This paper analyzes two mid-twentieth-century children's books — Hector Goes Fishing (Hallowell, 1958) and Moke and Poki Build a House (Funai, 1972) — through the lenses of gender, race, and socioeconomic class. The analysis examines how Hector's rural, working-class background reinforces expectations of boyhood behavior, and how the Menehune characters Moke and Poki reflect stereotypes associated with indigenous Hawaiian and Polynesian cultures. By comparing character roles, illustrations, and narrative details, the paper reveals how both stories encode social norms even when their protagonists deviate from conventional behavior.
In the first story, Hector Goes Fishing, a seven-year-old boy named Hector is bored and goes fishing. At the river, he meets a fish, then a duck, then a river rat, all of whom talk to him and are confused as to why he does not kill them. Hector becomes their friend just before two older boys arrive and try to kill the animals. Hector defends his friends and gets pushed into the river by the older boys. The animals then call all of their friends to scare the older boys away and save Hector (Hallowell, 1958).
In the second story, Moke and Poki Build a House, two Hawaiian "little people" named Moke and Poki decide to build a house for Moke, who is tired of living in a bush. All of their animal friends help them build the house and, as a result, want to live in it too. Poki, however, still lives in his bush. After a heavy rain, the house leaks and then collapses. All of the animals and Moke run to Poki's bush, where Poki lets them in to sleep warm and dry (Funai, 1972).
In Hector Goes Fishing, Hector is clearly the main character. Throughout the book he defines himself as a boy who acts out of the ordinary. His mother offers him worms for fishing, yet he declines because "they're busy" (Hallowell, 1958, p. 11). Later, when Hector encounters the animals, each one is shocked that he does not want to trap or kill them. Each animal suggests how happy Hector's mother or father will be if he catches it and takes it home. Yet Hector insists that he does not want to kill anything he can talk to (Hallowell, 1958).
Hector is clearly the child of a rural, working-class family. From the illustrations we know that he is also white. When he leaves home to go fishing, his mother is working in the garden and his father is at work. His mother wants him to catch a fish she can make for dinner. This detail, along with the home garden, speaks to a rural lifestyle and a family tendency toward procuring their own food. When Hector talks to the fish about its scales, he asks, "Do you have to have them patched often, the way Pa patches our roof?" (Hallowell, 1958, p. 18). The fact that his roof frequently needs repairs suggests the family is not wealthy.
Despite their modest means, Hector's mother is home while his father is at work, establishing a traditional gender division in a typical nuclear family arrangement. Other indicators of gender are embedded in Hector's actions and inactions: he does not do the things that "regular" boys are expected to do. The older boys want to shoot the duck and the rat, and the animals also find it strange that a young boy would not want to kill them. Even his mother is surprised that he does not want to bother the "busy" worms (Hallowell, 1958, p. 11). All of these details reinforce the stereotype that a young boy growing up in the country and from a working-class background would naturally enjoy hunting and fishing.
In Moke and Poki Build a House, the main characters are the two friends, Moke and Poki. They are Menehune — a group of legendary little people said to live in the rainforests of Hawaii. Though they are fictional, Moke and Poki display many traits associated with native Hawaiian and Polynesian peoples more broadly. Both characters are male, though it is difficult to determine whether they are adults or children. There are no parental figures and no female characters. Moke and Poki's friends are all animals, and none of them are described using gendered pronouns; they are simply called Crayfish, Nene-goose, Dog, and Cricket (Funai, 1972).
Moke and Poki are portrayed in the illustrations as having darker skin, and because the story is set in Hawaii and uses Hawaiian words, they are easily associated with Polynesian people. The first thing we learn is that they live in a bush, though Moke wants to move into a house. They look for a house but cannot find one. This perhaps suggests that, as native people, they are primitive and far removed from modern society — although this implication is probably unintentional on the author's part. Though they are the main characters and the only human-like figures in the story, Moke and Poki are not in charge of the animals; after helping to build the house, all of the animals claim ownership of it as well. This dynamic can be read in relation to the stereotype that indigenous and tribal cultures have a uniquely reverential relationship with animals (Funai, 1972).
In both stories, the main characters exhibit roles that are in some way unusual. Yet in Hector Goes Fishing, the other characters are aware — and sometimes explicitly point out — that Hector is behaving differently than someone like him would be expected to (Hallowell, 1958). In Moke and Poki Build a House, by contrast, the characters' relationships and actions are presented as entirely normal. Only once does Poki call Moke "silly" for not wanting to live in a bush anymore (Funai, 1972, p. 6). Still, Moke and Poki's "regular" behavior reflects stereotypical portrayals of native culture, while Hector's story defines what "regular" boys are supposed to do precisely by showing him failing to do it (Hallowell, 1958).
As far as socioeconomic status is concerned, the characters in both stories are shown living modestly. As discussed, Hector's family is most likely working class. Moke and Poki live in a bush, and even the house they build is poorly constructed and collapses, suggesting limited practical skills (Funai, 1972). Hector displays a similar gap in knowledge when he refers to the fish's scales as "shingles" (Hallowell, 1958, p. 18). Taken together, the two books reflect how children's literature of this era often embedded assumptions about class, gender, and race into its narratives, frequently through seemingly incidental details.
"Contrasting how norms are encoded in each text"
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