Explication of "My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight"

The two poems, "My Number" by Billy Collins and "I had heard it's a fight" by Edwin Derby, are paired together in Sound and Sense because they both take a stance on death. In "My Number" Billy Collins personifies death, even capitalizing it's first letter, and explains it as an ominous and unpredictable terror. One never knows when death could be coming for them, it could be far away or right around the corner and we may never know: "Is Death miles away from this house" and he goes on to wonder if death may be at his front door. The speaker describes death's actions as if it is actually a killer who plots to kill certain people. Collins writes that death may not be after him at this moment because he is "too busy making arrangements" for others whose times have come.  In this poem the speaker believes that death is not only inevitable but also that it comes on its own terms and nothing we do to prolong it really matter, it decides to take a life whenever and wherever it chooses.

Edwin Derby expresses a different view of death in his poem "I had heard its a fight". He also expresses that death is inevitable but goes on more positively than Collins does in his poem. The poem starts dark saying that death touches you: "The afternoon it touched me / it sneaked up like it was a sweet thrill", this scare with death makes the speaker look differently upon life. He starts living better: "Cut out the liquor, went to the gym, and did / what a man naturally does". Derby looks at death as being inevitable yet it is possible to prolong it by living a healthy life. Instead of being scared of death the speaker in this poem decides to live life to the fullest without fear of death, which is a much more positive view than Collins presents about life and death in his poem.

Comparing Apocalypse Now to Heart of Darkness

The movie "Apocalypse Now" has many similarities to Joseph Conrad's novel, "Heart of Darkness". The movie takes place during the Vietnam war  in Saigon and the main character, Willard, was assigned a mission to kill a colonel named Kurtz because he has lost his mind and is dangerous. The book, "Heart of Darkness" takes place during the time of the Belgian Congo and the main character, Marlow, also aspires to find a powerful man named Kurtz. Both Marlow and Willard take on command of dangerous and difficult journeys and the book and the movie are both depictions of the main character's recall of the events that occurred.

In Apocalypse Now Kurtz was once described as a brave soldier who deserved a lot of respect and somewhere along the line lost his mind and order the assassination of four people. In Heart of Darkness Kurtz is a mysterious character who no one really knows much about. This is similar to Kurtz in Apocalypse Now because Kurtz is difficult to find and the main character is told to keep his mission to kill Kurtz a secret.

Both Marlow and Willard look grimly back on their experiences leading a team down the river. The characters both do things that they now regret looking back. Both settings have violent natives as an obstacle as well as many other similar dangers along their journeys. The diseases and dangers that Marlow and Kurtz encountered in the Congo are similar to those that probably caused Kurtz to eventually go insane. In my opinion the movie Apocalypse Now effectively captures many details and concepts and follows a similar story line to Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, but each of the works also have their own individual differences. The movie highlights a lot of the violence that might have been more difficult to imagine through reading the book. Even though the settings in the book and movie were different seeing the immense violence that was present in the movie helped me to better imagine the atrocities that Conrad described in his novel.

Explication of "My Son the Man"

The poem "My Son the Man" by Sharon Olds is told from the point of view of a mother. The speaker is the mother of a boy who she is witnessing grow up into a man. The mother is sad about this transformation and wishes she could slow time down. The author's tone is one that would be relatable for most parents. The speaker seems as though she wishes that she could stop time and prevent her young boy from maturing and growing into a man.

In this poem the author effectively uses an allusion to portray the message and meaning of her poem. An allusion is a reference to something in history or previous literature. In the case of this poem Olds makes an allusion to the famous escape artist Harry Houdini, mentioning him twice throughout the poem and comparing him to her son. First the speaker says "his shoulders get a lot wider, / the way Houdini would expand his body". In this case the speaker is comparing her son growing to the way that Houdini pulled off his magnificent escapes. The mother feels as if her son is escaping from her because he is no longer a child and will not need to depend on her any longer. She goes on to say at the end of the poem that "he looks at me / the way Houdini studied a box / to learn the way out". The speaker is convinced that her son growing into a man means that he will no longer want to spend time with her and that he will immediately want to run away from her as if he is an escape artist. Sharon Olds effectively uses an allusion in her poem "My Son the Man" to portrays a mother's negative feelings about herdson growing into a man becasue she feels that he will leave her.

The Congo Free State

The Congo Free State was a colony that was controlled by Leopold II, king of the Belgians. He had wanted control of the region for many years and finally Leopold formally acquired the rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and gave it the name of the Congo Free State. His major reason for striving to gain power of the Congo for so long was to control the profitable ivory market in Central Africa by establishing a secure trade route between the upper and lower Congo. It was also known that the colony was rich in mineral resources. Leopold eventually lost respect of the people in the Congo due to the increasingly harsh treatment of the people and the decrease of natural resources. Leopold's main objective during his reign was to gain money and power and was not concerned with the well-being or quality of life for his people.

Under Leopold's reign the Congo quickly became one of the largest international scandals of the early twentieth century. Many people died due to the brutal treatment they endured under Leopold's reign, the estimated number of deaths during these years is around ten million. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who had been responsible for killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903 that was aimed to expand the Congo's international market while Leopold was still in rule. Europe and the United States exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in 1900. By the year 1908, public pressure and diplomatic moves led to the end of Leopold II's rule and to the addition of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, which came to be known as the Belgian Congo. The loss of life and horrors that many experienced in the Congo Free State under the rule of Leopold II inspired great literature such as Joseph Conrad's novel, "Heart of Darkness".