Analysis Of The Sneetches

Brooke Kleman
Professor Steven Hiller
COM 1110-902
22 June 2017
Reading Response Critique
The Sneetches
Summary:
This short story takes place on a beach. At this beach, there are two types of Sneetches, those who have stars on their bellies (the Star-Bellies) and those who have no stars (the Plain-Bellies). The Star-Belly Sneetches were immensely prejudice towards the Plain-Belly Sneetches and didn’t include them in any of their activities. One day, a stranger named Sylvester McMonkey McBean entered the town. As he announced he had a machine that could give the starless Sneetches stars on their belly, the town went crazy because they too wanted to have a star stitched on their belly. As the Plain-Belly Sneetches paid McBean to give them stars,

Seuss in the midst of Civil Rights Movement. Discrimination was a nationwide issue and Seuss knew that his story would bring the attention of many different races and those from all walks of life. People of this era could relate with the misery the Plain-Belly Sneetches were in. As the Plain-Bellies were being stereotyped for not having stars on their skin, people in the fifties and sixties were being discriminated by their class, race, religion, and even their sexuality. In the story, the Plain-Belly Sneetches weren’t allowed to play with the Star-Belly Sneetches. As the story goes on, it declares “When the Star-Belly children went out to play ball, / Could a Plain-Belly get in the game...? Not at all. / You could only play if your bellies had stars / And the Plain-Belly children had none upon thars” (Sneetches 13-16). When this happens in the story, it alludes back to the civil rights movement. In the fifties and sixties, blacks were living a life barricaded from everyone else. For example, blacks had separate bathrooms they were expected to use. Back then, anything and almost everything segregated the blacks from the

Seuss with a hidden meaning would be The Butter Battle Book. This book was written in reference to the Cold War. In this story, the Zooks and the Yooks are living in two completely different societies. The Zooks live in a place where bread is eaten with the butter-side down, but as for the Yooks, they eat their bread butter-side up. Clearly, both societies think they are correct and the other is in the wrong. They begin to try to one-up the other, building different types of weapons and bombs. As the book comes to a close, neither side launches their ultimate bomb, just like during the Cold War, both sides were too afraid to launch a nuclear