The concept of the city and human's impact on nature has been revealed through the two texts "Big Yellow Taxi"--lyrics of a song performed by the band The Counting Crows, and the cartoon "Truth and Beauty Left Lane" by Michael Leunig. The two texts both reveal similar themes about a particular interpretation of the city. Each text deals with the concept of the city in a variety of ways but the overall message of both texts is quite similar. This main theme being that humankind have destroyed nature's beauty and tranquility and replaced it with a polluted and sinister world where 'truth and beauty' does not belong to anymore.
The theme of regret has a strong accent in the song "Big Yellow Taxi" and relates to the fact that the city has been created with some form of penitence. The lyrics talk about a man who has lost a loved one and feels the pain of regret.
Human cheek cells
Human cheek cells
English: Michael Leunig speaks at a demonstration ...He uses a metaphoric principle to explain the story and emotions by comparing the loss of beauty and nature to a built-up human city.
In the song, words are used to describe the imagery of the metaphor- i.e. "They paved paradise and put in a parking lot." The image has been imposed in our minds that something has been replaced and we realize the loss and feel a sense of remorse. Other poetic devises such as an alliteration has been used also in this excerpt to accent the prominence of the sentence. In this way the audience keeps coming back to the idea and metaphor that people are destroying nature with cities.
The visual text has delt with the message by showing that pollution, traffic, sound, clutter, disorderliness and human dominance has spoiled what was once a natural...