Different types of garbage are thrown into a garbage can. Slimy and gooey liquids leak from cans and bottles that still have remnants of their original materials. Sticky unknown substances cling to the sides of the can. Leftover meals, never eaten, grow hairy mold. The filthy smell of the trash is atrocious, and you gag as you inhale the odor. As trash day nears, you excitedly push the garbage can out to sit on the side of the road, as far away from your house as possible. You roll each can out, holding them by the tips of your fingers, doing your best to touch as little as possible. When the garbage men arrive, they chuck all of the bags of rotting food, broken items and other miscellaneous ingredients into the back of the truck, where it will soon be compacted. As the bags of trash get thrown into the truck, bits and pieces of debris fall from holes in the bags. The trash man must retrieve these dirty and disgusting items with his shovel and return them to the truck to be destroyed.
Many of us treat mealtime as a chance to stuff our bodies with food that is unhealthy, wasting much in the process and leading to a disgusting overindulgence. The food we put into our bodies is garbage, unnecessary substances we pile onto our plates, or garbage cans. We place our plates full of food on the table, where we anxiously await to throw it into our mouths and destroy it with our chewing. Any food that we can’t consume with our fingers with shoved into our mouth with different utensils, similar to the garbage man’s shovel. Our overindulgence of food, especially during the holiday season, is just as disgusting as the trash we throw out once a week.
In these two paragraphs, I used comparison in order to parallel two usually unrelated things. The reason I chose to compare overindulging food with garbage was to create a sense of disgust. When the audience reads about garbage and pictures this in their mind, they envision dirty, filthy and unwanted things. Although the reader at first thinks that this description has nothing to do with them personally, they soon realize that this is actually something they partake in often and are soon disgusted with themselves as well.
Well written Sarah! I love how you compared the disgusting garbage cans and trash pickup to our eating habits. It really caused me to think of how gross it actually is how some of us stuff our faces with food. Once reading your second paragraph, I began to see the similarity between, “When the garbage men arrive, they chuck all of the bags of rotting food, broken items and other miscellaneous ingredients into the back of the truck, where it will soon be compacted,” and “Any food that we can’t consume with our fingers with shoved into our mouth with different utensils, similar to the garbage man’s shovel. Our overindulgence of food, especially during the holiday season, is just as disgusting as the trash we throw out once a week.” You honestly made me feel gross, because thinking about your parallelism of throwing out the trash and indulging mass amounts of food is just so real and, as you put it, atrocious.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, okay. This really made me feel like a disgusting pig. At first, while I was reading the first paragraph, I kind of wondered, "Okay, why of all things is she choosing to write about garbage?" Honestly, before I even read the second paragraph I felt a bit sick. But then I read the second paragraph, and I was a bit shocked, because I hadn't expected any sort of comparison to be made. But I completely agree with you and the parallelism you made. On holidays, I always stuff my face like a little piggy! But now, after reading what you wrote, it makes me feel a bit ashamed and very wasteful. Geez, thanks a lot, Sarah! No, just kidding. But anyways, you did a really great job describing the garbage and then comparing it to people’s overindulgence of food, especially here in America. I think more fat people should read this. Maybe they would feel disgusted with themselves as well, and obesity wouldn’t be such a problem. I’m also kind of curious to know; what inspired you to write this?
ReplyDeleteThis is a very well written piece. I like the comparison between the garbage and our eating habits. I like how it starts out by describing the garbage in a way that we instantly agree with you and are on your side. We see that garbage is nasty with the liquids that drip out of the bag and the hairy mold that grows on the remnants of the unwanted food. We are instantly on the author’s side. Then the author introduces the over indulgence in the second paragraph. They almost compare our eating to an animalistic act by saying that “we place our plates full of food on the table, where we anxiously await to throw it into our mouths and destroy it with our chewing.” This piece really makes me think about what food I put in my body and how much food I eat because overindulgence really is just as disgusting as the garbage that we throw out every week.
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