In "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp", Joy Williams talks about people's interests and the impact it has on the environment. She begins with a criticism of people's obsession with only their own interests. They have forgotten what nature is and how unique it is. Environmentalists aren't praised, since they are accused of halting economic growth with their limitations on pollutant emissions and exploitation of the earth. This is also the case with the food business, which includes shrimp. Shrimpers provide their highly demanded product, but are criticized for also causing the depletion of turtles that die in their shrimping nets. The tourism business also suffers, since consumers have caused national park managers to adapt the environment to meet the people's picky desires. The creation of motels and roads and the control of wilderness are effects of managers' attempt at modernizing parks, while still keeping the "nature" feel. The same occurs with the highly anticipated, new Everglade city project. The planners say that the new location will be ecological, but, in reality, it is all artificial nature, which actually costs insane amounts to maintain. Nature has become simply a visual entertainment, instead of what it actually is, like what happens in zoos today. People like the idea of a controlled nature and will not give it up easily. They exploit the environment, but do little or nothing to stop the horrible effects. Instead, people just live on with their lives, because they are in a comfortable situation they do not want to leave. Williams warns us that we must change our way of thinking and start giving worth to what is truly important; treating the earth with respect, so that the ecological crisis is solved.
The essay's author is a terrific writer, capable of conducting different writing styles and beautiful illustrations for her ideas, but fails in being effective at times. Williams writes her essay utilizing first-person pronouns, such as "I" and "you", which causes the essay to have a more personal approach. In her entire essay, the personal pronoun "You" is representative of all. When Williams uses "You", she is speaking to all the American people. At times, however, it seems as if she is accusing or directly confronting the reader. For instance, she says, "You seem to have liked your dinoseb. It's been a popular weed killer, even though it has been directly linked with birth defects. You must hate weeds a lot." Such usage of language may be harmful, since the reader might be offended by the author's offensive tone. Additionally, the author also changes her writing style at the end of the essay. To present counter-arguments to her ideas, she writes from the reader's perspective, referring to him as "we." As impressive as this change of writing style is, it does not prove to be effective. The entire section of counter-arguments, where the change occurs, seems unnecessary, since it does not add much to the author's ideas. On another note, various illustrations and examples are used to describe the author's points. In the first paragraph, Williams explains the decreasing value of nature photographs by utilizing different examples. Some other times, she references contemporary events, which allow the reader to understand what is being stated by connecting it to common knowledge. All the examples, illustrations, and descriptions, however, seem to be a little excessive. The essay could have done better without so many of them, because the reader would still understand the main ideas without having to endure long paragraphs, pages even, of endless explanations.
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