The Lorax Movie Analysis

While watching the film The Lorax, one can spot conflicts between social classes, a struggle for profit, and capitalism. The two main characters that express such conduct, are the Once-ler and Aloysius O’Hare. They were both strong business leaders that tried to make the world a better place, but did not perceive, (or simply care) about the consequences.

The Once-ler (as stated above) was a powerful business leader His family always doubted everything he did. Creating the thneed was his opportunity to shine and show everyone what he was really capable of. He started to create a large business making and selling soft thneeds having nothing but a horse and a buggy. However, in order to make a thneed, one has to cut down one whole tree. He did not think of himself as a bad guy, as he just wanted his business to

grow. Over time trees became scarce and the animals that used them as habitats had to leave to find new homes. It was at this time when the Once-ler realized what he had been doing was wrong and all the profit he had made was worthless to him. The thneed now resulted as a threat for all living beings that needed the trees to live. The Once-ler relates to capitalist ideas in the way he had a large personal, private business that oppressed the animals (lower class) that were at that time living in the woods.

Aloysius O’Hare was also a business leader from humble beginnings and is a ideal example of the saying “from rags to riches”.

After the fall of the Once-ler's Thneed empire, he took to the idea of canned air. He became widely renowned, and the mayor of his city, Thneedville. With his product of canned air, he had great power because it was something everyone needed to survive. With all of this power, he became corrupt and started polluting the air even more so people would need a larger supply of his air cans.

With Aloysius as leader, he struggled to keep the people ignorant about the life outside his walls. Many of the townspeople were brainwashed into thinking that their way of life was faultless and did not need changing. This is an example of Marxism in the way he used propaganda and a utopia to distort the thoughts everyone had.

ultimately, both of these men were power hungry and would go to extremes to gain profit and fame. They both believed that business should always grow no matter the cost and that their greed was their weakness. The only difference between the Once-ler and O’Hair is that one finally recognized his faults and tried to fix

it.