until the last little Who (“a very small, very small shirker named Jo-Jo” [Horton]) joins in and “Their voices were heard!” (Horton). Horton smiles, “Do you see what I mean? . . . They’ve proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. Their whole world was saved by the Smallest of All” (Horton).
As in the case of The Lorax, in which the Lorax could be read as a sort of utilitarian, one could make a case for Horton being a Kantian deontologist. He respects persons as beings of inherent worth “no matter how small” or inconsequential. He makes a promise and keeps it, come hell or high water, as he does in Horton Hatches the Egg. But I would like to urge that this, too, would be to force a narrow interpretation where a wider one, Deweyan, would be more appropriate. One of the things that Dewey sees as crucial in the moral life is developing habits of conscientiousness—of carefully reflecting on aspects of a situation that may not at first glance be obvious. We can call this “The Who Factor.” The Whos are values that may easily be overlooked but which are as important as the evident ones. Like the Once-ler in The Lorax, the various disbelieving animals, like the Wickersham Brothers, are fundamentally thoughtless individuals. They act out of a narrow sense of what is and is not and do not go to the trouble of finding out if Horton is right before passing the judgment that there are no Whos. Nor does Horton carry out his duty with a cold rationality, doing duty for duty’s sake. Horton acts because he cares for the Whos. Kant would find this problematic. Just as Horton cares for the egg in Horton Hatches the Egg, in Horton Hears a Who!, he is devoted to preserving something that others have disregarded so that, by the end of the story,