The American Society in 1960ss - Essay Example

The American Society in 1960ss Introduction This essay will talk about the history of the American Society in relation to the following manuscripts: The Sneetches, The Lorax and The Butter Battle. These are three books that touch on the history of American society. Looking at The Sneetches, it is a manuscript written by Dr. Seuss and was published in the year 1961. This is one of the stories in his collection and in this story he tells of certain creatures, yellow in color with green stars on their bellies. These creatures are the ones he refers to as Sneetches. At the initiation of the story, the sneetches look down upon creatures that do not have the same physical characteristics as them. These creatures are later on given a chance to have the same physical characteristic by having stars on their bellies. This is made possible by the McBean and McMonkey characters, for three dollars. This becomes annoying to the sneetches as they stand a risk to lose their special status. McBean at this point tells the sneetches who originally had the stars about his machine that can do away with the stars. With ten dollar payment, the sneetches happily have their stars removed. McBean goes ahead to tell the other sneetches about the machine where they pay for the service as well. This ends up making the sneetches move from a machine to the next for the purpose of maintaining their special status. It reaches a point where the sneetches are not able to differentiate between the machines and at last when they run out of penny, they finally realize that none among them is superior and they are able to get along well and become good friends. This book was generally written by Dr. Seuss to show discrimination that existed in the American Society, between cultures and races and was inspired by his opposition to anti-Semitism. The Lorax is another book written by Dr. Seuss. In this book, he talks about a boy who lives in a polluted town. This boy seeks explanation as to why the town is in such a state where he goes ahead to visit Once-ler a man who lives at the far end of the town. He pays the man fifteen cents, a snail shell and a nail to acquire this information. Once-ler gives an explanation to the boy that he reached a place where everything was beautiful. Here the Once-ler went ahead and cut down Truffula trees to gather raw materials for knitting Thneeds. This was his invention and every one needed it as Thneeds can be use for various purposes for example as a pillow, a glove, a curtain, bicycle seat covers, a shirt among others. Titular Lorax, a short. Old brown character speaks for the trees and warns Once-ler of the consequences of cutting them down. Instead of hearing him out the Once-ler ignores him and goes on to call his relatives to work for him in his factory. The beautiful area soon became polluted and the fauna was sent away to find more hospitable habitats. The factory of the Once-ler ended up being shut down due to lack of raw materials as all the Truffula trees had fallen down. His relatives left and the Lorax flew away in the clouds. The Once-ler ended up living a distressed life and kept pondering on the message that was left behind by the Lorax. He finally realizes that the Lorax meant if someone does not care then the situation will never improve. He gives the boy the last seed of the Trufulla tree hoping that if the boy plants a forest of it, Lorax and his friends will return some day. In this book he generally talks about the environment and the danger posed to it by the greedy who do not care about taking care of nature. The third book is The Butter Battle Book. It is a book by Dr. Seuss which was published in the year 1984. In this book, Dr. Seuss tells of two cultures named the Zooks and the Yooks. These two cultures are known to live opposite a curving wall and the yooks wear clothes that are blue in color whereas the zooks wear orange. The main thing that makes these two cultures conflict is that the Yooks’ bread butter-side faces up as they eat while the Zooks eat it with the butter-side facing down. This dispute leads to an increasing arms race where each culture aims at making big and better weapons so as to outdo the other (Seuss, 1984, 31). This is a situation which leads to a threat of communal guaranteed destruction. This race begins with the Zooks where one of them named Van Itch slingshots the other culture “Tough-Tufted thorny Snick-Berry Switch" used to scare away the Yooks if they came near the wall. The Yooks on the other hand, developed a device known as “Tripe-sling Jigger” which contains three slingshots. Van Itch gets scared and runs away but the Zooks get back on their feet and make “Jigger-Rock Snatchem” a device with three nets to throw the rocks fired by the Yooks. The two cultures keep on having disputes among themselves making stronger weapons to fight each other and it comes to a point where they make bombs to attack each other. At the end there is no resolution where both cultures set up their bombs and wait to see who will drop theirs first. The question is therefore left to the readers to make a conclusion on their own. In this book Seuss generally talks of conflicts that have been experienced before, among various cultures in the history of America. These three books explain about the history of America where they all cover one major issue which is conflict. Dr. Seuss addresses this issue where he explains that the cultures of America fought against each other but in the end some of them came to realize that the best thing to do was to stay together in harmony and avoid conflicts. This is what is reflected in his story of “The Sneetches.” In his story has clearly puts across that the disputes among the communities in America declines as there are some communities which found out that those disputes are a waste of time. This is after struggling to appear special than the others. In this case, it was some kind of game where the communities engaged in activities that would make the other cultures feel inferior making them fight over getting notices and looking superior. They finally noticed that it would be of no help as all of them lost trying to keep their special feature. They therefore joined efforts to improve the economy rather than losing it all trying to keep a special character. Looking at the Lorax he talks of communities that were not willing to take corrections from others. They only engaged in activities that would at times bring tem profit but loss on another aspect in economy. Such communities did what they thought was right and were not ready to take any corrections even if what they were engaging in was wrong or harmful. At the end they also lost it all as they did not make any more profits from their undertakings. At this point other people left them and it was too late for them to take corrections. They were left wondering whether if they started all over again their friends would come back. This is the situation some cultures were left in to date because of their ignorance. Taking a look at “The Butter Battle there are some cultures that were not ready to be defeated thus they were always ready to face the other communities to fight against them. They were in a position to make other communities know that they are superior but these activities never led them to any positive solution to their problems. This is the situation that still exists among the few cultures that are still having disputes among themselves. The fact that some cultures have broken their issues with others hence becoming friends, does not give an impression that all communities are now living in peace. There are some few communities that are still under the same situation where they are not ready to feel inferior to other cultures. Conclusion In conclusion the society of America has been faced by any challenges I regards to freedom and conflict. Give Me Liberty, is a manuscript that talks about the history of America. This includes the differences within the cultures of America and how they strived to work against each other (Foner, 2012, 368). The book goes ahead to explain the strategies that were later on implemented to make certain that the American cultures lived as one in harmony. This gives a clear impression that in America at first there was no peace but alter on the cultures came to learn how to appreciate each other which led to peace and harmony in the land. References Foner, E. (2012). Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Ap Edition. New York: W W Norton & Company Incorporated . Dr. Seuss. (1984). The butter battle book. New York: Random House. Read More