Political messages of Dr. Seuss
Seuss was a liberal and a moralist who expressed his views in his books through the use of ridicule, satire, wordplay, nonsense words, and wild drawings to take aim at bullies, hypocrites, and demagogues.
His first work signed as "Dr. Seuss", published in 1928, features East Asian stereotypes lampooning Japanese people.
[1] From the late 1920s until the early 1940s, Seuss's cartoons (some made for advertisements) variously featured racist depictions of East Asians, Arabs and Muslims, black people, Mexicans, and Native Americans—in addition to misogynist themes.
[1] A 1929 cartoon for Judge magazine depicts white men browsing a department store, where they examine a crowd of stereotyped black people labeled as "niggers" for sale as high-grade firewood.
[2] Seuss drew over 400 political cartoons for the New York newspaper PM, two years of which he was the chief editorial cartoonist (1941–1943).
The cartoons ranged from the topics of opposition to the nationalist "America First" policy,[3] support for U.S. involvement in World War II, and criticizing both Nazi Germany and Japan.
In particular, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he made anti-Japanese cartoons, some of which took aim at Japanese Americans, and Seuss explicitly stated his support for the killing of "Japs.
[4] The Cat in the Hat was written as a challenge in 1954 in response to an article in Life magazine that claimed that widespread illiteracy was caused by children being bored with books.
When the Cat realizes that he can't do it all by himself, he brings in helpers, which Burdorff suggests may represent the working public, the underclass, or the democratic citizenry.
It is sometimes said that Seuss wrote this book as a kind of atonement for his anti-Japanese editorial cartoons during World War II.
[4] Seuss visited Japan in 1953 and viewed the aftermath of the atomic bombs; he dedicated the book, published the next year, to a Japanese friend.
[11] He and his widow Audrey objected to the phrase being used in this way because "she doesn't like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view".
The main point of the book is "the basic message of The Lorax deals with ecosystems and the interrelatedness of all parts - living and non-living - as a viable, functioning unit".
Through this deforestation and pursuit of economic growth by the Once-ler, the lakes, skies, and land in the area become polluted, all the creatures who inhabit them are forced to leave, and all of the Truffula Trees are cut down.
He says to the young boy in the end that Truffula Trees (instead of thneeds) are what everyone needs, and that new ones should be grown, given clean water and fresh air, and should be protected.
[21] Another message within the reading suggests that young children need to be taught about the environment and how to live in a sustainable way in order to preserve what we have.
This is shown in The Lorax by the Once-ler educating the small boy about the dangers of pollution and degradation of the environment, and by giving him the last Truffula seed so that new ones can be grown.
With Dr. Seuss's approval, Buchwald and his editors reprinted the markup as a newspaper column, and it was published July 30 in The Washington Post.
[24][25] The Butter Battle Book, written in 1984, was a thinly disguised allegory about the danger and implications of the Cold War, in particular the arms race.
