#william steig

Wilhelm Reich's 'Listen, Little Man!' (1945)

Illustrations by William Steig

"For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say!”

“They promise you not individual but national freedom. They say nothing of self-respect but tell you to respect the state. They promise you not personal greatness but national greatness.” ―

“You listen on the radio to the announcements of laxatives, dental creams and deodorants. But you fail to hear the music of propaganda. You fail to perceive the bottomless stupidity and the disgustingly bad taste of these things which are designed to catch your ear.”

'Listen, Little Man is a human and not a scientific document. It was the result of the inner storms and conflicts of a natural scientist and physician (himself) who watched, over decades, first naively, then with amazement, and finally with horror, what the Little Man in the street does to himself; how he suffers and rebels, how he esteems his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he gains power and makes it into something more cruel than the power which previously he had to suffer ...'

Animated adaptations of four stories from the creator of Shrek. You can watch them here.