Jennifer Price, in her essay "The Pink Plastic Flamingo: A Natural History", highlights American culture's ridiculous obsession with displaying wealth through of diction, tone and simile/metaphor. It portrays American culture as meaningless, and therefore ridiculous, due to its elimination of normal standards or logic in order to satisfy its materialistic desires, as demonstrated by the popularity of the plastic pink flamingo in the 1950s. Price's word choice emphasizes his feelings toward America. culture. For example, Price's offhand use of the phrase "But never mind" (line 15) after describing how Americans had hunted flamingos in Florida to extinction in the 1800s, sarcastically mocks Americans' detached attitude toward their misdeeds as they cried out for wealth. However, he also uses this example of the greed of American culture to contrast it with the growing popularity of plastic flamingos in the 1950s. This growing desire for flamingos was not to kill them as before, but to create them. This three-sixty turn was a far cry from the normal way Americans treated flamingos. Both killing and creating flamingos, however, showed the avarice of American culture since hunting and producing flamingos produced a profit, and even the plastic flamingo produced was a display of wealth. Therefore, plastic flamingos not only showed opulence, but also produced opulence through their growing popularity which caused an increase in the production and profit of plastic flamingos. Furthermore, Price once again uses a sarcastic tone through his diction when he says "[the flamingo] was a flamingo" (line 3) as well as when he says "the flamingo was pink." (line 30) Price uses these two phrases to mock the popular... middle of the paper... trend, no matter how much it has deviated from the norm, in order to gain and display wealth. Price's view of American culture as materialistic and obsessed with the display of wealth, even if it meant moving away from the standards and traditions that American culture had had before, is demonstrated by his use of diction, tone, and simile/metaphor. The growing popularity of the flamingo in the 1950s is an example of American culture's obsession with wealth because it shows an unexpected rise to fame by a frivolous, lanky bird that differed from expected and conventional standards. This is seen by Price as ridiculous because it was such a distinctive bird, due to its bright pink color and skinny, skinny physique, that the only way it could have gained fame was if it brought to American culture something it desired, wealth or, in other words, the display or possession of money.