Author’s Note: In this essay I worked on developing a variety of methods to begin sentences and paragraphs and increase the use of complex vocabulary. Also I worked on improving methods of transitioning from one paragraph to the next to a proficient level.
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not” (68). A common way people interpret this quote is if you care about something a lot then do something about it don’t just stand back and watch it get worse.Some people do not care about the environment and it’s mostly big companies like the Once-ler and his Thneeds, exampled in this book. In The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, all of the characters have a very symbolic meaning in the world, and if you think about it you can see just what all of their purposes are. You have to start to care more about the ecosystem than you already do because the environment is the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal and plant lives and operates, and in this story the Once-ler just kept on thinking about how he could make more and more money and not about what he would leave behind once it was all done and over with. Readers should make a connection between the make believe characters in this story into real world situations, and what we can learn from history so history doesn’t repeat itself. Earth is our home and you have to be able to make the change and not just hope it happens.
There are four main living things in this book that have a really big meaning. Yes, they may just be made up animals or trees or plants. Besides all of those things if you really look and try to understand what all of these things mean, you will find that they all have real world connections to them. The one thing that was the hardest for me to connect to and truly find it’s meaning though were the Truffula Trees, and then when I really thought about it I realized that they represent agriculture. Which is the science or practicing of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products. This kind of reminds me of the rain forest if we keep clearing the rain forest then we will loose animal populations that will have to travel elsewhere to get their needs met, many will become extinct. Every year an area of rain forest the size of New Jersey is cut down and destroyed. The plants and animals that used to live in these forests either die or must find a new forest to call their home. Why are rain forests being destroyed? Humans are the main cause of rain forest destruction. We are cutting down rain forests for many reasons, mostly including: wood for both timber and making fires, agriculture for both small and large farms, land for poor farmers who don’t have anywhere else to live, grazing land for cattle, pulp for making paper, road construction and extraction of minerals and energy. The Once-ler did only a couple of these things when he cut down the Truffula Trees. He cut them down to grow his business and then also realized that he could build bigger roads and then a bigger factory. He should have realized that for every tree he cut down he should have planted five new ones, but he didn’t think of that all he did was hurt the environment.
Even though Truffula Trees have big meaning in this book so does Grickle Grass. Grickle Grass represents the thistled mess we will be left with if we do not care for what we have been given. Grickle Grass is what you would be left with if you cut down all the trees. Trees have more meaning than most people think. Animals use trees to live in and they also use them for protection. Also trees help hold the brush down like the Grickle Grass, and the Grickle Grass ends up being the only thing left because everything moves away and it’s not a good environment to grow anything. No one wants to live in a world full of Grickle Grass, it would almost be like watching paint dry, you have nothing to look at and trees not only give us oxygen to breath but they also make the world more interesting to look at.
Grickle Grass is important, but so are the animals that live in the environment. The Bar-ba-loots, along with the Swamy Swans and the Humming Fish represent the lifeforms we are disrupting by polluting their environment and destroying their habitats. This relates to the polar bears whose habitat is being destroyed because of all are pollution. Animals habitats are being destroyed because no one cares, and if they do care their not trying to do anything about it. Yes you will see polar bears in zoos but their not going to be where they belong. This is just like what the Lorax said to the Once-ler “Your glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed! No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.” (56)What this means is that even though you think that all of your polluting isn’t going anywhere or doing anything, it is it’s endangering all of the animals in are rivers, lakes and streams.
The Bar-ba-loots, Swamy Swans and Humming-Fish are all really good examples of animals that are being endangered, but the Once-ler is the most important figure in this whole book. The Once-ler represents big business’s that are to busy looking at the profit line to take heed to what damage their business is doing. They see the “EPA” (United States Environmental Protection Agency) as a nuisance. Once in a while they will stop and give help to a given situation but mostly they think of the EPA as a bunch of tree huggers. This is exactly what the Once-ler and the Lorax were. The Once-ler was the big business and the Lorax was the EPA. The Once-ler looked at him as a nuisance and wouldn’t hear him out in anything. All the Lorax was trying to do was prevent what the world was going to end up to be. Which is what we all have to do. You have to learn from history so that history doesn’t repeat itself. We should all learn from the story of the Once-ler. So that this can be prevented in the world because the more you destroy the ecosystem with pollution and cutting down trees, the less oxygen we will have and more and more animals will start to die off.
The Earth isn’t just a place for us to live it’s our home, we have to care enough to make the change not just hope it happens. “It’s not what it is, it’s about what it can become ” (70) What this means is that we can’t look at the world as just a place to live and then not worry about anything else. We have to look at it as what it can become. This is because it already is one way but we have to find ways to make it better. Everything we do effects us in some way, the more we protect are environment the better it will be and the healthier of a world we will get to live in. So look at it as what it can become not as what it already is and then maybe we can keep the story of the Once-ler on paper and not in real life.
