"Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky / was my big empty factory... / The Lorax.../ and I..." In this passage, Dr. Seuss demonstrates his rhetorical skill via rhyme, syntax and punctuation. The rhyme provides a sing song melody that lulls the reader along; the syntax allows Seuss to list the only things left in the decimated landscape; and the ellipses bring the reader down to a lonely single person.
While Dr. Seuss is usually found in the children's section of the library, I am here today to ask for 30 copies of The Lorax for my high school classroom. I would like to use Seuss to teach rhetoric. While it's crucial for students to learn about Plato and Aristotle and other classic writers and speakers, it's also crucial for students to "play" with language in order to gain a better understanding of how words work. There is no better playground than the one that Dr. Seuss provides in his classic tale, The Lorax.
My school in upstate New York began a new Advanced Placement English Composition course this year. We teach students how to write powerfully and succinctly. To start young writers along the way to mastery, we need to teach them basic rhetorical terms and strategies. The Lorax provides a treasure trove of rhetorical appeals, syntactic variations and word play.
The Lorax also ties in thematically to a myriad of literary works and current events. For instance, The Lorax shines a light on greedy behavior. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby does the same thing. The Lorax also questions the ethics of mass production. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed does this as well.
I used Seuss for the first time in class last week. The results were amazing. Students kept pushing their analysis further. For instance, one of them said that the Lorax's empty factory symbolized his own emptiness which also resembled Jay Gatsby's emptiness. They all wrote about The Lorax that night, but they didn't have the benefit of having the book at home to scrutinize. I need to fix this problem. Will you help us?
Wouldn't you love to be a part of something great and innovative? Wouldn't you love to be a part of this Seussian project?
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Krieger and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
