Pink Flamingo By Jennifer Price Analysis

In the essay, “The Pink Flamingo,” the author Jennifer price reveals her opinion of the United States culture. With various rhetorical modes Price views the country's society as followers of trend. Also Price views the society as caught up in money and fortune rather than the beauty nature has to offer.

In the pink flamingo's passage, Jennifer Price cleverly and effectively describes how American Society has always behaved and the virtues they hold important. Price successfully uses multiple rhetorical strategies to convince her audience how America is infatuated with claiming a position where the are regarded as high class and successful.

Jennifer Price in the essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History” explains her point of view of the American Culture. Price supports her explanation by providing examples and explaining the history of the American Culture and the flamingos. The author’s purpose is to point out the greed in order to further explain her opinion on the American Culture. Price entertains her audience by mocking the American Culture by using symbolism, ethos, and tone in her essay.

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.

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

Majority of Americans were “raised in the depression” was now able to afford a vacation. America was coming of a time where things were gloom and you where grateful for everything you were given. This “middle class” group of individuals was “eager” to share their “wealth” what better to do than stick a “flashy” souvenir in your yard. The Americans were obsessed with pink by giving examples of household items that come in all shades of pink, including Elvis Presley’s pink Cadillac. The “Sassy Pink” was shown to be a new beginning for America a more uplifting bright colorful

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

Just examining the title the reader already understands that the author is going to be using an ironic and sarcastic tone in her writing; “The Plastic Pink Flamingo : A Natural History.” The flamingo is plastic while “natural” may implied that is naturally made, while a plastic flamingo is actually man made. The reader gets another taste of her sarcastic tone with the first two sentences of the essay; “first, it was a flamingo”. As if the italics weren’t enough to notice her sarcastic tone on making such an obvious comment, as if a pink flamingo could be anything but a flamingo. It is quite evident that price did this on purpose she wanted to be sarcastic to show her point on how a simple thing as a flamingo can become the symbol of wealth in the eyes of Americans. The author continues with using more irony in her work by actually saying that something Americans did was ironic. “This was a little ironic, since Americans had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida…” what price is saying is that once Americans wanted flamingos for their meat, fast-forward a hundred years now the flamingo is almost being worship by the way it is use all across the nation “In the 1950s, namesake Flamingo motels, restaurants, and lounges cropped up across the country…”.The authors finds it ironic how Americans change their ideas about something that was once meaningless into something that everyone must have as soon as it is “cool” enough. This shows how price thinks that the American culture norm is to follow what everyone is doing or what everyone is buying even if it was just once meat.

Price's word choice emphasizes her feelings toward American culture. For example, Price's nonchalant use of the phrase, "But no matter," (line 15) after describing how Americans had hunted the flamingos in Florida to extinction in the 1800s, sarcastically mocks the aloof attitude of the

In Twitchell’s “Allure of Luxury,” he takes a negative stance towards materialism, describing the ideology of it to be

Living the American dream was a part of the road to Suburbia. As soldiers were returning home from the wars, births were reaching record highs known as the baby boom. Just in the year 1957, a total of 4,308,000 babies were born.4 Desiring large families and great economic prosperity, the women’s role as mother and homemaker were built-up in movies and television and magazines. Ultimately, with additional “leisure time” at home, Americans bought televisions, nice record players, lawn mowers and other electronic products. Manufactures and advertising agencies jumped at the opportunity to profit on consumerism. “More and more, ad executives and designers turned to psychology to create new strategies for selling. Advertisers appealed to people’s desire for status and “belongingness” and strived to associate their products with those values.”5 The Baby Boomers that began the consumerism in the mid-1950’s socially altered the United States then and still do

The phenomenon of consumerism is quiet powerful due to the impact on individual’s lives. Society has come to the point, happiness is associated with consumption. However, the way consumerism works, is if the items being purchased gives temporary happiness. There individuals are always buying the latest products to remain happy. In the text, “The Cult you’re in” Kalle Lasn, discusses a cult-like nature of consumer culture on Americans. Lasn uses the work ‘cult’ as a metaphor; he does not mean an actual cult but American consumers seem to be in a cult-like nature. The ideal example of Lasns argument is the text, “The man behind Abercrombie and Fitch”, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, goes in great depth of the life of the CEO, Mike Jeffries, of

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

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

Judith Wright’s knowledgeable use of poetic devices enhances the reader’s enjoyment and understanding of the white invasion that occurred in Australia many years ago through the use of metaphors, imagery and rhyme. “The blue crane fishing” is an example of a metaphor as a crane is a species of bird but it is also a type of rod used for fishing. The poet uses this to show the difference between how the Aborigines used to hunt for food independently and how the settlers who arrived in Australia manufactured food which changed the way Aborigines lived. Throughout this entire poem Wright uses rhyme. For example Stanza Two: