Summary of Living on a Lifeboat

Essay by afronczakB-, September 2014

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Adrian Fronczak

Eng101 MWF 8am

Explanatory Summary

Metaphors surround us in our everyday lives. We cannot escape the use of metaphors, though we can cleanse the theory of metaphor but metaphors are still far too common in our language to avoid the use of them. We must use metaphors wisely and thoroughly understand what we mean when we use one since metaphorical thinking is inescapable (Hardin, 1974). Instead of solving problems, metaphors are used as a point of emphasis. Sometimes the use of a metaphor can be quite successful while in other cases it can be nearly suicidal to the point that you are trying to make. Hardin uses the term lifeboat as a metaphor because it immediately makes the reader think of human survival, which properly exemplifies the severity of the issues that he talks about.

Garret Hardin's piece on living on a lifeboat is about helping others so much that our lifeboat can drown.

The lifeboat itself is a metaphor used to symbolize the earth and the individual lifeboats. He uses the metaphor lifeboats to illustrate that we have limited resources and space. It also questions justice and how much can we help others if we have issues of our own. "The poor world are in other, much more crowded, lifeboats".(Hardin, 1974). This quote explains the "luggage" that comes with helping people. People that come from poor countries do have a lot of financial luggage that tends to take up a lot more room then others that are well off. Harden explains the cruel reality that only so many people can survive and overpopulation is a problem. There is only so much room for people on these "lifeboats" and others are put at risk if we let everyone on board. He then looks...