The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: Capitalism and Environmental Allegory

Introduction: A Political Allegory of Industrial Capitalism

Probably the most ideological and political of Theodore Seuss Geisel's (Dr. Seuss) children's stories, The Lorax is a tale of industrial capitalism gone mad until it destroys the entire natural environment. Capitalism, as symbolized by the greedy and corrupt Once-ler, is the villain of the story, while the hero is the Lorax, who speaks for the forests, skies, water, plants, and animals that the system is destroying. Like capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Once-ler starts off small-scale, chopping down one Truffula tree and selling the products in a little shop, but eventually his greed becomes an obsession and he builds superhighways and a factory employing 100,000 workers.

For the Once-ler, all of this is progress, and he ignores the repeated warnings of the Lorax that the entire environment is dying and that the birds and fish are becoming extinct. The Once-ler cares only about his profits and rising stock prices, and only when the last of the Truffula trees are gone and the environment is ruined does he finally realize the evil he has caused. Unfortunately, the damage is done, and all he can do is warn the small boy who comes to visit him not to repeat the same mistakes. He presents the boy with the last Truffula seed and instructs him to plant a new forest.

This allegory of industrial capitalism does not offer an optimistic outcome. Industrial civilization simply destroys nature and exhausts all natural resources until it fouls the air, soil, and water past the point of no return. Whether the boy and his generation will have the ability — or even the willingness — to repair all the damage and ensure that social and economic policies are changed to avoid a repetition of such mistakes is not a question The Lorax can answer.

The Once-ler's World: A Post-Industrial Wasteland

This grim and pessimistic story begins with a boy walking into a ruined environment where the Once-ler lives alone in the middle of a post-industrial wasteland. Nothing is left to him but an empty factory under a sky filled with smog. Dr. Seuss compares the scene to Lake Erie, which was completely lifeless by 1971, pollution having destroyed it. With the ecology wrecked, "the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows, and no birds ever sing except old crows" (Geisel 1971). As the book's illustrations show, the land, buildings, and sky are all darkened by smog, and in this blackened environment the Once-ler lives alone in a ruined mansion.

Few people ever visit him, not even his relatives, but in exchange for a small fee he is willing to tell the boy his story. The former capitalist magnate lacks any human attachments; all his relationships were determined by money and exchange rather than by moral or emotional concerns. Indeed, his relationship with the natural environment was no different — he regarded it merely as an inanimate thing to be exploited and used up.

The Truffula Trees and the Logic of Exploitation

In the sad Street of the Lifted Lorax, the Once-ler tells the boy of a time when the grass was still green and the Truffula trees still existed. Dr. Seuss recalls that "the grass was still green, and the pond was still wet, and the clouds were still clean, and the sounds of the Swomer-Swans rang out in space" (Geisel 1971). When the Once-ler arrived on the scene in a broken-down cart, he was hardly a great capitalist — he was more like an itinerant peddler. He did not stop long to marvel at the beauties and harmonies of nature; his narrow and greedy mind simply began to concoct schemes for profiting from it.

When the Once-ler chops down his first Truffula tree, the Lorax appears and speaks for all the trees — for nature itself. "What's that thing you made out of my Truffula tree?" he demands. For the Once-ler, who is "crazy with greed," the tree is simply a raw material from which he can make socks, shirts, carpets, and bicycle seat covers (Geisel 1971). He does not understand that the earth is a living organism, or that his destruction of the trees is unbalancing the entire ecosystem upon which all life depends, including human life.

From Small-Scale Capitalism to Industrial Monopoly

Like capitalism as a whole, the Once-ler begins on a very small scale and simply cannot believe that his actions will cause any serious or permanent damage to the environment. Like the frontier days of western expansion, the Truffula trees seem to be a limitless resource, as do the air, land, and water. Perhaps like Thomas Jefferson and others at the dawn of the industrial age, the Once-ler cannot imagine that these resources could ever be exhausted in a thousand years. After all, men armed with simple tools like axes could never really cut down all the great forests of a continent. The Once-ler takes pride in the fact that "in no time at all, I had built a small shop, then I chopped down a Truffula Tree with one chop" (Geisel 1971).

Very quickly, though, he realizes that "here's a chance for the entire Once-ler family to get rich." He invents a Super Ax-Hacker to chop down many trees at once and then builds a four-lane superhighway from the Instant Roadway Company. He moves from being a small-scale capitalist to running a giant industrial monopoly, turning into a megalomaniac "figgering on biggering, and BIGGERING, and BIGGERING, and BIGGERING" (Geisel 1971). He gives no thought to the problem of long-term stability or sustainability — only to the fact that his profits are increasing every quarter. Nothing the Lorax says, and none of the environmental havoc that his corporation causes, has the slightest effect on his actions until nothing is left at all.

Conclusion: Will the Warnings Ever Be Heeded?

On the global scale, the question remains whether the warnings of the Lorax will ever be heeded — a question the book itself refuses to answer. The allegory that Dr. Seuss constructed around industrial capitalism's destruction of the natural world is as urgent today as it was in 1971, and the fate of the last Truffula seed remains an open and troubling one.

Works Cited

Geisel, Theodore Seuss (Dr. Seuss). The Lorax. Random House Books for Young Readers, 1971.

Geisel, Theodore Seuss (Dr. Seuss). The Lorax. YouTube cartoon animation, 1972.