One of my favourite stories when I was a little fella was The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. This wonderful tale is an insightful observation of discrimination, prejudice and how we all behave so foolishly in the way we treat each other. I remember as a child thinking at first it was just an entertaining story, however later in life I came to embrace it as one of the most insightful observations of our humanity.
In the book, some of the bright yellow creatures called Sneetches have green stars on their bellies while others do not. When the Star-Bellied Sneetches and the Plain-Bellied Sneetches treat one another disrespectfully because of simple stars on their bellies, we have to pause and consider how stupid their behaviour really is. The prejudice in the story causes the reader to ask who is better….. the ones with Stars or ‘none upon thars’?. The Sneetches with stars discriminate against and turn away from those without a green star upon their belly. Does this situation sound familiar?
The story gets interesting when a travelling salesman called Sylvester McMonkey McBean (the Fix-It-Up Chappie) appears and offers the Sneetches without stars the chance to get stars on their tummies with his Star-On machine. They get this wonderful service for only three dollars. The star stamping machine is at first a winner, but this upsets the original star-bellied Sneetches, as they are in danger of losing their special status. McBean then sells them the virtues of his Star-Off machine (sounds like tattoo removal), costing ten dollars! You can see where this madness is going right?
The Sneetches who originally ‘had stars upon thars’ happily pay the money to have them removed in order to remain unique. However, McBean doesn’t care about the uniqueness of The Sneetches and is only interested in sales. All chaos reigns and he shunts the recently starred Sneetches through his machine making even more cash. As the insanity mounts we see the Sneetches running from one machine to the next...
"...until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew whether this one was that one... or that one was this one... or which one was what one... or what one was who."
As the story comes to an end we see McBean driving off as a rich man, amused by the Sneetches crazed behaviour. He says to himself "you can't teach a Sneetch".
However, the Sneetches do take to heart a life lesson and learn from this experience that neither plain-belly nor star-belly Sneetches are superior. They make a choice to get along and become friends.
The Sneetches is a sounding gong in our deaf world. We get the message Dr Suess, however the question we have to ask ourselves is will we learn to celebrate our differences and become friends? It’s a good question to pause and ask ourselves….
