There's More than One Way to Butter your Bread
- So what's the deal with this Wall dividing Yook from Zook? Why does Grandpa seem so bummed out?
- We learn that the Wall was built to keep the Zooks out. But it could've also been built to keep the Yooks in—we're not sure.
- One thing's clear, though: there's no love between Yook and Zook because, as Grandpa tells the young Yook, "In every Zook house and in every Zook town / every Zook eats his bread / with the butter side down" (16-18).
- Yooks, on the other hand, eat their bread "with the butter side up" (22).
- Seems silly, right? Why can't they get along even though they eat their bread differently?
- The drawing of the Zooks doesn't look too frightening. As a matter of fact, they look very much like the Yooks, just with different colored clothes.
- The problem is that little differences like this very quickly translate to value judgments.
- Grandpa says the Yook way of buttering bread is "the right, honest way!" (23). But the Zooks' way of buttering bread is a "terribly horrible thing" (15).
- Of course, judging actions is a slippery slope to making dangerous generalizations as Grandpa does when he explains, "Every Zook must be watched! / He has kinks in his soul!" (26-27)
- So Grandpa does what he thinks must be done and joins the "Zook-Watching Border Patrol" (29). Sounds like trouble.