Technology can prove to be both a benefit to our lives as well as a hindrance. Today, people have come to rely on technology and the Internet to function in everyday life. While it helped advance our society to a great degree, it has also created new issues such as cyberbullying, Internet addiction, and “catfishing”—pretending to be someone else online for the purpose of tricking another individual. Carl Hiaasen discusses both the pros and cons of technology in the novel Skink: No Surrender. He uses connects technology with nature to show both how it can be important but not always necessary, and he uses unique, resourceful characters to deal with the situation their own way. The main character and narrator of Skink: No Surrender is Richard
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He is the man who abducts Malley in an attempt to marry her. He is obviously a very sad and disturbed person, considering he tried to marry an underage girl and catfished her under the alias of a war hero. In addition, he was also shown to be extremely violent, threatening to kill Richard, Malley, and Skink multiple times. However, he wasn’t the smartest criminal ever. While he did make Malley dye her hair so she would be unrecognizable, there isn’t much else he did that was extremely clever. When he caught a giant catfish, he carelessly handled it, obviously unaware of all the dangers that posed—such as the fish’s sharp, toxic spines. This ended up weakening him and putting him at a disadvantage since the hand that the spine stabbed was rendered useless for the rest of the story. Terwin was also easily fooled. Richard and Malley were able to trick him into sparing them while they worked to figure out an escape plan. Malley was also easily able to taunt him and distract him, further extending the time they had to plan. Terwin’s actions and behaviors help form the central conflict of this story, and they also eventually lead to his …show more content…
Skink’s actions were the biggest examples in illustrating this theme. Throughout the whole story, Skink constantly stresses the importance of nature and how humans need to protect the environment. He was willing to throw himself into the middle of the street to save a skunk, which ended up costing him the use of a leg. He also showed major disdain towards people who showed no compassion for the environment. For instance, he ruined one person’s car’s gas tank because the person threw a beer can into the road. He also had many environmental books, including Rachel Carson’s famous book Silent Spring, well-known for exposing the horrible truths behind the use of pesticides like DDT. Skink also stresses the simplicity and “honesty” of nature, claiming that “ ‘[n]ature never deceives us. It is always we who deceive ourselves’ ” (222). Here, he is saying that nature never tries to trick us by putting on any kind of act. Humans are the ones who “deceive themselves” by overthinking things. Another example of the importance of nature comes in the form of the ivory-billed woodpeckers. These seemingly-extinct birds started off as a topic Richard studied for a science project, but they ended up becoming an important clue in discovering Malley’s location. She was able to secretly tell Richard where she was because it was the same place where there had been ivory-billed
He is the man who abducts Malley in an attempt to marry her. He is obviously a very sad and disturbed person, considering he tried to marry an underage girl and catfished her under the alias of a war hero. In addition, he was also shown to be extremely violent, threatening to kill Richard, Malley, and Skink multiple times. However, he wasn’t the smartest criminal ever. While he did make Malley dye her hair so she would be unrecognizable, there isn’t much else he did that was extremely clever. When he caught a giant catfish, he carelessly handled it, obviously unaware of all the dangers that posed—such as the fish’s sharp, toxic spines. This ended up weakening him and putting him at a disadvantage since the hand that the spine stabbed was rendered useless for the rest of the story. Terwin was also easily fooled. Richard and Malley were able to trick him into sparing them while they worked to figure out an escape plan. Malley was also easily able to taunt him and distract him, further extending the time they had to plan. Terwin’s actions and behaviors help form the central conflict of this story, and they also eventually lead to his …show more content…
Skink’s actions were the biggest examples in illustrating this theme. Throughout the whole story, Skink constantly stresses the importance of nature and how humans need to protect the environment. He was willing to throw himself into the middle of the street to save a skunk, which ended up costing him the use of a leg. He also showed major disdain towards people who showed no compassion for the environment. For instance, he ruined one person’s car’s gas tank because the person threw a beer can into the road. He also had many environmental books, including Rachel Carson’s famous book Silent Spring, well-known for exposing the horrible truths behind the use of pesticides like DDT. Skink also stresses the simplicity and “honesty” of nature, claiming that “ ‘[n]ature never deceives us. It is always we who deceive ourselves’ ” (222). Here, he is saying that nature never tries to trick us by putting on any kind of act. Humans are the ones who “deceive themselves” by overthinking things. Another example of the importance of nature comes in the form of the ivory-billed woodpeckers. These seemingly-extinct birds started off as a topic Richard studied for a science project, but they ended up becoming an important clue in discovering Malley’s location. She was able to secretly tell Richard where she was because it was the same place where there had been ivory-billed