Reading (I am Otter) generates tolerance & love as alternatives to social competition

Part VII: Review of Sam Garton's I am Otter by Béatrice Dumiche

I am Otter introduces children to reading as a process allowing them to understand what happens around them by interpreting actions and reactions through a dialogue with adults who, at their own turn, re-appropriate these abilities which enables them to adapt individually and create personal bonds on the basis of reciprocal recognition. Otter is actually and symbolically the facilitator of this process which occurs in the reintroduction of interpersonal relationships since they have become almost extinct in a society which treats them as a cause for disturbance. She makes clear that trouble is the expression of vitality since life only develops by the concrete experience of otherness as an interactive transformation. Otter’s arguments with Keeper become more significant too since they introduce children into the adult world not as the necessity to conform, but as the experience of the natural existence in life. She incarnates a challenge not only for Keeper but for all the readers who face the questions she raises and who, by interpreting her behavior, become mediators between them while commenting on the story.  Otter’s education appears a common concern which unites actively the readers to the characters they enrich with their own reflection and experience.  The plot in I am Otter evolves from the pictured depiction of the interrelationship between Otter and Keeper; giving the readers insight about how they live stretching to a symbolic level letting everyone the freedom - and the responsibility - of one’s own interpretation. This changes according to the different stages of self-awareness, letting the children integrate the subtleties of the book as they grow, while it remains easy and playful so that they will not become discouraged. Thus it stimulates curiosity – another natural quality of otters – letting children become eager to read in order to grasp a deeper understanding of the characters and their actions so that they are in a better position to defend their point of view.

So, one could say that Otter is a very complex transitional character as she will enable adults to free emotions they have denied and unconsciously associated with childhood. She involves them in an educational project which aims to restore symbolic thinking by the development of creative imagination.  The adult readers’ participation in her story reconnects them with themselves which enables them to communicate with children while taking into account their different needs as a natural challenge to their own empathy and invention, helping them evolve according to their own stage of consciousness. Otter’s troublesome being reveals to them the paradox of evolution which requires the awareness and acknowledgement of otherness in order to improve oneself and generate love and gratitude between individuals. They realize that tensions and conflicts are part of mental growth which requires the setting of limits and acceptance of those limits.

Hence, I am Otter is not a one-sided moral enterprise which aims to teach adequate behavior according to what was admittedly right or wrong in an existing society; it is humorous and playful fiction which trains mentally how to adapt for a common good.  Interacting with adults, on the basis of the book, children will become more conscious of their own needs and those which are important for their socialization so that they can better decide on what matters for themselves. So, like their heroine, they are led to understand that limits are indispensable for their protection and that the adults’ authority is justified to prevent them from experiences they wouldn’t be able to cope with alone. The adults let children become conscious that autonomy doesn’t mean only to be able to do without them; it also means to know when they need them. This way, children learn confidence in their own abilities which enables them to make their own decision according to what they believe is right for them. The readers of I am Otter won’t ever become bored of Otter’s adventures as they evolve with her enjoying learning about themselves while having fun with her.

Thus, Sam Garton reintroduces sociability as an essential quality which makes the success of humanity - understanding that playing is a way to develop personal sensibility linking emotions and the intelligence to express them in a symbolic form. Otter lets adults feel what they owe to life as she reminds them that what they appreciated in childhood is the freedom games and tricks seemed to represent and which they rediscover through a fiction showing them that most have been reinvented in their memories for their own fun and distraction from what they miss so much since they have grown up. So, the encounter of Otter and Keeper illustrates that what makes life rich is the continuous exchange between imagination and the experience of its limits, which is natural to children.  While adults, on the other hand, acknowledge that literature – especially children’s literature – gives them the opportunity to live out their fantasies & imagination that they associate with a childhood which may never have existed yet still inspires them by stimulating their curiosity for a challenging, even provocative otherness.

This sheds light on Otter’s fascinating ambiguity which captivates both adults and children as she represents what was taboo in childhood and had therefore become a phantasm for grown-ups they will reproduce in their education if they don’t find a way to express it symbolically so that it can be discussed and assimilated in the reciprocal understanding of its constructive use. She takes advantage of her fictional personality to bring about the freedom of imagination as she is completely innocent and wild and doesn’t live but for herself. The sympathy she will get is then only for what she is; no expectations are attached as Keeper’s own behavior gives her no directives - just toys - and lets her be completely free. This creates a situation where she isn’t judged while adult readers are discharged of feeling responsible for what Keeper does, as Otter is “only” a fictional character in a book. Otter doesn’t evoke any existing real model so that she can’t be misused as a reference - by children or by grown-ups - who feel discharged of any responsibility for the rules she breaks since she is under the care of Keeper.  Entering her world means recognizing the fiction where she lives in as a symbolic place where taboos can be represented at an imaginary level because anyone needs to vent frustrations and aggressions which work against socialization. Otter’s cuteness and smartness express transgression in a rather harmless form and reveal its normality, showing that imagination can’t be controlled and therefore must find its proper medium and its proper style to be realized consciously connecting the Self to a symbolic otherness and includes its phantasm in a dialog so that it becomes understandable and solicits reactions. Thus, Sam Garton demonstrates that his book is opposite traditional education which aims at the inhibition of unsocial feelings to that of a moral.  Garton underlines that aggressions must be exhibited in order to not become destructive for oneself and others in real life; yet the negativity of the aggression becomes obvious without being judged because they belong to Otter’s unconscious animalism.  

Otter is an independent character living in her own world. This gives her enough consistency to be taken seriously by children who guess that they are like her in a phase of evolution where their situation relates to growing up.  Their identification with her let them evolve towards their own independence while having communication with adults helping to evaluate their actions according to their chances of success and not according to moral issues. Otter supports them in developing their adaptability as she invites them to participate in her games at their own stage of consciousness since playfulness has revealed the most efficient social link between different individuals who must adjust their expectations.

Thus, Otter liberates parents, not only from their own moral inhibitions, but she illustrates that any projection on social achievement of their children is unfair.  So, Otter invites both children and adults to evolve by renouncing their inadequate representation of the other’s stage of evolution to play freely. She offers them an uninterested ‘bystander’ which is only motivated by the pleasure to enjoy childhood by stimulating the power of imagination to learn how to better know each other without any ulterior motive, just to satisfy an innate interest in otherness at the service of personal enrichment since learning about others makes one happy and increases the curiosity for anything that lives and grows.  Thus, adaption becomes a game which doesn’t anticipate the children’s own experiences, yet lets them guess that they are related to their predecessors who went through the same process while growing up. The book opens a fictional space where the exchanges between generations reveal the continuity of life while preparing future changes at the brink of consciousness; it appears a quasi-magic structure where past and future not only interfere, yet elaborate how they will link virtually to transmit the indispensable knowledge for individual and collective survival. It supports a mental process which allows fantasy, setting it free from social conditioning to work out more dynamic forms of living together at an experimental level which playfulness is the most important aptitude as it generates temporary and adaptable rules which never exclude alternatives to integrate new unpredictable developments. In fact, it requires an open-mind which contributes to enlarge by increasing its public which will evolve individually thanks to their encounter with Otter who will let them surmount social conformism to find out what really matters to them in their own life.      

I am Otter interferes with reality, yet it doesn’t pretend to shape it as it works only at an individual level which supposes an autonomous adhesion to its purpose based on the principle of pleasure to counterbalance the unequal repartition between imagination and realism in the existing socialization which accentuates separations and leads to inappropriate fantasies alimenting an increasing discomfort in the actual existence which children’s education is revelatory for. Restoring the importance of playfulness from an evolutionary perspective, Sam Garton positions himself far from an educational purpose which aims to transmit advice for living since only life can provide it by experience. Through the experience of childhood, the revival of playfulness allows an individual criticism of society which solicits personal responsibility and action as a provocative opposition to conformism which however will only be understood by those who are mature enough because they are conscious that individual manifestations of autonomy create more empathy and insight through connection than social ones. Readers see themselves in Keeper who has been transformed by his encounter with Otter who awakened Keeper’s creativity and gave him the courage to show symbolically his uniqueness within the limits of existing society.

To be continued....stay tuned