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'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 Americans toward their misdeeds as they clamored for wealth. However, she uses this example of American culture's greed to also contrast it with the rising popularity of the plastic flamingo in the 1950s. This rising desire for flamingos was not to kill them like before but to make them. This three-sixty turn around was far from the American's normal way of dealing with flamingos. Both killing and making the flamingos however displayed American culture's avarice since hunting and making the flamingo produced a profit, and the plastic flamingo produced was also a display of wealth. Thus, the plastic flamingos not only displayed opulence, but also produced opulence through their rising popularity which caused an increase in production of and profit from the plastic flamingos. Also, Price again uses a sarcastic tone through her diction when she says, "[the flamingo] was a flamingo," (line 3) as well as when she says, "the flamingo was pink." (line 30) Price uses these two phrases to mock the popularity ...
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...trend, no matter how much it had deviated from the norm, in order to gain and display wealth.
Price’s view of American culture as materialistic and obsessed with displaying wealth, even if it meant straying from the standards and traditions that American culture had had before, is shown by her use of diction, tone, and simile/metaphor. The flamingo’s rising popularity in the 1950s is an example of the American culture’s obsession with wealth because it exhibits an unexpected rise to fame by a frivolous and gangly bird who differed from the expected and conventional standards. This is seen by Price as ridiculous because it was such a peculiar bird, due to its bright pink color and thin and scrawny physique, that the only way it could have gained fame was if it brought American culture something it craved, wealth or, in other words, the display or possession of money.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed.” As humans, we work countless hours in order to have a greater opportunity to succeed in life to fulfill our wants. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, utilizes effective language and punctuation in the text in order to accomplish his purpose: Illustrate what material goods does to a society. From a rhetorical standpoint, examining logos, ethos, and pathos, this novel serves as a social commentary on how pursuing the “The American Dream” causes people in society to transform into greedy and heartless individuals.
The dawn of the 20th century was met with an unprecedented catastrophe: an international technological war. Such a horrible conflict perhaps threatened the roots of the American Dream! Yet, most do not realize how pivotal the following years were. Post war prosperity caused a fabulous age for America: the “roaring twenties”. But it also was an era where materialism took the nation by storm, rooting itself into daily life. Wealth became a measure of success and a facade for social status. This “Marxist materialism” threatened the traditional American Dream of self-reliance and individuality far even more than the war a decade before. As it morphed into materialistic visions (owning a beautiful house and car), victims of the change blindly chased the new aspiration; one such victim was Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby. As his self-earned luxury and riches clashed with love, crippling consequences and disasters occur. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby delves into an era of materialism, exploring how capitalism can become the face of social life and ultimately cloud the American Dream.
"This was a little ironic, since Americans had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida" (Price lines 13-14). Price may be putting down American because Americans tend to follow the crowd and copy what everyone else is doing. The flamingo could be a metaphor of how Americans are followers and do not come up with their own ideas. The plastic pink flamingo gave an "extra fillip of boldness" (Price line 20). The flamingo was a way for Americans to stand out in the crowd and be noticed. Americans were flashy, cocky, and maybe even a little bit conceited.
During the time in our country's history called the roaring twenties, society had a new obsession, money. Just shortly after the great depression, people's focus now fell on wealth and success in the economic realm. Many Americans would stop at nothing to become rich and money was the new factor in separation of classes within society. Wealth was a direct reflection of how successful a person really was and now became what many people strived to be, to be rich. Wealth became the new stable in the "American dream" that people yearned and chased after all their lives. In the novel entitled the great Gatsby, the ideals of the so called American dream became skewed, as a result of the greediness and desires of the main characters to become rich and wealthy. These character placed throughout the novel emphasize the true value money has on a persons place in society making wealth a state of mind.
The world in which Lily grows up in is one where money is the standard by which everyone is judged. In a setting like this, “money stands for all kinds of things- its purchasing quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor cars” (Wharton 66). Therefore, even small things such as the way a person dresses or the places someone frequents become of high importance as they are representative of how much money a person possesses. This materialistic tendency ...
In ‘The Great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald criticises the increase of consumerism in the 1920s and the abandonment of the original American Dream , highlighting that the increased focus on wealth and the social class associated with it has negative effects on relationships and the poorest sections of society. The concept of wealth being used as a measure of success and worth is also explored by Plath in ‘The Bell Jar’. Similarly, she draws attention to the superficial nature of this material American Dream which has extended into the 1960s, but highlights that gender determines people’s worth in society as well as class. Fitzgerald uses setting to criticise society’s loss of morality and the growth of consumerism after the Great War. The rise of the stock market in the 1920s enabled business to prosper in America.
Aldrich, Nelson W., Jr. Old Money: The Mythology of America’s Upper Class. New York: Vintage, 1989.
Unfortunately for most, these dreams go unanswered as the monstrous world of the wealthy can only accept those of a certain “respectable” nature. It is these people, such as those I have known, The Buchanans, for example, who are intricate parts of the grotesque world that they choose to indulge themselves in. Tom Buchanan, a man whose arrogance emanates from his very core, was raised in a society that values wealth over the love of family, intelligence, and respectability. They instead believe that class and venerance comes with achieving wealth, not earning it through talent. As Mr. Lapham states, the Europeans of yesterday and today, see us Americans as irrational and insane for holding the wealthy onto a pedestal as prized possessions, without putting much thought into their actual beliefs and talents. This can be most connected to the mystery surrounded by an old friend, Jay Gatsby. For a whole summer in West Egg, people swarmed his extravagant and garish house, making it seem like it was the 4th of July everyday. Instead of asking why, these uninvited attendees instead generated respect for Gatsby solely based on his extreme and illustrious nature. For Gatsby, his self-worth was not generated in money but his ability to dream that it would get him to what he so greatly wanted: Daisy. But, agreeing with Mr. Lapham, the
The 80’s were a decade of great change. It became obvious that there was a widening between the classes. The middle class was disappearing and people took different approaches to dealing with this fact. One way of life that became synonymous with the 80’s was being a young, urban professional, or what people at the time coined a Yuppie. Due to the widening wealth gap, it became essential to market products as either upscale and downscale. Producers were forced to place their items in one frame of reference of the other, fancy of frugal. To sell items with the high price tag advertisers played on the yuppie habit of compensatory spending. Yuppies did not want to be confused with low class or middle class, so they spent in order to show their status to the world (Ehrenreich, 229).
Price uses words such as “extravagance”, “pizazz”, “flamboyant”, and “flashy” to convey that American culture was part gaudy, part distasteful and fully excessive. Whatever opposition to flamingos was weak because they could be seen from Florida to New Jersey and were prevalent in both the upper class and middle class. When flamingos emerged, they were meant for those living a lavish lifestyle, but eventually the popularity of the flamingos spreads and “draw[s] the working-class down too” (16-17). The cultural norm in America is to follow the trend that was fostered by celebrities. The importance of a flamingo being pink should be very minimal as there is no other colour they existed as but Price appeals to ethos by including quotes from Tom Wolfe and Karal Ann Marling, both figures of authority in their respective
The iconic Plastic Pink Flamingo lawn ornament was launched during 1957 in Leominster, Massachusetts and was sold beginning in 1958. The omnipresent flamingo became a cultural American icon over the years, and the inspiration for films, such as the campy smash success, 1972's "Pink Flamingos," produced by John Waters, and the Disney featured "Featherstone" in 2011. The pink plastic flamingo yard ornament also appeared in the film, "Gnomeo and Juliet."
The distance between the wealthy class and the rest has grown, but so has the idea of noblesse oblige. The Great Gatsby clearly shows all of these issues as they were in the ‘20s, and all of them can be paralleled to show the same issues in today’s times. Works Cited Auchincloss, Louis. A. “The American Dream: All Gush and Twinkle.” Reading on the Great Gatsby.
Price says that in the late 1800s Americans hunt the flamingo for food and plumes. This cause the flamingo extinction in Florida. After this, about a century later they start using the image of a flamingo to earn profits and get a better image. They did not care that they were the main cause of the extinction of this animal because they were being driven by their greed. Then, in another paragraph she says that other cultures have always seen the flamingo as “special” like Christians who associated whit the red phoenix (Price). Still, Americans without knowing just use it to create envy among
Li, a teenager, is enraptured by this western product, witnessing the duality of lifestyles portrayed by media and reality. Whereas her reality is poor in contrast, describing how “half the people [she] knew cooked in the hallways” because they had no kitchen, Tang glorifies a lifestyle of luxury and wealth. By falling for the persuasive advertisement, Li becomes obsessed with Tang and the lifestyle it represents. Within the Tang advertisement, all individuals had “healthy complexions and toothy, carefree smiles” and a “kitchen [that] was spacious and brightly lighted,” an ideal desired by lower-income families. Because this vision did not fit Li’s reality, Li becomes resentful and jealous, as it is not the lifestyle she has. Li effectively utilizes pathos in this instance by evoking a sympathetic effect. Similar to a baby who wants a candy bar but is given a strawberry instead, Li desires this luxurious lifestyle but is given her current
“Money is the root of all evil”(Levit). Man and his love of money has destroyed lives since the beginning of time. Men have fought in wars over money, given up family relationships for money and done things they would have never thought that they would be capable of doing because of money. In the movie, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the author demonstrates how the love and worship of money and all of the trappings that come with it can destroy lives. In the novel Jay Gatsby has lavish parties, wears expensive gaudy clothes, drives fancy cars and tries to show his former love how important and wealthy he has become. He believes a lie, that by achieving the status that most Americans, in th...