The Great Whale’s Mistake

A mother whale and a father whale were swimming along the coast with their adolescent son whale when the mother saw a school of people on the beach.

‘What’s that?’ asked the son whale, who had never seen a school of people before, or even a person on his own.

‘People, son,’ said the father whale. ‘You see them all up and down this coast at this time of year. They cover them­selves with oil and lie up there on the sand and boil them­selves until they sizzle.’

‘But they’re such little things,’ said the son whale. I’ll bet I could swallow one whole and have him live in my stomach’.

His mother said she would not want her stomach filled with anything that had been boiled in oil and had sand all over it. As well as that, she said, it would be very unhealthy because they were filled with smoke and hot dogs.

‘What do people do?’ asked they young whale.

‘They sit on the beach and stare at the ocean,’ the father whale said. ‘And they eat hot dogs.’

The mother whale said that they also walked in the ocean now and again for a short time and splashed around in such a clumsy manner that the fish had to get out of their way.

‘They seem to be useless,’ said the son whale. ‘Why did the Great Whale make people anyway?’

‘Son,’ said me father whale, ‘no creature in the Great Whale’s universe exists without a purpose. If the Great Whale made people it was for a good reason.’

‘Maybe people are the Great Whale’s way of keeping down the hot dog population,’ the young whale suggested.

‘There are some things,’ said the mother whale, ‘that even whales can’t understand. We must accept the world as it is and live at peace with it.’

The father whale drew their attention to a small group of people who had moved away from the school and were get­ting into a metal box on wheels. When they were all inside the metal box moved along the beach, throwing up a great cloud of sand and destroying vegetation and birds’ nests.

‘What are they doing now?’ asked the son whale.

‘Making rubbish,’ said the father whale. ‘People make al­most all the rubbish in the world and they use those little moving boxes to do it.’

He showed his son the dark gases which came out of the box.

‘And inside the box,’ he said, ‘they are also preparing more rubbish.’

At that moment six beer cans came flying out of the box, followed by a bag containing a half-eaten hot dog, a mustard jar, some banana peel and an empty plastic body-oil container.

‘Maybe that’s the reason the Great Whale made people,’ said the young whale. ‘To make rubbish.’

‘The world doesn’t need rubbish,’ growled the father whale.

‘Now, now,’ said the mother whale, who was always un­easy when religion was mentioned, ‘we must accept the world as it is and learn to live at peace with it.’

‘Sometimes,’ said the father whale, ‘I think the Great Whale doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

‘Your father has been very sensitive about rubbish,’ the mother whale explained, ‘ever since he dived into 800 tons of fresh sludge which had been dumped off the coast. He smelled disgusting for weeks.’

The young whale was so excited by this news that he spout­ed, and the people on the shore saw it and cried, ‘Whales!’ and somebody threw a beer bottle at them. The whales made for the deep distant water and later that night as they drifted off the Gulf Stream admiring the stars a large ship passed by and spilled oil over them, but they remained at peace with the world as it was, and afterwards dreamed of the unfortu­nate people far behind them making rubbish through the sweet summer night.

(The Great Whale’s Mistake by Russell Baker)

e) Look at the definitions below and match them to words from the last two paragraphs of the story.

i) n a measurement of weight equal in Britain to 2,240 pounds.

ii) n 1 thick mud. 2 the product of waste (sewage) treatment.

iii) v to drop or unload (something) in a heap or carelessly.

iv) v to throw or come out in a forceful stream.

f) Read the story more carefully and answer the following questions.

1) Why do you think the whales refer to a ‘school’ of people?

2) Why are people useless, according to the young whale?

3) Why do people exist, according to the young whale?

4) What do you think the ‘Great Whale’ is?

5) What is the mother’s view of the world?

6) What do you think the ‘metal box on wheels’ is?

g) Discuss the following.

1) What is the ‘Great Whale’s Mistake’?

2) How does the writer make us feel sympathetic to the whales?

3) How would you respond to the whales’ criticism of the people?

4) Find any examples of humour in the text.

VIII. Imagine you are a “Green Peace” member. Study carefully the following real “Green Peace” member letter and some statistics, prepare three TV presentations and act them before your group mates:

a) In defence of world forests.

February 28, 2001

Dear Friends:

The Brazilian congress is now voting on a project that will reduce the Amazon forest to 50% of its size. This letter will take 1 min to read. Please put your names on the list below and forward this on.

The area to be deforested is 4 times the size of Portugal and would be mainly used for agriculture and pastures for livestock. All the wood is to be sold to international markets in the form of wood chips, by multinational companies. The truth is that the soil in the Amazon forest is useless without the forest itself. Its quality is very acidic and the region is prone to constant floods. At this time more than 160,000 square kilometers deforested with the same purpose are abandoned and in the process of becoming deserts. Deforestation (and the subsequent processing of the woodchips) on this scale will also release a huge amount of carbon (which is currently locked up in the wood) back into the atmosphere worsening the problem of climate change.

We cannot let this happen. Copy the text into a new e-mail, put your complete name in the list below, and send to everyone you know. If you are the 300^th person to sign please send a copy to: [e-mail].

Thank you.

For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people… [Isaiah 65:22][39]

- The total area of the planet's forests is 4 billion hectares.

- One hectare of forests generates enough oxygen for 200 people to breathe.

- It has been calculated that a quarter of the world population breathes the oxygen generated by Russian forests.

- The world softwood reserves are 100 billion m³, while the total timber reserves are estimated at 300 billion m³.

- Every person utilizes an average of 100 m³ of wood during a life-span.

b) Against car expansion.

Your car is killing the Earth:

The car is an ecological disaster. It is now the world’s number one polluter. From the beginning to the end of its life, one car produces an enormous quantity of pollution.

The production of one car results in 1,500 kilos of waste, and 75 million m³ of polluted air.

During its life one car produces:

44.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide;

325 kg of carbon monoxide;

4.8 kg of sulphur dioxide;

36 kg of hydrocarbons;

46.8 kg of nitrogen dioxide;

29 kg of various chemicals

from the tyres and brakes
(an average car over a period of ten years).

When you throw the car away, many dangerous metals (like cadmium) and other chemicals pollute the earth.

The building of roads, motorways and car parks produces a large quantity of pollution. It is impossible to estimate how much.

The statistics above are for one car. There are now approximately 500 million cars on Earth. So multiply all these numbers by 500 million. That gives, for example, more than 22 billion tones of CO₂ in ten years!

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