Most people know Dr. Seuss as the guy who wrote nonsense stories that teach children how to rhyme fake words with pictures drawn by a four-year-old child, not a man who figured out how to communicate political views and morals through children's books.
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Little known fact: His books came from hallucinations.
mentalfloss.com
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Though the morals came unintentionally, since children can easily spot morals in stories, he has
said that, "There's an inherent moral in any story." But what kind of morals can be taught through a children's book? Don't disobey your parents? Don't shave the cat? Don't pee in the pool? Don't pee
into the pool?
The Sneetches is a story about fat, yellow, penis-shaped nose creatures that came in two races; the star-bellied Sneetches had bellies with stars and the plain-bellied Sneetches had none upon thars. These two groups lived in a society that treated the plain-bellied Sneetches like complete garbage, the race that gets blamed for all of society's problems. Then, to the joy of the plain-bellied Sneetches, an odd man named Sylvester McMonkey McBean came to town with a peculiar machine, a machine that can add and remove stars from the bellies of Sneetches. Now the plain-bellies can be starred and become socially acceptable, except once they got stars, the star-bellies were pissed and got theirs removed. After a wave of starring and un-starring, they pretty much just said, "Eh, fuck it, let's live together."
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| "Star or not, your neck still makes you disgusting." |
To the unobservant reader, this is just a goofy story about ugly creatures with stars on their bellies, but the observant may find a message of diversity and racial acceptance. Replace the stars with a race, now you have a story that reflects the real world. Dr. Seuss found a way to point out that people aren't all that different once you get past the physical appearance that can be understood by everybody. The Sneetches realized the stars don't matter, just like skin color shouldn't matter. The sly Dr. Seuss has just taught us an important life lesson, in the form of silly rhymes and pictures.
I'm not too hip on my Horton Hears a Who! knowledge, but I think I have a grasp on what the story sort of does. It's about an elephant, I'm going to assume that he is Horton, and finds a fluffy flower-like thing that houses millions of furry people things, which I'm going to assume are the Who from Whoville. Horton talks to them and befriends the mayor of Whoville and for some reason the other forest animals don't like that. Instead of letting Horton live in his own delusional world and giving him some meds, the other animals want to kill the flower, essentially causing a Who genocide.
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| "Mr. Horton, it appears we are going to have to fix your drinking problem before your hallucinations." |
Well, Horton gets the flower to the top of a mountain and plants it and all the other animals are happy, I'm not really sure about how the story gets to that point, but I'm pretty sure it involves a cage and torture.
Horton Hears a Who! has often been used in the pro-life campaign due to the famous last line, "A person is a person, no matter how small," and made Dr. Seuss out to be pro-life as well, which is
total bullshit. He actually threatened suing pro-life groups for using his quote.
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The title of this book sounds strikingly similar to another one...
injesus.com
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Since the pro-life message doesn't pan out, a more realistic message is to stick up for the little guys, the ones who aren't heard. Horton was the only thing that made a stand against the forest animals because he believed the Who people should be heard and given a chance to live without the oppression of the asshole animals. Doesn't this perfectly reflect real life? The large and powerful get their way, while the few small ones get brushed under the rug, or, in the case of Whoville, murdered. Once again, the sly Dr. Seuss has struck again with his secret messages.
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