Archetypes In Children’s Literature Children’s books have always shown the reader obvious signification to how the reader should feel towards the setting and characters. Looking at different colors and settings characters sparks a feeling in a persons mind. Dr. Seuss constantly used vibrate colors and settings to portray a magical world where things are different and almost anything could happen. In his book The Lorax, Dr. Seuss introduces a desolate wasteland with dark skies, dead vegetation and wind that, “smells slow-and-sour when it blows” (1). The archetype for a wasteland is often used for a sense for it to be cleansed. The reader can assume that at one time the area flourished, having bloomed with life, and might be returned to that…show more content… At first while the land still was luscious and beautiful he had only claimed to want to make a single ‘Thneed’. Yet as it progressed and his personality got darker so did the land. The child I read even interrupted at a certain part and asked me, “If the Once-ler feels bad about the bears why doesn’t he stop?” While I wanted to go through the whole book and let him come up with an answer I simply suggested that maybe the idea of having lots of money reduced someone’s qualities on others lives. After that scene every time the Once-ler was shown after that in the flashback he was somewhere near smoke or sludge and did not bother to show remorse to the animals he forced from their homes. The sludge that began to appear constantly was a sickly color in mixed shades of yellow, green and brown. Two of those colors had before been expressed in positive light; now had a different meaning reflecting the world around only to be corrupted too. When questioned how the colors mad him feel, the child I had read asked said, “Sick and gross. Like when you have a cold.” He had also said that while his favorite color was green it being shown how it was, did not make him enjoy its use in the story. For at the beginning he had liked the Once-ler for him being green now he thought of him in a different
