Queen Bees

Today, having lost access to the school network and internet services, the group had a good old fashioned meeting, involving a pen and paper, focused discussion between Nina and Maddie, and Erik clicking who-knows-what on his laptop. That said, his input was valuable.
The group discussed their research. Maddie has been looking at an assortment of political cartoons. Nina and Erik have been examining the metaphors and symbols within the book; Nina having followed the symbolism of turtles, Erik researching fascist societies.
Further discussion brought the group to some conclusions about the story.
-The pond is the original land where a fascist society in created.
-Yertle is Hitler. (In case you missed that part.)
-Mack, a turtle on the ver bottom of the tower, represents opposition. Any opposition in a fascist society is annihilated.
-Yertle orders more turtles to join the stack each time, as Hitler continued to raise his requirements.
-That the turtles stand on each other's backs in linked to the legend of a turtle holding the world on it's back. That's a lot of power.
-The other turtles in the story, excluding Yertle and Mack, are the Nazis, in that they accept orders, obeying Yertle, and express no views or opinions of their own. Their passivism represents their alignment to Yertle's beliefs, and possible alignment or willingness to be a part of his cause.

Our proposed thesis statement and essay topics include prooving how Dr.Seuss's Yertle the Turtle uses symbols and characters as metaphors to represent the mechanics of a fascist society.
This statement is subject to change.

On a funner topic;
the political cartoon.
We discussed possibly using bees, because they are all the same, working to build an orderly society.
Maddie intends to research other animals with similar routines to that of the bee in attempts to find a species that kills or banishes those who are born weak or with genetic mutations that the main ensemble finds undesirable.
And of course, there is the Queen bee; as in Hitler's fascist society, that demanded that people abandon personal beliefs and values in order to function as a country rather than an individual- someone is always in charge.

-Nina Danielle
Edited by Erik McGowan