Analysis Of The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History By Jennifer Price

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

I then think about how it would make me feel and how my life would be altered. Then we read on to the second metaphor, “and our hatred of it was still the vague, undirected restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo”. Okay, now we think about our hatred and how it never stops and we always try to find ways to get out like a zoo-bred flamingo. Now we relate these thoughts to poverty. The author then puts a personification after that, “zoo-bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free, “ the author gives a human characteristic of a conscious mind

Jennifer Price, in her essay "The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History," highlights the American culture's ridiculous obsession with displaying wealth through her use of diction, tone, and simile/metaphor. She depicts American culture as nonsensical, and thus ridiculous, because of its disposal of normal standards or logic in order to fulfill its materialistic desires which is shown through the popularity of the pink plastic flamingo in the 1950s.

Price begins her essay by explaining the flamingo’s rapid appearance in United States culture and the connotations behind the bird while using diction and cultural allusions to characterize United States culture as trivial, superficial and materialistic. Price uses a low level of diction in paragraph one through words like “pizzaz” and playful”. Her informal diction demonstrates her view that United States culture holds trivial things, like flamingo’s, with too much importance. Price continues on to describe the superficial value of the bird. The plastic flamingo is “inscribed...emphatically” across United States lawns, its owners hoping to attach themselves to ideas of wealth. Those who place flamingo’s in their lawn are looking to benefit from the wealthy face value of the bird, they do not wish to suffer any detriment from the less known irony surrounding the flamingos' extinction. It is only right that this flamingo revolution would be centered in Las Vegas - “the flamboyant oasis filled with instant riches…” Las Vegas is a city built on money and expensive material things, the same foundation the ever important flamingo is built on.

In the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History” by Jennifer price; the author shows implicitly her idea and point of view on the topic on the United States culture. The idea is that the U.S.A‘s culture is very overbearing, this is shown by her view on how Americans are so worried with their image that is seen by society. Price uses many writing techniques to express her view on United States culture, by the usage of diction, tone, and symbolism Price is able to convey her analysis on the greed and the corruption occurring in the American culture.

Price’s essay shifts from stating the artistic appeal of plastic flamingos in the 1950s to acknowledging that many American trends are hypocritical. She appeals to logos by stating how flamingos had gone extinct in Florida due to hunters killing them for plumes and meat. She presents this in order

In the story The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst, the author shows many similarities between the narrator's little brother Doodle and an exotic bird. While reading through the story the young boy is not thought very highly of. No one including, the doctors, ever thought Doodle would live past a couple days. But Doodle did just that, he lived for 6 whole years. His parents even named him William Armstrong, because they thought it would look good on a tombstone. His brother later renamed him Doodle because with that kind of name no one would expect much from him. Doodle had many obstacles growing up and didn’t really fit it. While going through life Doodle was constantly trying to prove that there was a reason for his life. Doodle’s brother tried very to have a normal little brother, so he pushed him in many ways to enable him to do normal things. Doodle could not stand up or crawl and when he did he crawled backwards, earning him the name Doodle. The brothers says to Doodle, “Aw, come on, Doodle,” I urged. “You can do it. Do you want to be different from everybody else when you start school?”

In sprawling suburbs across America, lies the remnants of a different era. In those few houses left relatively untouched and never remodeled, one can see the markings of the 1950s, an era of kitchens and bathrooms decorated in a monochrome of Hot Pink, just like the plastic pink lawn flamingos. In her essay, Jenniffer Price discusses the history of the flamingos in the United States and uses them as a symbol of America’s culture. Through her use of diction and imagery in the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, Jennifer Price characterizes American Culture as materialistic.

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.

Hello. I am Anna Zhang. Today, I will discuss the motif of birds in Joseph Boyden’s novel: Three Day Road by sharing two quotes following with my personal analysis.

In Western literature, birds are often used to symbolize humans. Birds’ anatomy, behavior, and perceived emotions combine to make the bird a useful symbol of humans, their thoughts, and their emotions. Z.Z. Packer adds to this list of more commonly used similarities between birds and humans by endowing the birds in her short story, “The Ant of the Self”, with the gift of speech. By doing so, Z.Z. Packer highlights her use of a squawking assortment of colorful African birds as a symbol for Spurgeon. The birds serve as a catalyst for the story, giving rise to Spurgeon’s and his father’s trip to the Million Man March. As the duo makes their way from Jasper, Indiana to Washington,

First and foremost one of her most clear strategies that was the basis of her work was using repetition of certain words such as "pink" and "flamingos". One might misinterpret that Price was merely speaking about the bird being a pleasant icon therefore assuming she is a fan of the bird but in reality she repeats those words to emphasize how the bird represents brightness and extravagance which is directly

This is evident when Price connotates that the bird was synonymous with solely, “wealth and pizzazz,” in American culture, yet, “symbolized the sun god Ra,” in Egypt and, “remains a major motif in art, dance, and literature,” in Mexico and the Caribbean. By contrasting these details, Price refutes the legitimateness of the flamingo in American society in the 1950’s- depicting Americans as ignorant toward the value of the exotic bird as they tried to reproduce its cultural importance. Furthermore, Price goes on to explain that throughout the 1950’s, “namesake Flamingo motels, restaurants, and lounges cropped up across the country like a line of semiotic sprouts”; this indicates that Price not only believes that Americans exploited the flamingo for their own commercial agenda, but also that the popularity of the flamingos is like a patch of weeds: annoying and

The poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver connects the both the natural and human world as it compares human life to the travels of wild geese. Touching on the landscapes of the natural world and emotions faced by the average person; Oliver manages to use devices such as tone, metaphors and descriptive images to convey a message that helps a person view life from a different perspective. Oliver makes it clear that the relationship between the wild and the human is coexistence; where one universe continues on if the parallel seems to have stopped. Thus, Oliver is able to move the reader on a comforting journey as she entangles the natural world and human world, showing that the natural world has more