In her essay, “The Plastic Flamingo: A Natural History,” Jennifer Price asserts that the United States culture is driven by the materialistic wants of society and the aspirations of the bourgeois family to surpass others, she uses Americans and their obsession over the pink flamingo to support her argument. Price uses diction, irony, and symbolism to additionally express her views of the culture of the United States. The generation that had been raised in the depression began to focus their attention on how to accumulate prosperity, and they began to find new and flashy ways to show off their wealth and success. Thus, creating their mania for the pink flamingos and other materialistic possessions. Her use of a sarcastic and sardonic tone …show more content…
In reference to a person, to be plastic and to be natural are almost always seen as opposites. In addition, the obsession with the pink flamingo shows a superficial or plastic quality among the people in the mid-twentieth century. There are multiple other places in her essay that supports her sarcastic, ironic, and sardonic tone. Already, two sentences in, she uses sarcasm and a sardonic tone in the sentence, “First, it was a flamingo.” Price bluntly states the obvious to the reader, who clearly already knows that a plastic flamingo is a flamingo. In addition, she further adds sarcasm to the sentence by italicizing the word flamingo. The same thing is done in the third paragraph with the sentence, “And the flamingo was pink.” In the second paragraph, Price makes a remark about how Americans were the cause of the extinction of flamingos in Florida, yet 150 years later they are ironically worshiped among Americans and used as decorations for their lawns. After this remark she uses the fragment “but no matter,” sarcastically saying that the ignorance of the Americans is of no importance. When she, in fact, feels angry by what society did and thought was