Dr. Seuss's the Lorax

The Lorax The Lorax by Dr. Seuss is a children's book about greed and destruction. The book is set in the forest of Truffula Trees. The Once-ler was riding through the country in his wagon one day and discovers the beautiful forest of Truffula Trees. Way back in the day when the grass was still green And the pond was still wet And the clouds were still clean, And the song of the Swomee-Swans rang out in spaceÐ'... One morning I came to this glorious place. And I first saw the trees! The Truffula Trees! The bright colored tufts of the Truffula Trees! Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze. The forest of the Truffula Trees was very lush and full of life. The Brown Bar-ba-loots were playing in their Bar-ba-loot suits and the Humming-Fish were humming. It was a utopia, a heaven on Earth. The Once-ler was greedy though and didn't see the natural beauty of the Truffula Trees. Instead, the Once-ler saw the trees and thought of all the money he could make by chopping them down and knitting their tufts into Thneeds. When he chopped down the first Truffula Tree the Lorax came to his office to speak for the trees. He begged the Once-ler to not chop down the Truffula Trees, but the Once-ler was convinced that his Thneeds were the things that everyone needs. A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need! It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat. But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that. So the Once-ler sold his first Thneed and he was in business. Here was the chance for the Once-ler and his family to be rich so he called them all up and started a business. The Once-ler built a factory and his business was in full tilt. He chopped as many Truffula Trees as he could and kept making more and more Thneeds. He expanded and used super ax hackers that could cut down four trees at once. The Lorax came back and had more complaints for the Once-ler. NOWÐ'... thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, There's not enough Truffula Fruit to go 'round. And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies! BUTÐ'... Business is business! And business must grow Regardless of crummies in tummies, you know. The Once-ler did not care about the environment. As he said, Business is business. All he cared about was profits and not the beauty of the land he was destroying. With each hack of his super ax hacker he was contributing to the destruction of the Truffula Tree forest. He didn't plant any Truffula Trees in place of the ones he cut down. He only had time to run his factory and make Thneeds. He kept making more Thneeds and making more money. Slowly all the animals that depended on the Truffula Trees for food, shelter, and fresh air had to move away from the barren wasteland that was once a beautiful and clean forest. The air was full of smog and the lakes were full of gook from the factory. The Lorax and the Once-ler fought until the very last Truffula Tree was chopped. The Once-lers family left and so did the Lorax. Just the Once-ler and his factory were left. But the Lorax left one thing, a small pile of rocks with a word carved into them, UNLESS. So for years and years the Once-ler sat in his house on top of his factory and worried about what he had done. In his heart he felt terrible that he let his greed cause so much destruction. So one day he told his story to a boy that wandered to his house. He told the boy that the meaning of the pile of rocks that the Lorax left behind was clear to him now. Unless someone who cares a lot does something, nothing is going to get better. So he gave the boy the very last Truffula Tree seed and told him to plant it and protect it, and maybe some day there would be a forest of Truffula Trees again. The Lorax, written in 1971 was Dr. Seuss' personal favorite. He wrote a masterpiece about pollution- its causes and the solutions. The book was made into a television special for the CBS network, which necessitated some toning down of the criticism of big businesses in the book, in order not to offend the program's commercial sponsors. Of all the Dr. Seuss books, The Lorax is the most strident and most thinly veiled of all the allegories, and its message, both to big businesses and young readers, is crystal clear. The Lorax is hard to describe. His appearance on the stump of the first Truffula Tree that is axed suggests that he is a nature spirit, living in the tree and liberated by the chopping. It also says that he needs a soapbox or a pulpit to get his message across. He is clearly some kind of messenger or supernatural guardian of living but defenseless things, for as he says, I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. The name calling and arguing between the Once-ler and the Lorax suggests that Dr. Seuss had very strong feelings on the issues he is discussing and the message that he is trying to convey. The Once-ler's goals sound like old adages and common sense. Business is business!/ And business must grow is a typical American attitude, adopted when the resources of our continent seemed limitless, and when a growth economy was the only way known to measure business success and prosperity. In opposition to the Once-ler, the Lorax points out the problems involved in the conduct of business, especially manufacturing industries-destruction of natural resources with no concern for replacing them, and pollution of the rest of the natural habitat, with the destruction of animals. The animals in the story do not die, but they do suffer: the Bar-ba-loots have crummies in their tummies, the Swomee-Swans have smog in their

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