Ruth Carruthers: The Lorax
A look at the classic Dr Seuss book and the relevance of its environmental message today.
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Whilst we’re anticipating the cinema release of Where the Wild Things Are, I thought I’d use this opportunity to bring Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax to your attention. It's another children's classic from the same era that’s equally full of wild things, and is also about to be turned into a blockbuster film.
If you don’t know the story already The Lorax, which was published in 1971, is Seuss’ ‘green’ tale. Here’s my much condensed version of it:
"It starts way back in the days when the grass was still green and the clouds were still clean, in a land where grow Truffula Trees, mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze. And, under the trees play the Brown Bar-ba-loots, frisking about eating Truffula Fruits.
Then along comes a Once-ler, who in no time at all, built a small shop, then lopped down a Truffula Tree with one chop, and with great speedy speed he knitted a Thneed – a Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need. The Once-ler becomes greedy and chops down more trees to make thousands of these, but thankfully there’s The Lorax who speaks for the trees, and believes no one on earth would buy that fool Thneed. Except the Lorax was wrong, people thought Thneeds were great, and before he knew it the trees were all gone.
The whole time the Lorax kept trying to say no, but the Once-ler insisted that his business did grow, and soon the Bar-ba-loots had nothing to eat, and were left with no choice but to leave on their feet.
Soon there was nothing but an eerie bare land filled with smogulouse smoke and water that’s smeary, and all that the Lorax left here in this mess, was a small pile of rocks with the word ‘unless.’ For the Once-ler the word of The Lorax was clear; Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not…"
Even if you haven’t heard the story before, replace the Once-ler with a corporate giant, the Bar-ba-loots with any animal, and the Lorax with the likes of Greenpeace, and the story starts to sound a whole lot more familiar.
I was in love with the stories of Dr. Seuss when I was a kid. But I’m even more in awe of him now as I’m hit by the realisation that this guy - along with so many people in the 1960s and 1970s - was completely ahead of his time. This story is more relevant now than it ever was.
It’s taken world leaders several decades to realise that using up all the world's finite resources in pursuit of endless economic growth was maybe not such a good idea after all, despite countless people trying to warn them so. The crazy thing is that Dr. Seuss and a bunch of kids were trying to tell them that in the 1970s. It’s a shame they didn’t listen.
The Lorax has been adopted by Universal Pictures who are giving the book a 3D animated makeover, and is set for worldwide release in March 2012. My main reason for bringing it up now is that November 28th is officially international Buy Nothing Day - a day when we’re all encouraged to “switch off from shopping and tune into life.”
On the run up to Christmas, you may find this particularly difficult. I find it tricky on an average day to leave the house without haemorrhaging money. But that’s precisely the point - it’s not easy. We are constantly led to believe in the ‘I shop, therefore I am’ mentality. So here’s a day when we are all encouraged to think a little bit more about separating our needs from our Thneeds (the things we think we need).
According to the Buy Nothing Day website “only 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth's natural resources, causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage and an unfair distribution of wealth.”
And unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better it’s not.
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The Lorax (text) by Ruth Carruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (3)
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An omen for the downfall of mankind.
Great column Ruthi-oh.
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