The Untold Stories of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” and “The Grinch”

Now all that was left beneath the bad smelling sky was my big empty factory, The Lorax. And I, The Lorax, said nothing. Just gave me a glance, just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants. And I’ll never forget the grim look on his face when he hoisted himself and took leave of this place, through a hole in the smog without leaving a trace. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And what you just heard is an excerpt from Doctor Seuss’s nineteen seventy-one book, The Lorax. In nineteen eighty-nine, this book was banned for the first time in a California school because it was believed to portray logging in a poor light and would turn children against the foresting industry. Doctor Seuss was raised as a Lutheran and had a strong religious background. His books often included strong moral messages, but he was always careful with how he went about it. You here to share a bit about Doctor Seuss’s The Lorax and The Grinch. By the way, is Brian J. Jones, author of Becoming Doctor Seuss.

In nineteen forty-nine, after he’d come out of the Signal Corps, he was still making a career in ads. He’d dabbled in Hollywood’s screen fixing and screenwriting. He didn’t like it. It’s writing by committee, it’s a little bit miserable. But he still really wanted to do children’s books, and he was just successful enough at it as a sort of second job that he was actually asked to lead a writer’s workshop on writing children’s books for the University of Utah in nineteen forty-nine. It was a pivotal moment in children’s literature because Seuss sat down and wrote down by hand what he thought made great writing for children, and he’d taken lessons that he’d learned from Capper. You can clearly see him processing and talking about, “You’ve got to make the words count. You have to keep the action moving forward. You will lose children.” He was telling students in his class, “You know, your biggest competitor right now is comic books.” And so, Seuss was really putting down on paper what children needed to, you know, have their interests sustained, and how you didn’t want to write down to them, and how you didn’t want to be deliberately saccharine. “You know, kids don’t like being talked down to.” Seuss inherently got this. If you’re trying to impress a kid, or you’re trying to write fancy for some kid, they will see right through you. He would tell these students in his class that a child is the toughest audience you will ever write for, because they will see you coming. “You cannot fool a kid, so don’t try.” The Grinch was successful right away. But The Grinch—I think it’s a fascinating book because, you know, remember, part of the message behind The Grinch is that Christmas doesn’t come from a store. And I love that this book was written by somebody who spent the first part of his career probably telling you that Christmas did come from a store. I mean, the guy, the guy was in advertising, was very good at it. So, I think, I think there’s a little bit of Seuss reckoning with himself in this story, which is one of the reasons why I think it’s—I think it’s one of the reasons he took it so personally. He could really sympathize with The Grinch and The Grinch coming around. But it’s a great example of Seuss really working on an ending. Because Seuss didn’t like his books to be overtly preachy or “message-y.” He often said—you know, again, consistent with what he said in the nineteen forty-nine lectures—”If you’re trying to be preachy again, kids are going to see you coming. They’re going to recognize immediately what you’re up to. They’re going to shut up shop. They’re going to walk away, like no kid wants to be preached to.” “So, you can’t, you can’t do that.” So when he got to the end of The Grinch and was trying to figure out what happens after the Grinch kind of redeemed himself, “What do you end it with?” He was trying to keep it from being a little too religious if he could, which is why it ultimately ends with sort of “the Brotherhood of Man,” where you see—you know—the, and the cartoon, they do it brilliantly when the star comes up, but he’s serving the roast beast at dinner. So it’s more of a family-type ending than a “Christmas-y” ending, per se. But that was Seuss working really hard with an ending. Now, at one point in his career, he did write an intentionally, deliberately “message-y” book, and that was The Lorax. And that’s the one book where Seuss said, “You know, I sat down to do this because I got mad.” Seuss’s house in La Jolla, California, sat up on Mount Soulo. That it’s this beautiful hilltop house, still there today. And at the time he built it, there was nothing around it, as you can imagine, in the forties and early fifties. But over the years, he was watching development sort of encroach on his hillside, and it was sort of cookie-cutter houses and apartments, and he didn’t really—you know—he didn’t really like the way they were tearing into the mountainside. So The Lorax was his intentional way of addressing the issue of being careful with our resources. Seuss never says in The Lorax, “Don’t cut down trees.” As Seuss pointed out—for, you know, after The Lorax came out—he said, “Look, I write books. Books are printed on paper. I live in a house. A house is made of wood. I’m not anti-logging. I’m not anti-cutting down trees. I’m pro being responsible with what we have.” And that’s sort of the message of The Lorax, which a lot of times gets lost in the discussion of that. I think it’s his most consistently banned book. A lot of times, it was banned in sort of the northwestern part of the United States, where they rely on logging and timbering and things like that. But that’s probably his most controversial book because of that. And Seuss always warned people, like, “Be very careful.” “You know, I’ve got a message in here, but be sure you understand what that message is.” And it’s got, I think, one of the most beautiful messages of any of Seuss’s books, where he says, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” “It’s not.” I mean, that has nothing to do with logging, with timbering, nothing. It is a universal message. It is the beautiful point of that book in there that is Seuss getting as “message-y” as he’s ever going to get. And I think when people get wrapped around the axle on whether Seuss is being, you know, too environmental in this, and he’s too woke, and he’s paying too much attention to the movement of the time—you know, this was when Earth Day happened in the early seventies—the real message in there is: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.” “You know, take charge, get involved.” That’s the message with The Lorax more than anything else. But that’s the one time Seuss deliberately set out to convey a message, and look how carefully he does it. He really sweated that. And I mean, that book was tough for him anyway, but like, really agonizing over the message because, as he had told everybody in the late nineteen forties, “You know, if you are deliberately messaging, you are in big trouble.” “You know, everyone will immediately see what you’re doing.” And so I just think that’s so interesting with The Lorax is because people think they see what he’s doing. You know, they immediately start saying he’s being environmental, he’s talking about logging. He’s—well, he is. But the bigger point is: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot.” I mean, that’s the real message of The Lorax more than anything else, and Seuss is almost hiding it in plain sight because he was being so careful about it.

Two beautiful short stories about The Grinch and The Lorax here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.