The Very Hungry Caterpillar: An Investigation

Awhile back, Xiaoxi and I had a little spat about this book, which apparently was not a part of her young life in China. A travesty, I say. She thinks otherwise. She thinks, in fact, that The Very Hungry Caterpillar is not a story. Her claim: All caterpillars are hungry. A caterpillar who eats through stuff and becomes a butterfly, therefore, is just a caterpillar, because that is what caterpillars do. In fact, she cried angrily, "That is NOT A STORY!"

This entry will not address the implications this might have for what defines a plot or what the necessary components of a story are. You can all decide that for yourself. My concern here is with just how hungry this caterpillar was. Was his hunger exceptional? Was he, in fact, very hungry, or was he simply doing what any old caterpillar would do to steel himself for two weeks of cocoon napping? (This entry also will not address the inaccuracy here: Eric Carle is aware of the fact that most caterpillars actually pupate in a chrysalis, not a cocoon. I refer you here for his explanations.)

According to my research, most caterpillars are herbivorous, and many chomp down only upon one species of plant. So yes, they eat leaves and not salami and ice cream, but how many leaves? Google (and Google Scholar) searches have yet to yield any helpful information regarding the quantity of food your average caterpillar consumes each day. I'm pretty disappointed, but apparently I have other work to do.

This begs another question, though: Should the book be retitled The Very Confused Caterpillar? Or The Caterpillar with an Exceptionally Sophisticated Palate? Come to think of it, the idea of a caterpillar eating salami is just weird. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. What is in salami anyway? A question for another day, I suppose.

So maybe Xiaoxi wins. Maybe this caterpillar, though his taste in food was rather strange considering his species, was not all that hungry. After all, as someone pointed out to me, he didn't eat EVERYTHING--he just ate HOLES in everything. He being so small and all. How does one even calculate the sustenance derived from a hole in an apple, a hole in an ice cream, a hole in a salami... clearly, the research I intended to do here was a bit over my head. I'm an English major, not a caterpillar expert, and I certainly don't have the time before graduation to follow a caterpillar around all day and see how much it eats.

Instead, I will leave you with three interesting and well-researched facts.*

1) The original title of the book was A Week With Willi Worm. Nothing to do with hunger! And also, probably, no plot.

2) The author was inspired by a hole puncher. He explains: "One day I was punching holes with a hole puncher into a stack of paper, and I thought of a bookworm and so I created a story called 'A Week with Willi the Worm'. Then my editor suggested a caterpillar instead and I said 'Butterfly!' That's how it began."

Aha! Maybe, then, all this hunger stuff is just a misread metaphor. The caterpillar is a bookworm! It's not really lollipops and Swiss cheese that he wants. He is hungry for Lit-tra-ture! That must be it.**

...and finally, and perhaps most importantly (though in no way related to the rest of the content of this post):
3) In 1999, the talented reader George W. Bush called the The Very Hungry Caterpillar one of his childhood favorites. Which is sweet, really, until you consider that he was 23 years old when the book came out. Who am I to judge? Far be it from me to determine when Mr. Bush's childhood ended, if ever it did.

And now we're all hungry and distraught, but full of food... for thought! HAH! Oh god I'm sorry. I'm going to go eat a hole and then crawl in it now.


*from the book's Wikipedia page, obviously
**I told you I'm an English major. Deal with it.