The Lorax

The Lorax by Dr. Suess, published in 1971, tells the story of how a business destroyed all of the nature around it. It begins in a dark and desolate place where the hermit the Oncler lives.  A child asks the Oncler to tell the story of how the Lorax was lifted away.  The reader quickly learns that this barren wasteland of the beginning once was a thriving ecosystem.  The Oncler started a company that sold a product that required the trees tufts.  So in order to keep "biggering" all the trees were killed in order for monetary gain. During this process all the animals had to move away to try to survive. The Lorax, the character that spoke for the trees defeated gave up once all nature was lost, and lifted himself into the sky and was not seen again.  At  the end of the book the Oncler bestows the last truffle seed to the child, showing that there is hope for someone to care again, and bring back nature, the various animals and the Lorax.  This book is pertinent to all ages although it is written as a children's storybook.  Here is a read-aloud version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUi6RG4UVBk.

The Oncler represents the bourgeoise, who controls the means to produce the good of the thneed.  All of his family that rolls into town represents the proletariat class, who are the workers for the Oncler.  Once the work was gone, they had to move on to keep economically functional.  The truffle trees, the brown barbaloots, and the swammee swans, are the parts of nature that are abused horrifically.  The Oncler is isolated for so many years that his actions as a captain of capitalism are causing a contradiction and tension  within him, which then results in him asking the child he just told the story to take the last truffle seed. "Plant a new truffula.  Treat it with care.  Give it clean water.  And feed it it fresh air.  Grow a forest.  Protect it from axes that hack.  Then the Lorax and all his friends may come back."  Here he is calling for a revolution, to undo all that he did as the bourgeoise in the capitalist machine.

This illuminates this text to show that is just more than a hippy tree-hugger book.  It shows the dangers of greediness and inhumanity that usually comes along with capitalism.

This quote from the Oncler shows that many businesses lead by the rich and powerful bourgeois do not know when to quit, even when the resources they use are running low, and all of the nature around them is destroyed.  The most fascinating part I have always found in this book is that the Onceler's face is never shown.  This allows the reader to substitute themselves or a business they know in for the Onceler.  This also shows the facelessness of large corporations and of greedy business leaders.  They are faceless because they never own up to their actions. They hide behind the name of the company and what they sell.