The Smell Short Story

I think the main idea of the short story, The Smell, by John Seabrook is that covering up something that is frowned upon will not get you anywhere and the truth will always come up. This is shown in the short story when then townspeople complain about the smell, when T. enterprises shop closes and when Daniel Chan lied about the smell. Firstly, the main idea is that something that is frowned upon will not get you anywhere and the truth will always come up is because of when the towns people complained about the smell that was all over town. “No one could say just what the smell was--only that it was certainly caused by putrefaction of some kind of flesh … We get a lot of bad smells in this business, but I never smelled anything like that”.

Secondly, an example of the main idea is something that is frowned upon will not get you anywhere and the truth will always come up is when T. Chan Enterprises was asked to get closed down. “If our inspectors seized the product, something probably isn’t right with the fins … explaining why the agency had the authority to shut Chan’s shark-fin operation down”. Mr.Chan’s enterprise was shut down as the EPA and Inspector Paul Feldman caught him red handed as he was exposed of sharks being de-fined and tossed back into the ocean alive. The problem was that Mr.Chan broke the law and he did not rectify the procedure of processing the shark fins causing his whole operation to close. Lastly, an example of the main idea is something that is frowned upon will not get you anywhere and the truth will always come up is when Mr.Chan continued to do work of the shark fins even after they were told to close the operation. “Daniel Chan said that the company was developing a new shark-fin processing method … two machines called ozone neutralizers, which Mr.Chan said the company had leased two hundred dollars a month in order to improve the smell… Mr.Chan inhaled the foul air deeply and