6/22/2023 0 Comments The tollbooth phantom![]() These doldrums, like those in The Phantom Tollbooth, took many of us by surprise. I’ve thought of this passage often over the last year, and somehow it felt fittingly mournful that its author, Norton Juster, died just as we were reaching the sad milestone of a year of pandemic life-though, of course, that anniversary is slightly different for everyone. ![]() When Milo objects that everyone thinks, they shoot back that most of the time, in fact, people don’t, and in fact that’s why Milo is in the Doldrums. Its inhabitants, the Lethargarians, are firmly wedded to their torpor, sticking to a strict schedule of doing nothing at all and telling Milo that thinking is against the law (“Ordinance 175389-J: It shall be unlawful, illegal, and unethical to think, think of thinking, surmise, presume, reason, meditate, or speculate while in the Doldrums”). ![]() He has strayed into this land of stasis by failing to pay attention to where he’s going, and, an inhabitant tells him slowly, it’s called The Doldrums: “‘The Doldrums, my young friend, are where nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes.’” The world loses all its color, everything becoming “grayer and monotonous.” He feels drowsy, his car won’t move, and finally he comes to a dead stop. ![]() ![]() In The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo-the child-hero driving through a world of word and number play-accidentally enters a low, dull place. ![]()
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