American Flamingo By Greg Pape

983 Words2 Pages

Have you ever wondered if there is a price to knowledge that we learn and get at any cost? In the poem “American Flamingo,” Greg Pape, (see Fig.1.) he is basing his knowledge on what he knows in the painting American Flamingo by John James Audubon, (see Fig.2.) what he did not know, and showing how smart he is with the knowledge he has. The painting has caused an ethical dilemma regarding knowledge. When I first read the poem by Pape I was confused because he writes about the “the tongue is lined with man small/ tongues (lines 4 and 5), and “the blue eye” (line 10). When looking at the painting Audubon did not draw the mouth of the flamingo open, that I lead me to think that Pape poem is demonstrating his knowledge on what is knows about flamingos …show more content…

Audubon has painted eight other flamingos behind the flamingo that takes up most of the painting, and they are in different postures to show how flamingos move their body in different ways. Pape has described the eight flamingos as “eight stunning movements in the ongoing/ dance of the flamingos” (lines 23 and 24). To show that flamingos may move in the same way but they move in different postures of life and stay in that posture like a dance that is being performed in front of their eyes. Audubon and Pape want us to know that there is much more to know about life and the world around us, also that there is more to come our way in …show more content…

As humans, we have studied the body of a dead animal to have knowledge of how the animals use their bodies to live, like how we study the human body to know how our body works and the functions. I know this because of Andreas Vesalius had experimented on pig’s spinal cord to further is knowledge by observing on how the body works (Gunderman, Richard). But is killing an animal worth the knowledge to know at the very moment? To think about the cost of knowledge leads to an ethical dilemma to know what is the greater good and the lesser evil. The greater good would be that killing animals lead us to know more about the world around us and how animal function differently from a human. The lesser evil would be we would be taking away children from mother nature and taking a life from this earth. Furthermore, we would be taking away a family member to their kind and children, like humans have family and children. The price of knowledge can be argued both ways, but there are people who might think that there is no point in taking a life to have

Open Document