A Pirate's Life For Me!

“I’m going to be a pirate when I grow up,” she cried. “Are you?” p160

I found these lines to be a very interesting way to end Pippi Longstocking. They made me ask myself, “Is Lindgren trying to say something about pirates and their behavior? Or considering Pippi’s background with pirates is she trying to indicate something about pirates’ influence on behavior – what one sees as “acceptable” or “unacceptable” behavior?”

While reading Pippi Longstocking I found myself wrestling with the question, “what does it mean to behave?” I found myself getting excited with Tommy and Annika when they were about to play with Pippi and frustrated at the same time because of the same reason – Pippi does not behave. It is exciting to be around someone who essentially is a rule-breaker and does things differently, but at the same time it could be annoying and irritating. Then I realized, Pippi doesn’t behave according to my social norms and culture. She behaves according to herself. Then I thought, “How did she form was it acceptable/unacceptable behavior without parents around for most of her life?” which led me to think about a few different behavioral theorists, specifically Pavlov, Skinner, and Bandura, and applying their theories to Pippi’s behavior. From this perspective, it is obvious why Pippi “doesn’t behave” according to me (and our society), but why she thinks she does behave.

You all remember Pavlov and his salivating dogs. What was he trying to prove? He used classical conditioning to show that behavior is learned through association. If you remember every time he fed his dogs, he rang a bell. He did this consistently to the point that when he only rang the bell, the dogs would salivate (expecting to be fed). Pippi learned some behavior from pirates when she was younger, but they are really the only people and environment she has ever been associated with.

Skinner associated learning behavior with rewards or punishment – you learn from the consequences of your behavior. Again, Pippi didn’t have parents to reward or punish her behavior; she essentially had to be her own parent and therefore behaved as she pleased.

Bandura formed the Social Learning Theory, which emphasizes that behavior is learned through social interaction and modeling is the primary method of learning for humans (an example of modeling just to give you a better understanding would be a child sees his parents always on the phone, so he will pick up the phone and pretend to carry on a conversation, just like his parents). Again, Pippi acts accordingly as she sees fit, but this made me wonder what kind of behavior she might be modeling that she picked up on from being around pirates?

Basically these three men all formed theories that revolve around a central theme of behavior. That behavior is all stimulus-response. The main stimulus-response Pippi got with her behavior came from being on the sea with her father and other pirates. They basically formed the norm for the foundation of her behavior, and when she lost them at sea she built her own behavioral norm off that foundation, which in our society is unacceptable behavior.

The reason I linked this together was because everytime Lindgren writes about Pippi misbehaving, she usually associates it with pirates. For example, Pippi asked Annika in reference to being invited to her mother’s coffee party “What if I can’t behave myself? …You can be sure I’ll try, but I have noticed several times that people don’t think I know how to behave even when I’m trying as hard as I can. At sea we were never so fussy about things like that.” P117 And again at the coffee party Lindgren writes, ‘“You must never come here again,” said Mrs. Settergren, “if you can’t behave any better than this.” Pippi looked at her in astonishment and her eyes slowly filled with tears. “That’s just what I was afraid of,” she said. “That I couldn’t behave properly. It’s no use to try; I’ll never learn. I should have stayed on the ocean.”’ P129