An Awful, Awful DYNNE

SO I've just finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth, and i can tell you -just by  looking at my annotations- This. Was not. A simple book. There are Soooo many things to follow. To the naked eye it may just seem like a whole bunch of word play, themes, trick questions, rhetorical questions, questions you ask yourself everyday, questions you don't ask yourself everyday, connections to the world, purpose, conflict. . .lots of conflict.(exetera) This book does give you a lot to think about, weather you would be seven or seventy. And yea, it would take a VERY long time to organize everything that is going on in this book, and to really get to the bottom of exactly what Norton Juster was trying to tell us about the world.
All this is way too much for someone like me to really put all together in just a measly week's time, so basically what i did, was prioritise these three concepts:

• changes in Juster's writing style
• Monarchies and empires
• conflict and character disposition. 

In the beginning of the book, i kinda think that the writing was pretty cold, like, its very straight forward and in a way, i think it was pretty boring. I usually prefer books that establish a character overtime or one that you have to really have to understand and learn about threw the text. but no. Norton juster just came right out with it:

"There once was a boy named Milo,"

There's really not much to it. Then four pages later, he's in a new world. In this new world, there isn't much description, and most of all that happens is world play. But then i saw a change, and it sorta made me stop reading and be like "wait." The description in this book seemed to stand out, as if most of it was replaced with dialogue and suddenly it pop ed up and was like "HEY" to my face. It just didn't really match up to the rest of Norton Juster's writing style in the book.

Monarchies and Empires. As i learned more and more about who this Norton Juster guy really was, i discovered more and more patterns and symbolism in the book. For instance, when i learned that Juster had practically just returned from war when he wrote this book, i started to look for conflict and symbolism that would relate to war and freedom and rights. And sure enough; there were tooooooons.
-rhyme and reason
-azaz and the math mathematician
-silent valley
. . .you get were I'm going with this.

Conflict and character disposition.

Every kingdom, valley, island, or whatever Milo and Tock ended up landing on had a problem. A problem that the people were unhappy with and needed solving. however the leader of each land also had a problem, a problem that only rhyme and reason were able to work out. the problem that the villagers had were all very simple and easy to solve, they could probably be ended by just about anybody. But for some reason Juster had to send Milo on a mission to do it himself... Why?
Maybe it was to build character, i haven't really looked into that yet, but one thing i do know is that Milo is a very complex character and Norton Juster is definantly trying to say something threw him.
Like, he enters a whole new world that he knows nothing about and ends up on a very dangerous quest.
Now, if this was me, i would be flipping out and crying, and trying to find my way back home. But no. Milo stays, and i don't think that for the majority of the book, you ever really know were he stands on weather he likes the world or not, or weather he wants to go back home or if he wants to stay.

"there once was a boy named milo who didn't know what do do with himself-not just sometimes, but always. when he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. wherever we was he wished he were somewere else."

I'm guessing Juster did this to show change in Milo. He didn't seem to want to back and he didn't seem to want to stay either. all he really mind about was weather he was lost or not. And the answer to that was, i think, something along the lines of "maybe".