Summary
In her essay "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp", Joy Williams attacks modern day indifference towards the environment, the root cause of the ecological crisis. Williams uses a satirical tone and dramatic writing to create an active dialogue between herself and the reader. She amplifies her concern for nature by showing disbelief and anger at humanity's selfish actions. Williams argues that nature has become industrialized into a commodity bringing negative impacts to the environment. Humans pay no attention to the environment around them because "it is easier to endure death without thinking about it than to endure the thought of death without dying"(139). Williams begins with a strict criticism of the reader's ignominious character;
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She explains that systemization happens because humans desire commodities causing there to be an overabundance of production. Williams explains that as long as humans pursue material goods, growth in industry is inevitable. This human desire for growth materializes itself in the form of the tourism industry, museums, zoos, and planned communities. The recomposition of nature makes humans disconnected from natural settings and turn natures into nothing more than "a scenery, a …show more content…
The line "You see a picture of a baby condor... And your heart sinks doesn't it?" directly makes readers empathize with a cute and helpless creature(139). By bluntly telling readers how they should feel Williams successfully extracts heartfelt reactions from the reader. Once Williams controls the reader's emotional state she shatters reality by explaining these "cute" and "heart sinking" moments are actually impending dooms(139). These pictures are now filled with feelings of shock and frustration and the once joyous imagery is replaced with sadness and inevitably. Her juxtaposition of beautiful scenery with inevitable claws of evils reflects the reader’s life. The modern society is filled with “happy” imagery but no one seems to care that there is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
Following this darker look on nature, Williams begins to question the reader on whether it is too late. These repetitive questions reaffirm the previous guilt and inevitably to recover the already impacted environment. This aggressive accusation makes readers feel as if they were the cause of the doom and persuades them to find a ray of hope. In turn, these questions also allow William to directly give suggestions on how to act in the
America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.
Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp is an essay written by Joy Williams, about the overwhelming complacency that todays culture shows towards nature.Williams argues in a very satirical way, that todays culture has all but completely lost touch with what nature really is, and that unless we as a nation change our morals regarding the role that nature plays in human existence, we may very well be witnessing the dawn of our own destruction.
Despite an expanded outlook on the world, Luke and Anna find themselves in a place of vertigo as they struggle to come to terms with the harsh world that is Garra Nulla. The metaphor “some days she feels like a fly caught in an invisible web” establishes a visual of one who is confined by their negative experiences, unable to escape, whereas the description of “an invisible web” depicts an image of an unexpected challenge that has impacted on Anna’s initially idealistic view of country living. However, despite the couple’s dislocation and the destructive yet regenerative bushfires an overall feeling of hope at the end of the novella is reassuring. Lohrey delineates this through the symbolisation of the black swans at the closing stage of the novella. “Look”, she says, “the swans are back.” Representing a return to normality in their world as the re-emergence of the swans metaphorically represents the return of hope. The omniscient narrator reveals Anna’s inner dialogue “Ah, she says so you are leaving us. So you are on your way at last. But it’s okay, it’s alright; yes, she thinks, I am ready for this…” displaying that they are finally able to attain comfort over the grief of losing their son. Despite Anna’s and Luke’s negative experiences, the responder attains a feeling of reassurance as through the distinctive images created we observe a return to normality and ultimately a positive feeling of
Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.
Automatically, the reader knows that serious issues are about to be discussed and that the outcome may not be positive. This novel challenges the material ideology discussed above. It does this by bringing the issues to the forefront and reporting on them in a fictitious yet realistic manner. The reader is not led to believe that the ending will be happy, he is supposed to expect the consider the harsh realities of the world throughout the piece.
Rachel Carson is a noted biologist who studies biology, a branch of science addressing living organisms, yet she has written a book called Silent Spring to speak about the harmful effects of pesticides on nature. Carson doesn’t write about birds’ genetic and physical makeup, the role of them in the animal food chain, or even how to identify their unbelievable bird songs, yet strongly attests the fight for a well developed environment containing birds, humans, and insects is just and necessary. To Carson, the war for a natural environment is instantly essential for holding on to her true love for the study of biology. Thus Carson claims that whether it be a direct hit towards birds or an indirect hit towards humans and wildlife, farmers need to understand the effects and abandon the usage of pesticides in order to save the environment by appealing to officials, farmers, and Americans in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. She positions her defense by using rhetorical devices such as rhetorical questioning to establish logos, juxtaposing ideas, and using connotative and denotative diction.
The thesis of “Despair Not” is “… the time has come for outspoken, full-throated heroism in the face of the great moral danger of our own day: the environmental crisis – an unfolding calamity whose main victims are our own children and grandchildren.”
Diamond opens the chapter using an ironic tone by posing a question regarding the parallels between societies such as the "Easter Islands, Henderson Islands, Anasazi, Maya, and Greenland Norse," with our current society, and then answers it as if he was a critic arguing against him. Diamond, in his ironic tone, gives examples such as, "deforestation, over harvesting wild animals sources of their protein, topsoil eroding away, building cities in dry areas, and destabilizing wars", to be the major catalyst in the collapsing of these past societies (16). Diamond 's use of irony portrays the ignorance of the "critics" knowledge of today 's societal issues, because deforestation, destabilizing wars, over harvesting, building cities in dry areas are all environmental issues
Wild by Cheryl Strayed gives a vivid depiction of a young woman on her journey through life and over a thousand miles of rough conditions on the Pacific Coast Trail. Cheryl Strayed makes the spontaneous decision to hike from the Mojave Desert to Washington alone, in order to reinvent her life, and forgive herself and others for her troubled past. As her situation becomes more demanding, Strayed finds that she has been humbled by her past, and is able to guide readers across raging rivers and through scorched deserts, in order to free herself from the person she allowed herself to become. It is a moving story of a woman reinventing herself though beauty and suffering, and can teach anyone that they can navigate through the tough times that lie ahead.
To say that Cheryl Strayed has overcome many things in her life is an understatement. She has an unmistakable amount of courage and bravery. Cheryl goes through a complete transformation within her life. The person she becomes after all of her pain and struggles is unbelievable. During her tough journey through life, Cheryl has truly found herself and becomes the person she knows her mother raised.
Everyday people all over the world try to improve the qualities of their lives. Nonetheless, they forget that what they do can have severe harms and damages on the environment and other organisms. In the excerpt “A Fable for Tomorrow” from the book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson describes the disastrous and horrific effects of pesticides on the environment and animals of the town. In the essay “Our Animal Rites” by Anna Quindlen, she shows the inhumanity of animal hunting by human. Furthermore, she argues how human migration is destroying the natural habitats that belong to the animals. In the excerpt “Reading the River” from the autobiographical book Life on Mississippi, Mark Twain describes how he loses the ability to perceive the
The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These
In the first chapter, the author talks about how most people’s attention is on eye-catching images, instead of what is going on in the world. People care more about murders, airplane crashes, etc. instead of the exploding populations or the growth in the amount of nuclear weapons that exist. Because of this, our environment starts to deteriorate. The environment will continue to deteriorate, and such events will be out of control until the human race realizes just how selectively the environment persuades the human mind, and how the biological and cultural history determines our comprehension. The book is about fundamental connections to our past and how the human race can
The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).
In her essay “The Obligation to Endure”, Rachel Carson alerts the public to the dangers of modern industrial pollution. She writes about the harmful consequences of lethal materials being released into the environment. She uses horrifying evidence, a passionate tone, audience, and the overall structure of her essay to express to her readers that the pollution created by man wounds the earth. There are many different ways that pollution can harm the environment, from the nuclear explosions discharging toxic chemicals into the air, to the venomous pesticides sprayed on plants that kills vegetation and sickens cattle. The adjustments to these chemicals would take generations. Rachel