In Peter Sís’ book The Wall, Sís reflects and details his life growing up in Communist controlled Czechoslovakia through the Prague Spring and eventually through The Velvet Revolution. The book details what it was like in Prague under a totalitarian regime.

The spread on pages thirty-one through thirty-two details a significant part of resistance in Prague during the time period: the Lennon Wall. The spread is full of small details that add to the depiction of history in the pages. Considering page thirty one, the wall and surrounding setting are dull black and white: monotonous. A single peek of color is aligned on the wall at first, followed by movement in the images until the whole wall is filled with colorful art, which serves as detailed references. An example of the subtle references begin with the submarine in the top right of the third box which is a possible reference to the Beatles song Yellow Submarine. Another reference on this page is the number “68,” which is a potential reference to The Prague Spring, where the Czechoslovak people experienced a small period of liberalization and freedom of expression before the period of Normalization (1). In the penultimate box, the art is erased by Communist Party members, but in the final box, the art comes back in even greater and more complete force. The second page depicts the back and forth between those erasing the art and those continuing to create the art.

The images on the spread are influenced by avante garde art movements of the 20th century. Besides the book being influenced by the art as a form of protest that took place in Prague during the Velvet Revolution, the way in which Sis expertly depicts the art of the Lennon Wall is directly influenced by dadaism and pop art movements. After all, the painting of the Lennon Wall was literally a form of avante garde art. Pop Art, like “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso, was often used as a form of political protest against totalitarian regimes, just like the USSR controlled government of Czechoslovakia, (Museum of Modern Art). Besides the spread from The Wall being rooted in art history movements, picturebook history is also a clear influence on the color and playful shapes on the pages through The Lorax.

It is common knowledge that Dr. Suess, besides being a prolific children’s book author, was known for the political protests depicted in his cartoons and even in one of his books: The Lorax. The Lorax is about mistreating nature. The bright colors of the Lorax and nature against the totalitarian wasteland that was farmed until there was nothing left is reflected in The Wall. The totalitarian wasteland of Prague is just as dark as the wasteland in The Lorax. The hope depicted in the end when the Lorax himself reappears is just as colorful and bright as the hope depicted on the wall in The Wall.

Hope and color can break through the darkness. It’s possible just like Peter Sís’ story.

Footnotes:

(1) Normalization is a term used to describe the period of time after the troops of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 that ended the Prague Spring. It is known as an oppressive era where the Party attempted to reestablish control and set harsh standards (McDermott 149).

Word Count: 501

Works Cited:

McDermott, Kevin. Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-89: A Political and Social History. Macmillan Education, Palgrave, 2015.

Museum of Modern Art. “Picasso’s Protest.” MoMA Through Time, MoMA, https://www.moma.org/interactives/moma_through_time/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.

Picasso, Pablo. Guernica. 1937, https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica. Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofía.

Seuss. The Lorax. Random House, 1971.

Sís, Peter. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2007.