Speak Up
- Gertrude, we soon see, is the kind of bird who does something about her misery, flying immediately to see her Uncle Dake, who must be some kind of plastic surgeon.
- Hey, who cares about Dr. 90210 when you've got a guy with an office by a lake?
- Gertrude wants a magic pill to make it all right, which is scarily accurately on Seuss' side about where our society was headed in the half century that followed the publication of this story. Dake, as it turns out, is our normative character, looking maddeningly reasonable and empathetic up there on his perch as he tells Gertrude she's got just the right tail for who she is and that talk of change is absurd.
- Which is true, but um… have you ever reacted kindly when someone called you absurd?:
- "Oh, I'm acting absurd? That very much validates my deeper pain. Now that my suffering has been acknowledged, I'll leave your swanky nest now and let you alone. OR WOULD THAT BE AN ABSURD THING TO DO?"
- What does this Dake character know about it anyway? His tail is even more pathetic than Gertrude's. It's no wonder he relents in the face of her tantrums and tells Gertrude where she can find a "pill-berry vine" on the top of a hill.
- Wait a second. Pill-berry vine on the top of a hill? We want to go to there.