<P> The book's fiftieth anniversary in 2007 prompted a reevaluation of the book from some critics . Yvonne Coppard, reviewing the fiftieth anniversary edition in Carousel magazine, wondered if the popularity of the Cat and his "delicious naughty behavior" will endure another fifty years . Coppard wrote, "The innocent ignorance of bygone days has given way to an all - embracing, almost paranoid awareness of child protection issues . And here we have the mysterious stranger who comes in, uninvited, while your mother is out ." </P> <P> Philip Nel places the book's title character in the tradition of con artists in American art, including the title characters from Meredith Willson's The Music Man and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Nel also contends that Geisel identified with the Cat, pointing to a self portrait of Geisel in which he appears as the Cat, which was published alongside a profile about him in The Saturday Evening Post on July 6, 1957 . Michael K. Frith, who worked as Geisel's editor, concurs, arguing that "The Cat in the Hat and Ted Geisel were inseparable and the same . I think there's no question about it . This is someone who delighted in the chaos of life, who delighted in the seeming insanity of the world around him ." Ruth MacDonald asserts that the Cat's primary goal in the book is to create fun for the children . The Cat calls it "fun that is funny", which MacDonald distinguishes from the ordinary, serious fun that parents subject their children to . In an article titled "Was the Cat in the Hat Black?", Philip Nel draws connections between the Cat and stereotyped depictions of African - Americans, including minstrel shows, Geisel's own minstrel - inspired cartoons from early in his career, and the use of the term "cat" to refer to jazz musicians . According to Nel, "Even as (Geisel) wrote books designed to challenge prejudice, he never fully shed the cultural assumptions he grew up with, and was likely unaware of the ways in which his visual imagination replicated the racial ideologies he consciously sought to reject ." </P> <P> Geisel once called the fish "my version of Cotton Mather", the Puritan moralist who advised the prosecutors during the Salem witch trials . Betty Mensch and Alan Freeman support this view, writing, "Drawing on old Christian symbolism (the fish was an ancient sign of Christianity) Dr. Seuss portrays the fish as a kind of ever - nagging superego, the embodiment of utterly conventionalized morality ." Philip Nel notes that other critics have also compared the fish to the superego . Anna Quindlen called the Cat "pure id" and marked the children, as mediators between the Cat and the fish, as the ego . Mensch and Freeman, however, argue that the Cat shows elements of both id and ego . </P> <P> In her analysis of the fish, MacDonald asserts that it represents the voice of the children's absent mother . Its conflict with the Cat, not only over the Cat's uninvited presence but also their inherent predator - prey relationship, provides the tension of the story . She points out that on the last page, while the children are hesitant to tell their mother about what happened in her absence, the fish gives a knowing look to the readers to assure them "that something did go on but that silence is the better part of valor in this case". Alison Lurie agrees, writing, "there is a strong suggestion that they might not tell her ." She argues that, in the Cat's destruction of the house, "the kids--and not only those in the story, but those who read it--have vicariously given full rein to their destructive impulses without guilt or consequences ." For a 1983 article, Geisel told Jonathan Cott, "The Cat in the Hat is a revolt against authority, but it's ameliorated by the fact that the Cat cleans up everything at the end . It's revolutionary in that it goes as far as Kerensky and then stops . It doesn't go quite as far as Lenin ." </P>

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