Primary Source Summary Example

In this promotional movie poster from the motion picture Where the Wild Things Are, directed by Spike Jonze, a young child stands next to a creature. Like the child, the creature (whom many might describe as a monster) is bipedal and has one arm draped over the child’s shoulder. One cannot view the entire face of the creature. Instead, the creature’s legs, arms and torso are the most highly visible, however, the monster is also smiling. The creature has coat of fur, but legs with feathers. The child is young, most likely male, and white, and he is yelling. Unlike the monster who is too large to be considered a normative human, the boy wears a sort of costume in a type of likeness of the creature. Moreover, a golden crown graces the boy’s head over his full-bodied outfit. There is only cursory writing in a scrawled, untidy hand including: “There’s one in all of us”; the title of the film, “Where the Wild Things Are”; and “Fall 2009”, denoting the timeframe for release; and, lastly, small logos and information regarding the companies that made and own the film at the bottom of the poster. From the prominent position of the title in the exact middle of the poster, the viewer might discern that the creature is in fact one of the “wild things” of the title. The background where the boy and wild thing stand appears, from the little that is visible, to be a forest where the leaves have changed and fallen to the ground.