"World in Pieces"



The Song of the Dodo

 

In his closing chapter of the book Quammen brings the main theme of his book back around, reminding us that these questions that had been formed to study the biology of islands now apply to mainlands as well, where ecosystems are being divided into virtual islands by human activity. He uses the example of Carl Jones and the Mauritius kestrel. Even though initial efforts to save the bird were shut down Jones persisted and essentially saved the species from extinction. Quammen includes several other efforts similar to this that started out rather rocky but were essentially successful.

He then switches gears in order to end his book on a hopeful note. He tells the story of how he went to the island of Aru where Alfred Wallace had done his main research. He went to look for the colorful bird of paradise that Wallace had described over a century before. He closes with the idea that despite the signs of human activity, even on Aru, the magnificent bird survives.

 

I think out of this whole final reading the last sentiment is my favorite part. During chapters in the rest of the book it was a lot of doom and gloom and talk of extinction and endangerment but there were very few moments that made you truly hopeful such as this. There were parts in this book where I almost felt hopeless, like there really is nothing that I could do to save some of these species, but in this last happy moment he gives us hope for humanity and for the beauty in the world. I'm happy that he ended with this so as not to leave a sour taste in our mouths but to leave a feeling of joy and hopefulness.