The Works of Dr. Seuss: Written for Adults or Children?

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Recommended: Introduction on Greed

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” (Seuss 1 pg. 58) In our world today, the environment is not taken care of properly. Most anyone can look outside, or look in a stream, and finds garbage or pollution littering the landscape. Dr. Seuss knew and despised this fact. For this reason, he wrote a children’s book titled “The Lorax.”
His strong respect for the environment portrayed through this character as a “guardian” type figure for the fictional truffula trees. When the Once-ler arrived and found the forest of these trees, he decided to cut one down. He realized, by cutting a tree down and selling the silky leaves, he could become rich! So he did just that. He cut another. And then another. But this didn’t suffice. So then he cut ten. And then he cut one hundred. Until finally, there were no more truffula trees to cut down. The Once-ler felt terrible, but it didn’t matter because he was rich. Now, in today’s society, the majority of people don’t care about the environment. So there’s not a lot that can be argued about that aspect in relation to this book. But what can be argued about this book is the fact that greed causes more damage than is known or seen. The Once-ler realized, long after he had chopped all the trees, that what he did was extremely greedy, damaging to the environment, and inconsiderate. Greed is one of the biggest social problems in society today. The mind-set of “I want more, and I don’t care what has to happen in order for me to receive it,” is a very extreme, but unfortunately real way that people think. Mahatma Gandhi said; “There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.” He wisely stated that in the world today, we can onl...

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...ecause of a star on their bellies. Theodor Seuss Geisel was a very practical man, who taught very important life lessons not only to kids, but also to adults through his children books.

Works Cited

"Adolf Hitler." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2014. 1 April 2014. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/adolfhitle385743.html

Geisel, Theodor, Seuss. “The Lorax.” Random House. 1971. Print.

Geisel, Theodor, Seuss. “The Sneetches.” Random House.

Geisel, Theodor, Seuss. “Yertle the Turtle.” Random House. 1942. Print.

Jefferson, Thomas. “The Declaration of Independence.” U.S.A. Congress. 1776. Print.

"John Steinbeck." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2014. 7 April 2014. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnsteinb411693.html

"Mahatma Gandhi." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2014. 7 April 2014. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mahatmagan104952.html

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