Poem Analysis: 'Snow Leopards At The Denver Zoo'

Same Terms, Different Understandings When I think of survival, I think of a dramatized situation in which someone or something is having a hard time staying alive. People tend to differentiate living and surviving as if living is not an essential part of surviving. I think a lot of these connotations about surviving being a way of life through hardships come from the way we talk about it amongst other species not humans. When we talk about animals, we speak about survival being the opposite of extinction. This means an animal is always striving to survive to avoid extinction. Yet, I tend to think about survival being the lowest point of a person’s life when thinking about humans. I think about a person living in some form of deprivation whether it is food, clothing, shelters etc. People who are not struggling, I view as the ones who are living. However, ultimately, survival can be anything except extinction. Survival is everything that extinction is not. Looking at different text I think it is important to look at terminology and the way that we speak about humans and animals existing …show more content…
I found it very interesting that while the guy was observing the snow leopards in their environment, instead of thinking about how these particular snow leopards interacted, and did different things, he made comments focused on extinction. For instance, he states, “Snow leopards land without sound as if they were already extinct” (Matthews). I think perspective is very important when thinking about this poem. We are focusing on the entire snow leopard population and according to the quote, speaking as if these animals understand that they are going instinct. It is because we have an advantage to hold animals in captivity and monitor how they are reproducing that we cannot escape this consistent focus on survival versus