Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches
Had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches
Had none upon thars.
This is what is know as instantly situating the conflict. Right there in the opening line is the conflict which drives the narrative of “The Sneetches.” Kids, of course, will simply look at it as a story about Sneetches, but insight will reveal enormous dimensions at work. The difference between those who do and those who do not have stars on their bellies works as a metaphor for racism, economic disparity, political ideologies and practically any other defining difference between two opposing groups.
“Never budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least!
Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east!”
“The Zax” features two representatives of the same species. One is traveling north and the other is headed to the south when their tracks lead them directly to each other. Now, the prairie lands of Prax, where they live, are abundantly spacious. Not a building in sight. Nothing in sight, in fact, but their own footprints. All it would take is for one—or preferably both—to simply take one step to the right and suddenly, like that, there is absolutely no impediment to either as far as the eye can see. But neither will budge. The North-Going Zax is every bit as bull-headed as the Zax quoted above. The story ends with both of them still standing toe-to-toe while the vast wasteland of the Prax prairie has built over decades to become a busy metropolis. The moral could not be clearer, yet its lessons remain abundantly ignored.
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.
“Too Many Daves” is a strange little tale even by the standards of the lesser-known examples of the Seuss canon. It is a simple story of one Mrs. McCave who named all twenty-three sons named Dave. Five pages later the narrator asserts that Mrs. McCave has reached the point where she confesses that she wishes instead she had given them different name. He then proceeds to list the alternative selection for each of them, all twenty-three Daves. The story closes on the line quoted above. Simple and effective for conveying the concept of regret over fatefully bad—but not emotionally devastating—choices in life.
“But then a strange thing happened.
Why, those pants began to cry!
Those pants began to tremble.
They were just as scared as I!”
The first-person narrator of this story tells us that that is a stranger to fear until one night fateful night in the woods when he comes across the fear-inducing sight of a pair of green pants standing up straight though no body inhabited them. His fear of these pants becomes the bane of his existence, creating a potential threat to every task requiring him to venture forth outside. And then on another fateful night he finds out that the pants were every bit as scared of him—thinking him every bit as strange as sight—as he was of the pants. Another good old-fashioned lesson. What the story lacks in originality it makes up for in finding an original way to convey the lesson.
