The power of emotion: compassion
In Marina Keegan’s essay, Why We Care About Whales, Marina claims on how humans value the life of humans and the life of non-human animals. The essay starts with a social occurrence of emerging beached whales. A natural force that is created by the movement of both the moon and the Earth push whales to the beach. While giving a detailed, vivid explanation of how beached whales die, Marina maximizes the sadness and lamentation of whales’ deaths. Furthermore, she describes her anecdote, which was happened at the beach in front of her house. Following frenzied neighbors and animal activists, she helped rescuing 50 beached whales. As she participates in the relief work, she connects her own personal anecdote …show more content…
This quote clearly evidences that the author understands that there are full of resources that can be utilized to save humans and animals; however, people should value the same species rather highly value the animals. She, moreover, gives an example of spending $10,000 transporting a whale to an aquarium, arguing that same amount of money could be used to purchase more food supplies to save humans. However, her theory breaks as she “looks in the eye of a dying pilot whale at four in the morning” (612). Since the author directly experiences the environment of rescuing animals, she truly realizes and appreciates the value of living objects and understands how people should react towards those uncontrollable situations. Even though she explains the importance of protecting more painful, suffering living things all around the world, her emotion immediately reacts toward a whale nearing the end in front of you. Her instant reaction towards a dying whale intelligibly delivers her ambiguity of whether she concurs her logic: Should people support the things that are more suffering in the other side of the world or the things that are right in front of them. At the end of the essay, eventually, Marina suggests an ambivalent conclusion to the …show more content…
There is a proverb that demonstrates this statement much clearly: “Out of sight, out of mind”. This quote is usually applied to a situation where people cannot meet each other, and they gradually reflect less or forget about each other. People tend to care less about an object or situation that occurs far away both from physically and psychologically; it is a human nature phenomenon. For instance, most of the teenagers learn that there are many refugees, orphans, and people die of hunger in the world in school. However, even though they understand and feel a tiny compassion towards those people, only a few, maybe none of, teenagers would actually practice or take an action to help those poor people. Rather, many would feel more compassion towards an old homeless without any jackets who stretch their arms and implore help. Moreover to feel compassion, students might even give money. This example clearly reveals that people always think more about things that they can see, touch, listen, taste, and smell: which means people want to have an actual ‘sense’ of what they experience. This argument will stand to a reason that Keegan threw herself into a rescuing project and watching a dying whale with a huge compassion and
In Marina Keegan’s essay, Why We Care About Whales, Marina claims on how humans value the life of humans and the life of non-human animals. The essay starts with a social occurrence of emerging beached whales. A natural force that is created by the movement of both the moon and the Earth push whales to the beach. While giving a detailed, vivid explanation of how beached whales die, Marina maximizes the sadness and lamentation of whales’ deaths. Furthermore, she describes her anecdote, which was happened at the beach in front of her house. Following frenzied neighbors and animal activists, she helped rescuing 50 beached whales. As she participates in the relief work, she connects her own personal anecdote …show more content…
This quote clearly evidences that the author understands that there are full of resources that can be utilized to save humans and animals; however, people should value the same species rather highly value the animals. She, moreover, gives an example of spending $10,000 transporting a whale to an aquarium, arguing that same amount of money could be used to purchase more food supplies to save humans. However, her theory breaks as she “looks in the eye of a dying pilot whale at four in the morning” (612). Since the author directly experiences the environment of rescuing animals, she truly realizes and appreciates the value of living objects and understands how people should react towards those uncontrollable situations. Even though she explains the importance of protecting more painful, suffering living things all around the world, her emotion immediately reacts toward a whale nearing the end in front of you. Her instant reaction towards a dying whale intelligibly delivers her ambiguity of whether she concurs her logic: Should people support the things that are more suffering in the other side of the world or the things that are right in front of them. At the end of the essay, eventually, Marina suggests an ambivalent conclusion to the …show more content…
There is a proverb that demonstrates this statement much clearly: “Out of sight, out of mind”. This quote is usually applied to a situation where people cannot meet each other, and they gradually reflect less or forget about each other. People tend to care less about an object or situation that occurs far away both from physically and psychologically; it is a human nature phenomenon. For instance, most of the teenagers learn that there are many refugees, orphans, and people die of hunger in the world in school. However, even though they understand and feel a tiny compassion towards those people, only a few, maybe none of, teenagers would actually practice or take an action to help those poor people. Rather, many would feel more compassion towards an old homeless without any jackets who stretch their arms and implore help. Moreover to feel compassion, students might even give money. This example clearly reveals that people always think more about things that they can see, touch, listen, taste, and smell: which means people want to have an actual ‘sense’ of what they experience. This argument will stand to a reason that Keegan threw herself into a rescuing project and watching a dying whale with a huge compassion and