Critic Analysis of How the Grinch Stole Christmas

This story by Dr. Seuss is one of the classic children’s stories of all time, which is about a cave monster, Grinch, who hated Christmas because of all the festivities. Because of this, he wished to ruin it by stealing all the gifts from the inhabitants of the nearby Whoville. He thought that through this, he could end all the happiness that the people were feeling during Christmas, but he was wrong. He found out that Christmas is not just about gifts and special presents, but it’s more on the spirit of giving and love.

He had a change of heart, and was later accepted in the community (Kowalski). Using the Psychoanalytic school of criticism, we try to define the how’s and why’s of the Grinch’s action (Bressler). We can see that he is the stereotypical monster/villain, who lives a solitary life in his cave, with no one to mingle with except his dog. We see a grumpy character in Grinch, who would hate everything that is fun in the context of a normal person.

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So Grinch is the typical antagonist, who evilly plans on how to take away the happiness from the people in the Christmas time.

But as the story continued, we found that the villain had a change of heart and became good, a typical happy ending, considering it is intended for the young audience (Kowalski). We could see that the Grinch, as well as the inhabitants of Whoville are not humans, though we still give them human characteristics.

This is an effective way to relate what you feel in the story, as well as learn new things from it. It is intended for the young ones, so the content is not really complex, and it is easy to understand.

The story had the bad guy gone good ending, which suits the story well, since Grinch has a very unique personality, someone you’d want to go along well with. Works Cited: Bressler, Charles. "Psychoanalytic Criticism". 1994. April 4 2008. <http://www-as. phy. ohiou. edu/~rouzie/307j/critgroup/psycho. html>. Kowalski, Frankie. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas . . . And My Heart". 1996. April 5 2008. <http://www. awn. com/mag/issue1. 9/articles/kowlagrinch1. 9. html>.