James And The Giant Peach

The theme of acceptance flows throughout the book. James is sent to live with his aunts following his parents’ death. Even though they are directly related to James, his cruel aunts do not accept him into their family unit of two. They treat their four-year-old nephew like a slave, never showing interest or love towards him. When he does try and integrate—for example, when he asks to help sell tickets he is told, “the last thing we want is the likes of you messing things up and getting in the way” (26)—he is always excluded.

The reason for his aunts’ cruelty is not James’s behavior, since James accepts his situation with his brutal aunts without argument. Their cruelty stems from their narcissistic, self-absorbed personalities, traits which preclude the acceptance of anyone else into their lives. Therefore, the aunts lead narrow, sad lives, cut short by greed. When James meets the giant insects, he is accepted without question by all of them, despite being unrelated and from a different species. For the first time since living with his parents, James feels welcomed into a community.

The personified group of insects also accept each other, even though in nature, centipedes, grasshoppers, ladybugs, and the others do not mingle. When James expresses his disbelief about where some insects have their ears, Centipede is quick to point out that to insects, having ears on the side of one’s head is “ridiculous,” shutting down judgment based on physical attributes and allowing the reader see things from the insect’s perspective. The acceptance of James, a human, by the group of insects is even more impressive since Miss Spider watched Sponge kill both her father and her grandmother, based on nothing other than humans’ bias against spiders. When James asks Spider about how she is perceived she tells him, “I am not loved at all. And yet I do nothing but good. All day long I catch flies and mosquitoes in my webs. […] It is very unfair the way we Spiders are treated” (91). Despite this, Miss Spider accepts and loves James without reservation.

The furor that erupts in New York city when Centipede and Spider peek over the peach highlights the tendency of people to jump to conclusions—that the unknown (giant insects) is dangerous, and therefore bad. It takes a young boy to overturn the preconceived ideas formed by the people of New York, who rapidly turn from an angry mob to a cheering welcoming committee. Being open, accepting, and listening to James, is all it took for the people of New York to embrace and accept the giant insects, who in their turn become productive and cherished members of society.