After years and years of blogging, this blog, this very blog is
finally the last one of my existence, forever, goodbye, my fellow
bloggers...
Just kidding, as
you all know I have not been blogging for years and this is not my
final blog but, this is my last blog for this course. I am stumped.
When I first started blogging I thought that seven blogs was such a
high number but now, there is still so much more I want to write
about and say. More about Icarus Girl, more about A Tale of Two
Cities, or all of the poems that we have discussed. Even though I
wish to blog more, sadly my only blog left is to make a connection
between world news and the themes in our class. Since this is my last
blog, this will be my best one yet, I am going to make Donald Driver
proud.
“I was six when I first saw
kittens drown.
Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the
scraggy wee shits',
into a bucket; a frail metal sound.
Soft paws scraping like mad. But
their tiny din
was soon soused. They were slung on
the snout
of the pump and the water pumped in
'sure isn't it better for them now?
Dan said.
Like wet gloves they bobbled and
shone till he sluiced
them out on the dunghill, glossy and
dead.
Suddenly frightened, for days I
sadly hung
round the yard, watching the three
sogged remains
turn mealy and crisp as old summer
dung
until I forgot them. But the fear
came back
when Dan trapped big rats, snared
rabbits, shot crows
or, with a sickening tug, pulled old
hen's necks.
Still, living displaces false
sentiments
and now, when shrill pups are
prodded to drown
I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It
makes sense:
'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts
ice in town
where they consider death unnatural,
but on well-run farms pests have to
be kept down.”
As I mentioned in
the latter paragraph this last blog is about finding a connection to
the material in class that we have discussed to world news and
issues. So, as I started rummaging through a couple of Seamus
Heaney's poems that we have looked at I discovered that to me his
poem, “The Early Purges” resembles very much the views of very
many people around the world. I had read this poem over and over and
understood the message of it to be that death is a natural occurrence
and that one should harden themselves in order to live on. However,
after reading through it again for the fifth time, I saw a connection
to this mindset to that of a soldier in the military. I do not know
if Heaney ever meant to connect his poem to that of a soldier, but
the connection is clear. Soldiers all around the world know what the
speaker of this poem went through, they themselves had to harden and
lie to themselves that what they were killing was nothing, but an
object that needed to be brought down. Sadly, just as the speaker of
this poem slowly became accustomed to the killing of selfless
animals, soldiers all around the world, become so much used to
killing and death that it may not even bother them anymore to kill.
Or does, the fact of killing another, even a terrorist, still bother
the experienced soldier? Others will take death differently; there
have been soldiers in the past, even in the past year that have
snapped due to the constant remembrance of all the lives they have
killed; and as a result has either committed suicide or slaughtered
other soldiers, including their own. Unfortunately, it is not just
soldiers who are becoming more and more used to the sight of death,
our society, and the world’s opinion is also changing on death.
There are people who as the speaker said “Prevention of cruelty'
talk cuts ice in town where they consider death unnatural,” which,
I would like to think are civil as I am and think death as to be
awful and tragic and there are others such as doctors, and police
officers who similar to soldiers are continuously face to face with
the experiences of death. Unfortunately, there are also many people
around the world today who are feeling less and less sorrowful of
death and are beginning to forget and lose the meaning of life.
As I said before
this blog is my very last for this class, and hopefully, I have
provided a fair amount of evidence pertaining to my belief that
Heaney’s poem connects to that of soldiers around the world. My
brother has just recently enlisted into the Marines and will be
leaving soon in October; he too, will have to slowly become
accustomed to the sight of death. However, even though he will become
accustomed to death, I do not want him to become used to it, like so
many people are today. Well, that is all I have to say about this
topic, and as I am writing these final few words, I bid you all
farewell, especially you #80 and thank you for reading my blogs, for
commenting and for viewing my page.
Now, I can
actually say goodbye, goodbye my fellow bloggers, my fellow packer
fans, and my favorite player of all time.
