The sneetches are a bunch of anthropomorphic characters who look a good deal like Big Bird from Sesame Street. Two examples are in the image above.

They all live together in some community somewhere. Some of them have green stars on their bellies, and some don’t.

The star-bellies dominate the community (it’s not exactly clear how this came to be). They discriminate against the plain-bellies and treat them as second-class citizens.

One day, an enterprising humanoid non-sneetch named Sylvester McMonkey McBean visits their community. He informs the plain-bellies that he has developed a marvelous machine which will put green stars on their bellies for a small fee, making them indistinguishable from the star-bellies. Every one of them takes advantage of his offer, making every single sneetch effectively a star-belly, and making McBean a good deal richer.

We then see a meeting of the (original) star-bellied sneetches, who are quite upset by this turn of events. They are convinced that they are the superior variety of sneetch, but as all sneetches now appear to be star-bellies it is unclear how they can continue to oppress the “inferior” sneetches whose bellies used to be plain.

This meeting is interrupted by McBean, who apparently has a second machine which is able to remove the stars. After each paying a small fee, the star bellies all have their stars removed. They are now able to tell who is who and go back to oppressing the former-plain-bellies-who-now-appear-to-be-star-bellies, until that oppressed group also pays up to have their stars (which they just paid to have added a few pages earlier) removed. Now none of the sneetches have stars, and they are again indistinguishable.

There follows a brilliant picture, with the star-on machine set up at one end and the star-off machine at the other, and the sneetches forming a figure 8, paying their money, going in to one machine, and then rushing to the other machine to pay to have the process reversed.

Eventually, the sneetches spend all of their money, and McBean packs up his stuff and leaves. The sneetches then decided to be nice to each other, treat each other equally, and stop caring about who has stars and how doesn’t.

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