to an even more mysterious character known as the Lorax.
Once the Once-ler has been remunerated for his narrative services (fifteen cents, a nail, a snail shell: because even in the wake of complete economic and ecological collapse, there is still a buck to be made), he begins to tell his story. He takes us back to an Edenic world of natural abundance and beauty, a lush landscape of soft and tufty Truffula trees, green rolling plains, and beatifically smiling animals of various Seussian species. Into this prelapsarian realm the Once-ler arrives—rendered, again, only as a pair of green arms. Upon arrival in this place, the Once-ler informs us, he is taken above all by the beauty of the Truffula trees, in which he immediately sees an opportunity for wealth creation. He builds a little shop, and then chops down his first Truffula tree, using its tuft as a textile from which he knits a garment called a Thneed, which is ugly and ungainly to the point of outright absurdity.
It is then that we meet the Lorax, a stout and extravagantly mustachioed creature who looks somewhat like the actor Wilford Brimley rendered as a soft toy. He emerges from the stump of the first felled tree, to take vocal issue with the Once-ler’s mistreatment of the land. (“I am the Lorax,” he says. “I speak for the trees.”) It’s the Thneed itself, though, that the Lorax is particularly bent out of shape about. What even is it, he demands to know? What conceivable purpose could such a haphazard accoutrement serve, and why on earth was it deemed worthy of chopping down a beautiful tree?
The Once-ler then patiently explains that this Thneed is “a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need”—by which he means that it’s a shirt or a sock or a glove or a hat, or a carpet, or a pillow, or a sheet, or a curtain, or indeed a cover for a bicycle seat. The Lorax, speaking now for the reader as well as the trees, accuses the Once-ler of having lost his mind with greed, insisting that no one is ever going to buy such a pointless piece of merchandise. But he’s wrong: the demand for Thneeds quickly becomes so great that the trees can’t be felled fast enough, and a new Super-Axe-Hacker is invented in order to cut down entire rows at a single blow, while belching great plumes of smoke into the air and destroying animal habitats. The Once-ler allows that the situation is regrettable, but insists that it can’t be avoided, arguing along familiarly circular lines: “Business,” he says, “is business.” And people, after all, want Thneeds.
* * *
—
This particular moment in the book has given rise to the occasional bedtime discussion on the nature of consumer desire, on where needs end and Thneeds begin. My son will point out that Thneeds are silly, and that the Once-ler’s customers are themselves “total stupidheads” for buying them. I will agree but judiciously point out that we are all of us on occasion prone to lavishing money on the odd Thneed, that it’s therefore worth bearing in mind the extent to which we are all of us, in our own right, total stupidheads, and that anyway it probably isn’t nice to call people total stupidheads, though I take his point.
“We don’t have any Thneeds,” my son protests.
“That’s technically true,” I say. “Because Thneeds aren’t a real thing, and you couldn’t buy one even if you wanted to. But maybe what Dr. Seuss is getting at is the way we all tend to buy things we don’t need. I think it’s a metaphor.”
At this point, I can hear the clanking and wheezing of the machinery of my PhD in English literature as it is roused into a state of sluggish animation.
“Do you know what a metaphor is?” I ask.
My son turns his face slightly toward the wall and literally tightens his lips, as he tends to do rather than admit to not knowing something. I have lately noticed in him the presence of intellectual vanity, and although I know it’s not a particularly likable characteristic in people generally, I can’t help finding it adorable in him, if occasionally frustrating. (“I know that!” he’ll say crossly when told a thing he already knew, and occasionally a thing he didn’t.)
To the best of my ability, I explain to him what a metaphor is, though I’m not sure he’s really grasped it.
“So maybe a Thneed is basically anything we don’t actually need,” I