In the passage from Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey, a former ranger in what is now Arches National Park, creatively illustrates how ecosystems are a crucial part of our world and that they can easily be destroyed with our architectural modernization, in order to convince United States citizens to keep the Southwestern U.S. landscape wild. He supports his argument by deep diving into the little creatures we might not know about to give us a better understanding of the ecosystems around us, by emphasizing the peace and harmony of these ecosystems and turning the audience's attention to how in sync they are, and by causing the audience to think about the ecosystems if we were to install cities. Abbey hopes to change the United States thought process, …show more content…
Overall Abbey is trying to open our eyes to the possibility that even these little frogs still need their home and that destroying it with buildings is wrong. Building up his first few paragraphs, Abbey adds on by emphasizing the order and harmony of these ecosystems and turning the audience's attention to how in sync they are, even with so many moving parts. He highlights a concept of peace and harmony, and even downplays the significance of the frog's life, something he is fighting for, to make the reader pause and ask themselves if that's what he truly thinks. He calls attention to the serendipity of the ecosystem by stating, "At night the mammals come—deer, bobcat, cougar, coyote, fox, jackrabbit, bighorn sheep, wild horse and feral burro—each in his turn and in unvarying order, under the declaration of a truce. They come to drink, not to kill or be killed." By creating a tone that is calm and orderly, it allows the audience to see the perfections of the entire ecosystem through words like, "treasure" and "order". It shows there is peace to the chaos and if the animals don't even kill each other why should the humans kill the peaceful