Let the Animals Run Free!
You’re trapped! Panic rushes over you. You cry out for help, but it’s like no one hears you. The cage is one million times too small for you. Its dark, there is a metal bar protruding into your back, and you have no idea where you are. In the distance you hear voices; maybe they’re coming to help you! Voices grow louder in your ear! It’s all overwhelming. Their cameras flash in your eyes! What is going on here! They are taunting you! They’re on the outside being free, while you’re stuck in this dark, small cage. Why are you even here? This is what it would feel like to be in a zoo. Animals shouldn’t be put in zoos because it is animal cruelty. It’s not their natural habitat, and they don’t even have a reason for keeping animals in captivity. Animals shouldn’t be held in captivity because it is animal cruelty. Even after many generations, animals bred in zoos still have their instincts and they won’t ever get used to being in captivity. Majority of animals at zoos show signs of stress and boredom, some symptoms are, pacing, retracing steps, biting themselves, and elephants swaying their trunks. Saddest part is that every time we go to a zoo, we see such behavior that we come to think of it a normal. Oxford University did a study on lions and found that they spend forty-eight percent of their time pacing. Forty-eight percent is almost half of their time, could imagine for 12 hours pacing back and forth, every day! That study just shows how bad things really are and how stress the animals are. Animals in zoos often live a shorter life time than animals in the wild do and it greatly shows with elephants. In a zoo an elephant can live about 17 years, while at a logging camp where the elephants are forced to work, they can live 19 years, and in the wild elephants can live about 65 years. People are beginning to see that zoos are cruel to animals and that zoos don’t serve a purpose.
Zoos don’t even have a reason to exist! They say that they are there to conservation, but most of the animals in zoos aren’t even endangered. People say that zoos are there to nurse the animals back to health, but zoos only return about 16 different species to the wild and with varying results. It all began back in Egypt in 1500 B.C. when Queen Hatshepsut had her servants collect animals from all over Africa for the first zoo. In 1874 the Philadelphia Zoo opened as the first zoo in America. The zoos were intended for observing and learning, but we go to the zoo for entertainment. Obviously zoos aren’t being used for the correct purpose, and it’s not the animal’s true habitat so we should get rid of all zoos. Zoos are unhealthy for animals because it is not the animals true habitat. Zebras in zoos are becoming over weight because the grass they are given in the zoo is higher in calories than the grass that they would receive.
Ponyboy Curtis
Ponyboy Curtis is the youngest member of the gang. Ponyboy has light brown, almost red hair and grey-green eyes. His hair is longer than most of the other boys and thicker than the others too. Squared off in the back, long in the front and on the side; it’s heavily greased. Since he is a Greaser, he doesn’t bother to get haircuts, just the rest of his neighborhood. Ponyboy Curtis is a very creative and sensitive boy.
I selected Ponyboy Curtis to write about because he is very unique and he thinks in a very odd way, and I think that when he speaks, it really paints a picture in your head. His creative and sensitive personalities are what him so likeable. Sunsets, movies, and books are what make him different than the other boys in his gang. But anyone can sit through a movie or read a book or even look at a sunset, but it’s the way that Ponyboy thinks through these everyday things and his passion for them that make him distinct. In the story Johnny wrote a letter to Ponyboy and he said “like the way you dig sunsets, that’s gold”. Everyone can relate to Ponyboy because he’s any everyday person goes through problems in life. We struggle in life sometimes and it’s through these struggles that we change, it’s as if it lets us see the world from a whole new angle. We all can relate to Ponyboy because every town and every school has its social groups and we all have our struggles.
Ponyboy is revealed when he walks out from darkness of the movie house, to the bright daylight and the only things on his mind are Paul Newman and a ride home. As the story goes on Ponyboy is walking home from the movies, he tells us the Greasers shouldn’t walk home by themselves. It grows dark while he is still walking home and some Socs. Pull up beside him, they hop out of the car and approach Ponyboy. They yell rude things and threaten him. “How’d you like that haircut to begin just below your chin?” His sensitivity shows here when he does not fight back, and calls for help. “I saw Johnny’s cigarette glowing in the dark and I wondered vaguely what it was like inside a burning ember.” This is my favorite quote from the book because it sends chills down my back. It shows us how much Ponyboy thinks, and how creatively that he thinks. “We couldn’t watch the sunset, since the back faced east, but I loved to look at the colors of the fields and the soft shading of the horizon.” That is my second favorite quote because it paints a beautiful picture in your head; I think that it is worded absolutely perfect.
A child, that’s how Ponyboy started out, but throughout the novel we watch Ponyboy grow and become a man. It’s through struggles and hardships that Ponyboy learns and grows. The quotes in this story that really symbolize a change to me, can be found on page 47 and 92. On page 47 we see Ponyboy before he grows up. He says “I saw Johnny’s cigarette glowing in the dark and wondered vaguely what it was like inside a burning ember.” And then on page 92 it says “the cinders and embers began falling on us, stinging and smarting like ants. Suddenly, in the red glow and the haze, I remembered wondering what it was like in a burning ember, and I thought: Now I know, it’s a red hell.” These two quotes really show Ponyboys changing throughout the novel. I think that the fire shows Ponyboy that everything isn’t always what it seems, and fire is hot and dangerous, it can take away lives.
Grateful is the first word that comes into mind when I think about Ponyboy at the end of the story; he is grateful to be alive and to be living with his brothers. I think that Ponyboy really learns that Socs. And greasers, they’re the same thing: people. “I knew Johnny was dead. I had known it all the time, even while I was sick and pretending he wasn’t.” I think that this quote shows how Ponyboy is ready to move on with life, there is nothing that he can do, Johnny is dead and so is Dally and there is absolutely nothing that he can do to change it. It’s a change for the better because Ponyboy accepts the fact that Johnny is gone, his best friend really is gone, and it’s too late to change it.
Thorough out the book I have learned that everybody has feelings, and everybody is the equal. Actions have their consequences, and you have to learn from mistakes. Through the deaths in the story I learned that you have to accept it and move on, they would want you to be happy and live life. And most of all everybody is equal.
