Analysis Of Flamingo By Jennifer Price

In “ The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History.” author Jennifer Price examines how the popularity of flamingos has shaped and influenced American culture today. Price’s purpose is to convey the idea that the American culture is very self-centered and ignorant. She adopts a scornful tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in her scholarly readers. Price uses rhetorical strategies including imagery, several alliterations, and irony to judge how Americans used flamingos to reveal prosperity.

Price juxtaposes the American view of the flamingo with other culture’s views of the majestic birds. She says Americans exploited the flamingo, “reproducing it, brightening it, and sending it.” She compares these actions with the reverence other cultures have for the flamingo and determines that Americans tend to pervert and exploit beauty for profit, rather than preserve the original

“There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of the stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in the sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove” (11). The very vivid descriptions of the birds, people, and nature gave a more creeped out feeling than

The chief metaphor of “Joyas Voladores” is the hummingbird compared to flying jewels. The first white explorers in American named them flying jewels because they were new creatures to the world, and the men found them fascinating. Brian Doyle compares the hummingbird to multiple things throughout this piece, such as, the blue whale, a rundown engine and human life.

Price's use of similes/metaphors reveal her views on American culture. For instance, at the end of her essay, Price compares the plastic flamingo to a real flamingo. However, instead of describing the real flamingo as wading across a sea of water, she describes it as “wading across an inland sea of grass.” (line 61) This shows Americans clouding up the image of a real flamingo in order to suit their own interests. Instead of having flamingos in water like they are meant to be, they make fake flamingos to display on lawns in order to exhibit “leisure and extravagance.” (line 19) Another example would be when Price describes many flamingo based buildings such as motels, restaurants, and lounges that sprang up all across the country in the 1950s. (line 26) She compares these flamingo based buildings to “semiotic sprouts” (line 28) that just shout out “flamingo” in order to take advantage of the flamingo trend. These buildings using the “namesake Flamingo” (line 27) adopted this new trend and threw out the old in order to “stand out” (line 25) and draw in “riches.” (line 22) Thus, this shows the adaption of the new trend, no matter how much it had deviated from the norm, in order

Price continues building her portrayal of United States culture as superficial and materialistic with detailed descriptions of household items. By downsizing from large-scale hotels described in her first two paragraphs to small-scale household items in her third paragraph, Price exemplifies the materialistic ways of United States culture. Americans purchased “washing machines, cars, and kitchen countertops” in the various shades of pink. The desire of Americans to own the audacious color displays their need for material possessions. Price describes the shades of pink available,

In the poem “America,” by Tony Hoagland, the idea of Americans being consumed with their money is shown using symbolism and metaphors. The speaker in this poem is a teacher whose name is never mentioned. One thing revealed in the poem is that the speaker has a father who is presumably very wealthy and successful. One of the teacher’s students compares America to a maximum security prison. A recurring theme throughout “America” is Hoagland showing examples of America’s greedy society using a teacher, student, and a father’s experiences. Using metaphors of money and symbols of rivers filled with merchandise, Tony Hoagland captures how the teacher begins to think after he hears his student compare America to a maximum security prison.

Jennifer Price uses diction to characterize American Culture as materialistic and thoughtless in her first and second paragraphs. To add color to her first paragraph, Price uses a variety of words including “splashed”, “boldness”, “flocking”, “pizzaz” and “playful”. This word choice characterizes the flamingos, and through comparison, American society as valuing glamour and consequently, wealth. In describing the new plastic flamingos Price even goes as far as to describe flamingos as “synonymous with wealth”, and the middle class as “eager” to enjoy the flamingo culture, associated with wealth. She aids her characterization by calling the flamingos “souvenirs”, pointless chotskies that a person brings home to show off and display their wealth. She contrasts this with the irony that flamingos in America had already gone extinct by the nineteenth century. While describing this extinction,

The truth behind the poem “Poverty and Wealth” is bone-chilling, almost as if it was meant for a character like Ponyboy Curtis. On the east side of town, there lives

She uses a very elegant word choice in statements like “the Flamingo, had made the bird synonymous with wealth and pizazz…” giving the audience a more in-depth look of just how much the Flamingos were viewed by Americans. Price the delivers “in 1956, right after he signed his first recording contract, Elvis presley bought a pink Cadillac. This detail enhances her credibility by showing the audience that she is very knowledgeable and an expert in her field. The irony comes into play when she mentions “ Americans had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida in the late 1800s” which taints the reputation of America by creating the image that American society is greedy and irresponsible. She then builds upon this thought by comparing how we treat the Flamingos, and how other cultures treat them “always singled out the Flamingo as special. Early christians associated it with the red phoenix. In ancient Egypt, it symbolized the sun god

Doyle takes a different approach on this essay for the beginning, he makes a move on the reader. Doyle provides the reader with the assumption that the short essay will cover hummingbirds. Leading to the effect of grabbing the attention of different types of readers, ones who are interested in humming birds or readers who know little and are just curious. Doyle states “consider the hummingbird for a long moment” (147). Doyle’s presentation of the beginning of his essay now affected specific readers, it pulled in readers from an animal interest. Providing readers with the assumption that while reading this essay they should consider the hummingbird, and causes them to imagine a hummingbird for a moment. This move works in the text because the reader’s focus is pin pointed to a specific topic from the beginning, and from that intro Doyle explains in later sentences facts about the

It is known in our generation and those past to have trends, rituals, and ideals which have been passed on over the years. Many still exist nowadays with simple meaning in our everyday lives yet we are not familiar with their origins. The well-know modernized pink flamingo had its own roots of popularity around the world that many are not familiar with. Therefore the question is how did the flamingo get its claim to fame. Jennifer Price provides a great explanation as she recalls and summarizes the past history of the origin of the pink flamingo. Price analyzes the rising popularity of the flamingo and she portrays her view on U.S. culture as being glamorous and trendy through symbolism, numerous listing, and implementing a motif corresponding to the color pink.

In Jennifer Price’s essay, “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History” (1999), she proclaims that the United States has embraced the pink flamingo and its history. The author utilizes benevolent diction, enlightening metaphor, and alluding allusion. Price’s purpose to get people to understand the beauty of the pink flamingo in order to show her view of how the flamingo changed the culture of the United States. The author writes in a admirable tone for her audience of American citizens.

The sentence ‘the passengers… stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour’ symbolises the wealthy forced to be confronted with the consequences of their lives of luxury, while the word ‘forced’ implies these upper class people would rather not know about places like the valley of ashes and the conditions the people there have to live in, the truth being inconvenient. This ties in with the theme of the American Dream but draws attention to the reality of a downside to the hedonistic lifestyles of the rich – the Valley of Ashes is proof of this; it is a by-product of capitalism.

Throughout history, many people struggle with greed. Greed is defined as a selfish desire for something. Throughout the story each character faces there own form of greed, whether they know it or not each action impacts each other and leads to the death of the mother’s son. In the short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the author D.H lawrence uses a rocking horse, wealth, and lack of family intimacy to illustrate to the reader the disastrous problems with greed.