Boundaries of Freedom

Toni Morris, with the help of her son, Slade Morrison, once again writes a book that encourages people to think on a deeper level.  Unlike the majority of her writings, this is a children’s book that challenges the definition of social boundaries adults set for children.  In The Big Box, parents, teachers, and other adults determine the boundaries of personal freedom for three irrepressible children “who just can’t handle their freedom.”  Because these children don’t fit into the expectations that the adults have for how children should behave and act, the adults have created a world inside a box where the kids are to live.  The adults have supplied everything they think children would want:  toys, games, gifts, and treats.  In this artificial world, the children are expected to live carefree and happily.  What the adults don’t take into consideration is that all the children desire is to be accepted for who they are and to have freedom.    

     The Big Box’s story is easy to read due to its poetic rhyme and repetition and its gentle flow from page to page.  Though the story is told with a child’s perspective and addresses the struggles I’m sure that children go through when trying to live in an adult world, I feel like the message of the book is perhaps too deep for smaller children to grasp.  This book seems more fitting for teenagers and adults.    

     When reading The Big Box, I started making connections to Morrison’s book, Beloved.   In Beloved, several of the main characters came from a plantation named Sweet Home where they served as slaves.  Though Sweet Home could be considered a place of comfort and privilege for slaves, it was nonetheless a place where individuals were denied their freedom to come and go and live the life they desired.  This is directly connected to the position that the children in The Big Box found themselves.  Though they were given what would seem to be everything they could want, they did not have their freedom.  Both of these books represent how important and instrumental freedom is for all. 

     As Schoolteacher in Beloved saw the slaves as subjects of experimentation and specimens that should be controlled, the parents in The Big Box believed that the children needed to be “cured” and until one could be found, they would control the children’s environment.  In both instances, a group condemned and controlled others because the segregated group didn’t fit the expectations and the controlling group ultimately decided their fate and thereby took away their freedom. 

     Both of these stories are about oppression of minority groups: in this case blacks and children.  In both literary works, the oppressed groups expressed a strong desire to be free.  Both groups compared their lack of freedom to the freedom animals naturally have in our world.  It is indeed difficult to understand and justify not being able to live your life, to express who you are, and to be an individual, when others, whether because they are white or because they are adults, are allowed not only make decisions for their own lives, but also determine the boundaries of personal freedom for others.