Sin is like a curtain that blocks the light of God from the people who need it most. He becomes literally and figuratively lost at sea, and his sins weigh him down like an anchor. Because the Mariner lives “in an ordered universe where crime leads to suffering”, he is immediately punished for his sins (Modiano 150). God proves his command over nature when he puts the wind to a halt, causing the ship to become static. The “copper sky” and “bloody sun” physically drain the accompanying sailors until they become too exhausted to wake up leaving the Mariner in agonizing isolation (Coleridge 111, 112).
Are Lobsters Pain-Free? “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” David Foster Wallace, author of “Consider the Lobster” asks this question throughout his article. He explains how lobsters are considered as low class food because of its living conditions. Thus, most people do not consider the lobsters or simply do not care about them. He explains that killing a lobster for our own pleasure is not right; it is unethical.
Another is how Fujimoto, Ponyo’s father, hates all humans because of the bad effects to the ecosystem that they cause. Fujimoto once was human sacrificed it all to serve the sea. For example when he states,”I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.” (Thoreau, lines 46-47). Even though Ponyo’s father loathes humanity, she has so much love for both humanity and nature that instead of bringing humanity down, she wants nature to come up alongside it. Fujimoto is the advocate for the idea that humans – society, corrupts people.
The Importance of Critically Thinking Freely The process of writing is different for everyone. Some people use outlines to clearly organize their thoughts and others just start writing and go wherever that takes them. Peter Elbow teaches how to relate these two writing styles by using first-order thinking and second-order thinking. For a piece to be interesting and well thought out, I believe that both styles should be incorporated. First-order thinking is creative and free.
Having an imagination is necessary to get deeper in the story, and a good memory is also required to tie the pieces of the story together. And of course an artistic sense to appreciate the beauty of the author’s writing. Nabokov states “Since the master artist used his imagination in creating his book, it is natural and fair that the consumer of a book should use his imagination too.” The reader needs to also understand and appreciate the language used by the author. He needs to pay attention and notice the details in a novel and not just the general storyline. He needs to read with an open mind regardless of other people’s judgment of the novel.
But the Mariner escapes his curse by unconsciously blessing the water snakes, and the albatross drops off his neck into the ocean. In the poem, I think the Albatross represents Nature, but it means nothing to the Mariner. What’s more, a ship followed by an albatross is generally consider an omen of good luck. When the Mariner kills the symbol of Nature, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship, Nature quickly changes and began punishing him. He is then tortured by the rays of the sun and mocked by the sight of water that he could not drink.
After every account, the investigators refute it as unbelievable. “Bananas don’t float”, “How could you survive in a lifeboat with one?”(99). After much time trying to uncover the truth, the investigators are frank with Pi and tell him “We want a story without animals that will explain the sinking of the Tsimtsum” (99). Pi must oblige and recounts the actual story in where the Chinese sailor got his leg amputated by the cook for bait and his mother is killed right before his eyes. He must recount the story in which he is left with the final option of killing the savage cook.
Whaling has been around on since prehistoric times, they were hunted by chasing the whales, and throwing a harpoon into them. Whaling and fishing in the late nineteenth and twentieth century became a tragedy of the commons where fishermen had little incentive to allow some fish to remain to only be taken by others. Countries around the world were putting whales on the brink of extinction through any means necessary. By not taking young fish, this would allow future fish to keep the population stable, but by not taking the younger fish, the fishermen would lose these to other fishermen. In the 1800s and 1900s whales were found to be quite practical and useful.
The Cove The first word that poped out of my mind after I saw the movie “The Cove” is “Wow”. In the film, Ric O’s Barry which was a dolphin trainer, he figured out that dolphins are such intelligent creatures, they shouldn’t be captive and fill humans’ happiness, and they belong where they came from, the ocean. In Japan, Taiji, 23,000 dolphins are being slaughters each year in the cove, it really harms the dolphins population, and nobody knows this is happening, not even the Japanese people. The Japanese government knew what was going on, they wanted money, they hid the facts, and they feed their kids with meats full of toxins. Should dolphins be living in a stressful life because of our human’s selfishness?
Defending Innocents I believe animal testing is one of the most cruel things a person can do to a living thing. It is not acceptable to subject these innocent animals under terrible scrutiny. According to PETA: “More than 100 million animals are tortured and killed each year in scientific experiments”. “Some people say animal testing and experimentation should go on because there is nothing wrong with it if it’s ethically correct, these people are contradicting themselves because they are rejecting the same experiments but practiced on human beings” (PETA). They are agreeing that these experiments are inflicting terrible pain to animals that humans could never undergo.