Save Your Breath, Screw the Sarcasm

“Your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment have been catered too far too much. You just want and want and want. You believe in yourself excessively. You don’t believe in Nature anymore...Your eyes glaze as you travel life’s highway.”

-Joy Williams, Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp

This quote is taken from a biting sarcastic piece aimed at revealing how ironic and ridiculous human behavior is. We are aware of the ways in which we harm the environment, and yet we are too lazy to change our lifestyles and too greedy to even face or confront these problems. Williams begins her peice with this very passage, wasting no time in her quest to blame the reader and all of humanity for essentially destroying the earth and all of its living things. Her capitalization of the “N” in Nature displays her reverence for the wildlife she discusses in this text. She begins each sentence with “You”, giving the impression of fired insults. Instead of subtly revealing a truth, she tells readers how the act and what they value. This leaves no room for argument in her point, as readers are caught off-guard. She then repeats “want” three times in one small sentence, revealing that everything comes back to what we as humans want. Even after things that seem selfless, there is still want, and then more want. There is nothing that we do that is not out of our own selfish desire. According to Williams, if we do not want to do something, we won’t. This creates her pessimistic tone and idea that the world is doomed in our hands.

Williams believes that we let ourselves become numb to the problems around us, accepting that we can do nothing or that it is already too late. Her message was strong and her use of loose sentences, irony, and rhetorical questions aid in her overall purpose very nicely. While her message is accurate and important, I believe that her accusatory tone and sense of superiority makes readers defensive. I found myself asking what on earth she has done that makes her above all of these criticisms. If she wanted to attack in this way, I feel that she should have either admitted to being a part of the problem, or used less of the second person. She demolishes the entire lifestyle that privileged Americans lead. After reading, I am going to keep living the same exact way I was before, except now I don’t like Joy Williams.