The Lorax
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Lorax is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss and first published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, who speaks for the trees against the greedy Once-ler. As in most Dr. Seuss works, most of the creatures mentioned are original to the book.
The book is commonly recognized as a fable concerning the danger corporate greed poses to nature, using the literary element of personification to give life to industry as the Once-ler (whose face is never shown in any of the story's illustrations or in the television special) and the environment as The Lorax.
Plot
A young boy living in a town visits a strange isolated man called the Once-ler "on the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows... in the Street of the Lifted Lorax", who never appears fully in illustrations; only his arms are shown. The boy pays the Once-ler fifteen cents, a nail, and the shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail to explain why the area is in such a run-down state. The Once-ler explains to the boy (shown in flashback) how he once arrived in a beautiful, pristine valley containing happy, playful fauna that spent their days romping around blissfully among "Truffula trees". The Once-ler proceeded to cut down the Truffula trees to gather raw material to knit "Thneeds," a ridiculously versatile invention of his, "which everyone needs". Thneeds could be used as a shirt, a sock, a glove, a hat, a carpet, a pillow, a sheet, a curtain, a seat cover, and countless other things.
By cutting down the tree, however, he summoned the titular Lorax to appear from the stump of a Truffula tree. He "speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues" and warned the Once-ler of the consequences of cutting down the truffula trees, but the Once-ler ignored him, instead calling his relatives to come and work in his factory.
As soon as the Thneed industry kept expanding, the once beautiful area became choked with pollution and the Lorax sent away the fauna to find more hospitable habitats. Finally disgruntled by the Lorax, the Once-ler declared his intention to keep "biggering" his operations, but at that very moment, they heard the very last Truffula tree get cut down. Without raw materials, his factory shut down; without the factory, his relatives left. Then the Lorax, silently, with one "very sad, sad backward glance", lifted himself by his posterior and flew away through the clouds.
The Once-ler lingered on in his crumbling residence where he dwelt in great distress, and he pondered over a message the Lorax left behind: a stone slab etched with the word "Unless". In the present, he now realizes that the Lorax means that unless someone cares, the situation will not improve. The Once-ler then gives the boy the last Truffula seed and tells him to plant it, saying that if the boy grows a whole forest of the trees, "the Lorax, and all of his friends may come back."
