The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster

“Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you’re going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not.

“Well,” continued the watchdog impatiently, “since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.” And with that he hopped into the car.

“I never knew words could be so confusing,” Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog’s ear. “Only when you use a lot to say a little,” answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he’d heard all day.

He drew from inside his cape a small heavy box about the size of a schoolbook and handed it ceremoniously to Milo. “In this box are all the words I know,” he said. “Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is use them well and in the right places.”

“For instance,” said the boy again, “if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we’d all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered with tinsel, while the trees opened our presents.” “What does that have to do with it?” asked Milo. “Nothing at all,” he answered, “but it’s an interesting possibility, don’t you think?”

“Isn’t this everyone’s Point of View?” asked Tock, looking around curiously. “Of course not,” replied Alec, sitting himself down on nothing. “It’s only mine, and you certainly can’t always look at things from someone else’s Point of View. For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water,” he said, pointing to a bucket of water; “but from an ant’s point of view it’s a vast ocean, from an elephant’s just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it’s home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from. Now, come along and I’ll show you the rest of the forest.”

“I don’t hear any music,” said Milo. “That’s right,” said Alec; “you don’t listen to this concert—you watch it. Now, pay attention.” As the conductor waved his arms, he molded the air like handfuls of soft clay, and the musicians carefully followed his every direction. “What are they playing?” asked Tock, looking up inquisitively at Alec. “The sunset, of course. They play it every evening, about this time.” “They do?” said Milo quizzically. “Naturally,” answered Alec; “and they also play morning, noon, and night, when, of course, it’s morning, noon, or night. Why, there wouldn’t be any color in the world unless they played it. Each instrument plays a different one,” he explained, “and depending, of course, on what season it is and how the weather’s to be, the conductor chooses his score and directs the day. But watch: the sun has almost set, and in a moment you can ask Chroma himself.”

“IT’S LAUDABLE TO BE AUDIBLE”

“How about music?” asked Milo excitedly. “Right over here—we weave it on our looms. Symphonies are the large beautiful carpets with all the rhythms and melodies woven in. Concertos are these tapestries, and all the other bolts of cloth are serenades, waltzes, overtures, and rhapsodies. And we also have some of the songs that you often sing,” she cried, holding up a handful of brightly colored handkerchiefs.

“You must never feel badly about making mistakes,” explained Reason quietly, “as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.” “But there’s so much to learn,” he said, with a thoughtful frown. “Yes, that’s true,” admitted Rhyme; “but it’s not just learning things that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.”

Just to the left, and not very far away, were the Triple Demons of Compromise—one tall and thin, one short and fat, and the third exactly like the other two.

And, in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build, and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn’t know—music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real. His thoughts darted eagerly about as everything looked new—and worth trying.

While you were there, everything seemed fraught and new and notable, and when you returned, even if you didn’t suffer from Milovian ennui, the “real world” seemed deeper, richer, at once explained and, paradoxically, more mysterious than ever.

It has been repeatedly stated that children’s literature plays a specific role in totalitarian countries, because dictators don’t read children’s books and don’t think children’s books are important enough to bother with. Fortunately, dictators are wrong. Children’s books are incendiary stuff; they are liberating, they mold young minds, they teach children to think independently, to question, to investigate, just as Milo learns to do during his travels. In a country where at least a thousand writers paid for their words with their lives and many more with their freedom, how essential it was for writers to choose words cleverly, yet without compromise. As the Count of Connotation explains to Milo: “You must pick your words very carefully and be sure to say just what you intend to say.” Likewise, readers had to be skillful enough to see through the double meanings to the true intentions.

The mark of a great story is that it doesn’t finish when the pages do but lives on in the imagination of the reader for days, or weeks, or even fifty years.