Curiouser and Curiouser

 

I've been doing some research and thinking about a paper due this week for my Literature and Empire course, and today I stumbled upon something interesting: A hidden layer of meaning in the Curious George stories.

 I used to love those books when I was a kid, and I still have my Curious George doll, though he's in rough shape, buttons for eyes and barely held together with patches. Liam has a newer version of the same doll, whom he calls "Monkey George."

What follows is an excerpt from a 1996 lecture on Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" by Candice Bradley, an anthropology professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin:

I am going to begin my discussion of Heart of Darkness with Curious George. As you all know, Curious George was a little monkey who was found  in the jungle by the man with the yellow hat, and brought to America where he had many adventures. Curious George, we are told, is "a good little monkey." He is a good little monkey with no tail who walks upright and rides bicycles. Those of you who have taken paleoanthropology, however, already know that Curious George is no monkey. He does not have a tail. Maybe he is a chimp -- except chimps walk on their knuckles and generally don't deliver papers, paint walls, and make phone calls.
As we all know, George has a problem. He is a good little monkey, but he is "too curious." He is so curious that he causes problems for the man in the yellow hat. The man in the yellow hat dresses like a colonial officer, wearing a bright yellow safari suit.
In Curious George Takes a Job, George is in the zoo. He steals the keys to the cages from the zookeeper, and frees all the African animals. George, now newly liberated himself, takes a series of menial jobs. At one point, George breaks into an apartment and paints African animals all over the walls. At the end of the story he stars in a Hollywood movie.
Curious George is a two layered story. On one level it's a dumb but beloved children's story. On another, it is a postcolonial parable in which George stands for Africa, and the zookeeper and man with the yellow hat for benevolent colonizers. George stealing the keys and liberating the animals is a parable for the decolonization of Africa. From the middle of this century onward, the African took the keys fromthe white manand let himself out of the cage.
One day I read some of Curious George Takes a Job to my students. One student, an African woman raised biculturally, was shocked. "My parents read me this story," she said. "This is horrible! Did the author know what he was doing? Was he a racist? Or did he write this postcolonial plot into the book with full consciousness?" Unfortunately there is little written about the author, so I cannot tell you whether he was an enlightened man who hid the symbolism in there on purpose, or if he did it unconsciously.

Wild stuff, eh? Anyone interested in reading the rest of the lecture on "Heart of Darkness" is invited to follow this link: AFRICA  AND  AFRICANS  IN CONRAD´S  HEART  OF  DARKNESS