The Lives of a Cell

     In Lewis Thomas's The Lives of a Cell, he describes the connection between man and nature, and how man may not even be his own, as each cell in his being has smaller cells that have their own DNA, such as the mitochondria. He explains this idea by stating, "I like to think that they work in my interest, that each breath they draw for me, but perhaps it is they who walk through the local park in the early mornings, sensing my senses, listening to my music, thinking my thoughts." (Thomas, 359) He then expands this idea outwards in scale, by comparing the earth to a single cell, as they both have parts that carry its own DNA.

If you look through the microscope down at earth,
you'll see humans, just as if you looked at a
human through a microscope, you'd see cells.
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     Lewis Thomas was a physician, etymologist, and even the dean at Harvard for a while, among other skills and talents. Because of his background in the medical field, we can trust that he possesses a large amount of knowledge on cells and life, and so his ideas can be trusted. Thomas's purpose in writing The Lives of a Cell was as an exposition in a book of essays called The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. The purpose of this book was to show how everything on earth was connected in some way. Because of the more scientific ideas presented in the book, its intended audience is probably for those in or past college. Thomas uses personification a lot in his essay, because he is trying to establish the idea that something like the mitochondria in our bodies might be working for themselves instead of for the whole. He then uses this to link the earth to the human being in a comparison, saying that mitochondria are to use as we are to the world.

     I believe that Thomas's essay fulfilled its purpose, as it gets the reader thinking, preparing them for the rest of the book. The use of comparison does this, as it starts them thinking about the connections throughout earth by first making the most significant one, which is the chain of importance, from the entire earth to a singe mitochondria.