The Real Killer Whale Was the Friends We Made Along the Way.

     1: Morality is a mostly human-made invention to categorize actions and behaviors of other humans as either desirable (good) or undesirable (bad). Morality is not a binary, obviously there's a lot of grey area, in fact, most of it is grey-area, but my larger point is that ascribing it to stuff that isn't human gets messy. Is a lion "bad" for eating an elk? Is water "good" for hydrating us? Is lightning "a douche" for turning my hotdog into ash? The answer to all of these is, probably, no.

     This was a longwinded way of saying that I don't think Tilikum was the villain in this situation. Were they the victim? Broadly speaking, yes. SeaWorld, famously, is a factory for marine-mammal misery, and if the article is anything to go by, Sealand was basically the equivalent of orca hell, “If you pen killer whales in a small steel tank, you are imposing an extreme level of sensory deprivation on them,”.

    The villain of this story, in my opinion, is Don Goldsberry. Of course, with the way the article is written, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the writer was aiming for. As for the hero, I don't really think there is a hero. Balcomb is the closest there is but even then he only informs the writer of orca whale behaviors.

    2: It's a profile essay in the sense that it paints a word-picture of the perspectives/careers of multiple individuals. most notably: Tilikum the orca, Ken Balcomb the human, Don Goldsberry the demon human, and, of course, Dawn Brancheau the human.

    3: The author uses active language to paint a person (in this case, Don Goldsberry) in a specific light:  "“I’m only speaking with you because those idiots out there, mainly the politicians, want to release all the killer whales,” he growls."  the usage of the word "growls" instead of something more neutral like "said" gives the reader an image of Don as an angry, malicious man. Honestly, the way it's written kinda reminds me of Ebenezer Scrooge. This depiction of someone who treaded dangerously close to animal poacher territory fits into the larger whole of the article which talks about the effect captivity has on intelligent, social animals.

    4: Based on description, I would contrast them as such: Goldsberry is a true-blooded capitalist who won't let some trivial thing like "ethics" get in the way of a juicy profit:  "“I would go into SeaWorld and say, ‘I need a quarter of a million’ or ‘a half-million dollars,’ and they put it in my suitcase,” he says with a grin. “It was good, catching animals. It was exciting. I was the best in the world. There is no question about it.”". Balcomb, on the flipside, seems to just be a lovable orca nerd: "Since then, he’s become the Southern Residents’ scientific godfather, noting every birth and death, and plotting family connections."

    5: I think the argument the article makes is the inherent cruelty of keeping orcas in captivity. I'm not a zoo abolitionist but even so it feels wrong to keep such intelligent animals in such unnatural, mind-breaking conditions.