Lorax And Easter Island Comparison Essay

The Lorax and Easter Island are similar and different in many ways. First of all, an obvious difference is that one is fictional and the other is reality. Even though this is true they both have a lesson to be taken away from them.

To begin with, the Lorax and Easter Island have many differences but the most obvious one is that in the Lorax one person/thing (the onceler) was responsible for the destruction and the depletion of a resource. Unlike the Lorax a whole generation of people led to the destruction and depletion of many resources, and not just one individual profited from the exploitation but a whole species of people did. In the Lorax you can see that the onceler used the truffula trees for economic purposes. He got filthy rich from the exploitation. Whereas, in Easter Island a whole group of people benefited from it, they build pyramids, cut down trees to build temples, and depleted the land of all its natural sources.

To pursue further, another difference is that on Easter Island some of the species that lived on the island became extinct, very few species survived.

In The Lorax, the trees produce a fabric that could be used on anything and everything. With all the resources of trees gone the species that once were dependent on it were forced to migrate elsewhere. Their population did not become extinct. Something that caught my eye about the people on Easter Island was that exploiting their resources was part of their culture. They used up their resources to build and they went overboard with it. At one point they could’ve realized that they had enough statues/monuments and left the land fallow to regain its nutrients. Unlike the Lorax, once the people of Easter Island ran out of its resources and were not able to hunt for food they resulted to cannibalism. This would later lead to human extinction on the

island.
Furthermore, the similarities between these two topics involve many environmental factors that we are dealing with today. A similarity was that both populations had run out of resources. They ran out as a result of carelessness, they did not think about the consequences of their actions. Even if they thought about planting or finding a way to grow these resources, the time it takes for them to grow back would be too long and the population would starve. In other words, the supply would not be able to keep up with the demand. Another similarity was that most species in these environments depended on trees. When the population was overusing these resources, the species depending on these trees lost their food sources and shelters, thus leading to starvation and death. Another similarity was that both these places were abundant with resources before intervention. But once they started taking advantage of these places they saw the resources diminish and they didn’t even stop to think of future implications of their actions.
In final analysis, this relates to real life where we witness major industries overusing resources, and not letting the resources replenish, but yet they continue to overuse and ignore the environmental and future consequences.
I believe that Dr. Seuss wrote the Lorax to warn people of their impact on the environment and how there are many consequences if they don’t treat it well.
In our history many stories like this have taken place where greed overtakes people and that leads to their destruction/downfall. It seems as if we never learn from our mistakes and history always repeats itself. We are educated being and even though we witness these horrific consequences we continue to make the same mistake.