Paper suggests Lorax inspiration
CONCORD, N.H. – The furry orange protagonist of “The Lorax” and the Truffula trees for which he spoke may have been inspired by specific monkeys and trees in Kenya, according to researchers at Dr. Seuss’ alma mater, Dartmouth College.
The 1971 book pits a short, mustachioed “sort of man” who “speaks for the trees” against the Once-ler, a greedy industrialist harvesting the trees into near extinction.
Some have speculated that Seuss was inspired by cypress trees near his California home. But anthropology professor Nathaniel Dominy suggests the whistling thorn acacia commonly found in Kenya makes more sense, given that Seuss wrote much of the book while visiting a safari club there.
The region also is home to the patas monkey, which, like the Lorax, has orange fur and stands on two feet. And in a paper published Monday, Dominy and his co-authors argue their theory could challenge some traditional interpretations of the text.
“A lot of people criticize the Lorax and say he’s too angry, he’s too upset, that his rhetoric is problematic and that it’s not the way environmentalists should be engaging with policy makers or polluting industries,” Dominy said in a recent interview. “Our argument is, no, if the Lorax is based on a living animal that has this tight, co-evolved relationship with a tree, then it’s better to think of the Lorax not as some indignant steward of the environment but as a participating member of the environment. And then this anger is so much more understandable.”