43 pages • 1 hour read
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
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Chapters 20-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary: “Dragon Fruit”
Nezhukumatathil provides a poetic description of the dragon fruit, mentioning its flavor, its appearance, and the associations its name carries. Despite its vibrant colors and “ethereal displays of blossoming” (114), the dragon fruit’s flavor is soft and subtle. It has several uses, from cocktails to soothing skin balms. The first time Nezhukumatathil eats a dragon fruit is at a market in Singapore with her mother.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Flamingo”
Nezhukumatathil describes flamingos gathering around a lake and eating algae, and she explains their mating rituals. She transitions to her freshman year in college, where she and other young women often travel together and sometimes dance with older men at bars. They often walk home together in groups or in pairs. She briefly mentions growing pains in her legs as a teenager.
She tells the story of “Pinky,” a flamingo at Busch Gardens in Tampa who is “so beloved, she was named the zoo mascot” (118). Pinky is violently attacked by a man at the zoo and has to be euthanized. Nezhukumatathil moves again to the present, when she is a professor at the University of Mississippi. She worries about young women and says “a silent prayer for them all to come back safe to their nests late at night, again and again” (120).
The second half of the chapter is interspersed with italicized conversational sentences speculating on the present-day disappearance of a college student from Nezhukumatathil’s alma mater; for example: “Someone said she was just finishing up her shift at a local restaurant” (120). Nezhukumatathil ends with a description of flamingos migrating at night.
Chapters 20-21 Analysis
“Dragon Fruit” is another short meditation on the wonders of nature, and particularly on the complexity of organic life. Nezhukumatathil entices the reader with poetic descriptions of the dragon fruit’s striking appearance, contrasted with its subtle flavor. The dragon fruit is beautiful and unique, and Nezhukumatathil simply wants to share its secrets.
In “Flamingo,” Nezhukumatathil returns to her modus operandi of using organisms as overt metaphors to tackle more serious subjects. She likens young, party-going women to flamingos traveling in groups, highlighting the threat of violence that all women contend with in our culture. By interspersing the italicized descriptions of a missing persons case from the present with her recollections of the past, Nezhukumatathil underlines the persistence of danger and violence, concluding that she will still “look over my shoulder in a dark parking lot” (120).
As Nezhukumatathil writes, “None could imagine” the motivation for the man who kills Pinky the flamingo at the zoo (118), and the dangers Nezhukumatathil describes are defined by the darkness of night. We may have psychological and sociological explanations for gendered violence and abduction, but the experience of fear and vulnerability come from the unknowability of violence. As in other chapters, Nezhukumatathil uses fear of abduction as a tool for understanding the precarity of life, and vice versa.
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By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
