The Butter Battle Book Analysis
The Butter Battle Book written by Dr. Seuss is extremely satirical because of the story’s many similarities to the Cold War. By way of example, the conflict in the book is due to a nonsensical disagreement about which side an individual should butter his or her bread. The two groups, the Yooks and the Zooks, build a wall to divide the two societies due to their conflicting opinions. This parallels with the Cold War and the Berlin Wall which divided the Capitalists from the Communists. Another similarity was the amount of propaganda around the two opposing sides. Each group was receiving an immense amount of information about one side being better than the other, just like in The Butter Battle Book. This disinformation lead to the nuclear arms
race that challenged the Yooks and the Zooks to invent the most powerful weapon. Although, the two groups are using their weapons as threatens rather than machines for destruction. Seeing that, we can look to compare this to the Cold War and take notice of the United States (Capitalists) strategy to contain the Soviet Union (Communists), by threatening them but not attacking. Further regarding the nuclear arms race, if we look back into the history of the Cold War we notice that each side was racing to build the most powerful weapon until they both eventually had access to nuclear bombs. However, both sides had the same weapon and they knew that if one fired their weapon so would the other, which would destroy everyone. In the same way, the Yooks and Zooks gradually escalated building stronger weapons until they both created the ultimate weapon, the big boy bomeroo which parallels with the Cold Wars’s nuclear weapons. The story ends with both of the military leaders standing on the wall threatening to activate their weapons with the Yook’s grandson watching nearby in horror. Similar to us, the readers, the grandson may not be fully assimilated into the Yook-Zook rivalry leaving him currently impartial and allowing us a doorway into the story. This allows us to look as the story and view the situation and disagreement as ridiculous. The way Dr. Seuss brings out the irony and mocks the story of the Cold War is very satirical.
race that challenged the Yooks and the Zooks to invent the most powerful weapon. Although, the two groups are using their weapons as threatens rather than machines for destruction. Seeing that, we can look to compare this to the Cold War and take notice of the United States (Capitalists) strategy to contain the Soviet Union (Communists), by threatening them but not attacking. Further regarding the nuclear arms race, if we look back into the history of the Cold War we notice that each side was racing to build the most powerful weapon until they both eventually had access to nuclear bombs. However, both sides had the same weapon and they knew that if one fired their weapon so would the other, which would destroy everyone. In the same way, the Yooks and Zooks gradually escalated building stronger weapons until they both created the ultimate weapon, the big boy bomeroo which parallels with the Cold Wars’s nuclear weapons. The story ends with both of the military leaders standing on the wall threatening to activate their weapons with the Yook’s grandson watching nearby in horror. Similar to us, the readers, the grandson may not be fully assimilated into the Yook-Zook rivalry leaving him currently impartial and allowing us a doorway into the story. This allows us to look as the story and view the situation and disagreement as ridiculous. The way Dr. Seuss brings out the irony and mocks the story of the Cold War is very satirical.