Should Wizard hit Mommy
The
chapter captures a very sensitive reaction of a small girl to an important
aspect of the story that her father narrates to her. The story reveals the
worldview of a little child to a difficult moral question that shows her mental
or psychological richness. Jo is a little girl of four years. She is engaged in
a story session with her father. Jack, the father used to tell her a story
every evening and especially for Saturday naps. Jo feels herself involved with
the characters and the happenings. The story always had an animal with a
problem.
Roger
Skunk is a very obedient child but he feels very sad and upset because he
smells so awful that nobody wants to befriend him and play with him. The old
owl advises him to visit the wizard who would solve the problem. He visited the
wizard who changed it to the smell of roses He feels excited about the change
for everyone likes his new smell and readily agrees to play with him. However
Roger's mother does not like the change. For her, Roger was better off with his
original smell. So, she makes the wizard restore Skunk's original smell. Roger
meekly accepts his mother's decision and other children get used to Roger's
awful smell and don’t complain about it anymore.
On
hearing the story of Roger Skunk, Jo was not happy with the ending. She feels
that mother is wrong in getting her son's original smell back and wants her to
be spanked by the wizard for her mistake. She wants her father to change the
ending. She wants the wizard to hit the mother back and let Roger be which her
father was not ready to do to establish his authority. This raises a difficult
moral question whether parents possess the right to impose their will on their
children. Her father finds it difficult to answer her question. . Her father,
who has modelled Skunk's story on his own story, strongly defends the mother
Skunk's decision.
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