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If Max, of Sendak's (1963) Where the Wild Things Are, is the quintessential child of classical Freudian psychoanalysis, then Hushpuppy, the 6 year-old protagonist of Beasts of the Southern Wild (Gottwald et al., 2012), is the baby of current relational trauma theory.
Max had it easy. We're not quite sure what inspires him to don his wolf suit and “make mischief of one kind or another”. Oral aggression? (He does threaten to eat his mother up.) Oedipal issues? Be that as it may, when Max is exiled to his room for bad behavior, he manufactures a fantasy in which he cavorts gleefully with his internal wild things, gains control over them, and ultimately decides to surrender the thrill of uncontrolled instinctual abandon for the security of home and family. He returns to his safe little room and finds his supper waiting for him and “It [is] still hot.”
Max has the good fortune to be held, in a Winnicottian sense, in a safe, reliable environment that can survive his destructive rage (Winnicott, 1971). Max is able to use symbolic play to master the stresses and strains faced by any child as he navigates through the developmental waters leading to maturity. His imaginary boat trip to the land of the wild things takes place in a transitional space (Winnicott, 1951). With the security of an indestructible and containing environment bracketing his experience both before and after his voyage, it becomes safe for Max to venture into the world of fantasy play, and fantasy and reality remain clearly differentiated for the reader. We can assume that underlying Max's capacity for symbolic play is an ability to exist in the paradoxical intermediate zone that Winnicott called “transitional space”. By this, Winnicott meant the ability to enjoy illusion and to contain the “doubleness” of fantasy and reality (1951).
Not so for little Hushpuppy, however. Beasts of the Southern Wild tells the story of Hushpuppy and her father, Wink, who live “off the grid” somewhere in the vicinity (but not r