In her essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, Jennifer Price illustrates the influence of pink flamingos in American culture. Jennifer Price also describes the nature and color of real flamingos. However, Price’s main purpose of writing the essay isn’t stating the nature of real flamingos, but in fact her view of American culture talking about these plastic flamingos. Price uses certain rhetorical devices, such as strong diction, tone, and use of examples to further convey her readers of the greed and the lack of seriousness that exist within the United States culture in the 1950s. Prices use of strong word choice reveals how the plastic flamingo reflects culture in the United States in the 1950s. Price uses the word “boldness’ very often in her essay to describe how the “pink flamingo splashed into the fifties market”. She also argues how pink flamingos stand out in the desert “strikingly than on a lawn”. “In the 1910s and 1920s, Miami Beach’s first grand hotel, the Flamingo, had made the bird synonymous with wealth and pizzazz……” at …show more content…
The title of the essay, “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History” is a good example of Prices sarcastic tone. It shows how the title refers to “natural”, yet it says “plastic” which is ironic because plastic is manmade not “natural”. Price also points out that “Americans had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida in the late 1800s” and at that time they weren’t important because they were killed for “plumes and meat”, but now all of a sudden, nearly hundred years later flamingos become important to the American culture. Price states “Flamingo motels, restaurants, and lounges cropped up across the country like a line of semiotic sprouts” to show her readers that she finds it ironic how a thing that had no meaning at all is being