This is a story about the Once-ler, an entrepreneur
who discovers a land with diverse creatures
and beautiful Truffula trees.
He chops down a tree and with the tree's tuft,
sews a thneed, a mysterious product that can
transform into several cloth-based products.
The Lorax appears, a small creature who claims
to speak for nature.
He confronts the Once-ler about chopping the
tree, saying that no one will buy a thneed.
However, the Once-ler quickly sells the thneed
and seeing that a profit can be made, calls
his entire family to help build a business.
Over the course of time, as the thneed business
grows bigger and bigger, more and more trees
are chopped.
This creates a food shortage and air and water
pollution in the area, forcing the native
creatures to leave.
Eventually, there are no more Truffula trees,
which shuts down the business, leaving the
Once-ler alone.
Yes, this story is about the environment and
resource conservation, but it's also about
capitalism.
From a pure business standpoint, the Once-ler
does nothing wrong.
He creates a product, ironically organic by
today's standards, and makes money on his
own ingenuity and hard work.
However, he is a little short-sighted for
not planning ahead for the longevity of a
business that relies on natural resources.
In hindsight, he needed to plant trees to
farm for future use.
Also, what exactly is a thneed?
In the story, the Once-ler claims that a thneed
is something that everyone needs, but is it?
A thneed does have many advantages in that
it can be a lot of things and that versatility
can be quite useful.
Instead of a consumer buying several different
products, potentially draining more natural
resources, the purchase of one product that
can become several others, in a way, saves
resources.
The ending is quite dreary.
It isn't the typical "happily ever after"
ending.
In fact, the end of the story really becomes
the beginning of another - a real life story
that the reader is encouraged to begin.
In the gesture of presenting the child with
a Truffula seed at the end, a lot of responsibility
rests on the reader.
In fact, a lot of the storytelling conventions
that children typically understand and expect
are ambiguous in this story.
Are readers supposed to hate the Once-ler?
Is he even the bad guy?`
Well, no.
In a lot of ways, the Once-ler is the tragic
hero trying to make things right that were
turned wrong.
He really doesn't know what to do, but hopes
that the child, or reader, can help.
And although he directly causes the potential
extinction of the Truffula tree, indirectly
the society that bought the product is responsible
as well.
And so there is no "one bad guy" that's to
blame, but a societal paradigm that needs
changing.
So unless someone like you cares a whole awful,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
