EXTRA CREDIT 1ST QUARTER-- response to The Lorax

"Why does the onceler not ever show his face?" -Daniel A. 807

In the lorax, all we see of the greedy, money hungry creature is his green arms.  The onceler  literally destroys the environment around him, defies the lorax's pleas to stop, and later when the lorax leaves, feels awful about it and holes himself up.  In response to Daniel's question, I say that the onceler never shows his face, because in a way of money and greed and regret, he is all of us with many faces. By that I mean, we are humans, bound to make mistakes, and since we now live in a world where money and power are the solution to almost everything, we can't help but to always want more of it to get ahead.  

It's obviously a bad thing to always want more, but are problems ever justified if we fix them?  In the end of The Lorax, the onceler gave the boy the last truffula tree seed for him to plant, and though we never found out what happens with the seed, we still get a feeling of hope from it.  Yet, I wonder, does fixing something make the problem go away completely?  It seemed as if even though the onceler did a notion of getting back a rich truffula tree forest, he still regretted what he had done.  In a way, we never can truly fix a problem, because the impact for that time being (before we fix it) will always exist.  Also, we can't just forget what we have done wrong, because if we did, we would never learn from our mistakes. 

That leads me to the next point of why didn't the onceler plant the tree seed himself?  Was it because he didn't want to start the problem of killing the environment again, or did he simply not want to be reminded of the wrong he did (further than he is reminded of it from all the barren gray around him already)?  To me, it seems a bit less greedy, the fact that the onceler gave the seed away to some boy to plant.  Some say it could be that he is too cowardly, but I think it shows that he wants to make a difference to the world by teaching others to help and respect the land they live on.  In a sense, I feel like the onceler knows he can't ever personally cover up his mistake, so why not let someone else get a chance to do a good thing.  

When we are kids, we are taught to be accepted as a kind person again is to say 'sorry', but as we get older we realize that sometimes, sorry isn't good enough.  In a way, I guess we learn it the hard way, simply realizing one day sorry doesn't go too far, but it's a lesson we all need to learn to take a step toward making less errors and more accomplishments.  I always thought the saying 'you need to fail to succeed' was BS, but in a way it is true, because if we learn that mistakes will be made, we will also learn that we should try to live without a lot of them, or learn from them and move on.  I guess we can never truly erase a mistake we have made, but we can always hope for a future where we progress beyond simply fixing the mistake we made, but making the world better on top of fixing the original thing.