The Lives of a Cell

By: Lewis Thomas

    Mankind is no greater than any other organism to inhabit this planet called Earth.  Every species is created equally; every species plays a part in this “long and tedious biological game” (Thomas 360).  The belief that the human race is a delicacy to this planet is only a result of the ignorance that mankind beholds.  At the end of the day, Earth is simply “a single cell” (Thomas 360); mankind is solely helping it function.   That is the point Lewis Thomas tries to get across to his audience in his essay The Lives of a Cell.  For those not familiar with Lewis Thomas, Thomas is a Harvard medical school graduate from Flushing, New York.  Through his years after college, Thomas took many teaching jobs as well as research posts before winning the National Book Award for his highly anticipated Lives of a Cell.  Within this essay, Thomas brings it upon himself to explain to his audience, or mankind itself, that every living thing is made up of cells.  There is nothing special about the human race; “We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts.  We are shared, rented, occupied [by cells]” (Thomas 358).  While Thomas stresses the idea that all living beings are composed of cells, he also contradicts himself by mentioning how evolution determines who stays and who does not stay in this game of life.  With viruses racing from organism to organism however, Thomas points out how this can further lead to the mutations of species.  While many species will die out eventually, they will continue live on through their heredity which may in fact end up being an entirely new species.  Although it is clear to Thomas that not all species are the same, it is clear to him that all species work towards a common goal: to maintain life on Earth.  With Thomas’s uses of both vivid imagery and similes throughout his essay to back up his views, Thomas manages to undoubtedly achieve his goal in getting his point across to his audience.

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No matter how different we are from one another, we are all apart of one home at the end of the day