The Cat in the Hat Literary Elements

Children's literature, humor

A rainy day at Sally and her unnamed brother's house

The unnamed brother is the first-person narrator.

Whimsical, jovial, strange, and exuberant

The children, especially the unnamed boy who narrates, is the protagonist. The Cat is the Antagonist.

While a storm forces the children to stay inside and feel bored all day, they are unsure if they should embrace the Cat’s exciting, albeit rule-breaking, hijinks.

The story reaches its climax when the brother catches Thing 1 and Thing 2 with a net and implores the Cat to leave.

The Cat's early claim that he knows "some new tricks" and "some good games" understates his rebelliousness, impressive balancing and bouncing skills, and penchant for chaos.

The images of the Cat skillfully balancing various household items illustrates his dexterity and commitment to entertain Sally and her brother. The opening image of Sally and her brother staring at the gloomy rain creates a mundane, drab portrait of childhood.

The Cat himself is a paradox. He acts as a true agent of chaos, and his actions make an alarming mess in the children's home—and yet, he helps them clean, and by the time he leaves, all household items are back in their proper place.

Sally and her brother end the book exactly as they started: sitting in their chairs, staring outside the window, awaiting their mother’s return. Seuss uses the boy's narrator to further connect the children’s position at the story’s beginning and ending. In the opening stanza, the boy explains, "I sat there with Sally./We sat there we two" (5-6). In one of the final stanzas, he explains, “Then our mother came in/And she said to us two” (295-296). The parallelism of these two lines stresses the partnership between the siblings, as well as emphasizes the household’s revitalization to its neat, undisturbed condition.

The Cat in the Hat is one of the most famous examples of anthropomorphic personification, which grants human characteristics to an animal, plant, or object. While the Cat is clearly a cat with whiskers, a tail, and fur, he also embodies several human actions and behaviors, such as walking on two feet and talking.