Auto Wreck: Death and Grief Explored

Who’s the Victim?

“Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.” (“Road Crash Statistics”) Auto disasters produce significant sentimental sorrows for family members and witnesses. The theme of grief and death are important concepts in the twentieth-century poet, Karl Shapiro’s, “Auto Wreck.” A spectator’s point of view is used to reach the universe of death along with the thoughts of voyeurism in Karl Shapiro's "Auto Wreck." Shapiro decorates the poem with intriguing inconspicuous dialect and a lovely, although rather disheartening, depiction of death all through the

The eyes of the blameless onlookers witness the revulsions of a vehicle wreck, which is enlivened through Shapiro's use of imagery in "Auto Wreck." As an audience reads Shapiro's sensitive, deliberate visual signals, they must be mindful of the seriousness of the circumstance and reality of what occurs. Signs, for example, "And down the dark on ruby flare/ pulsing out red light like an artery," (Shapiro, Line 2) and "The doors leap open, emptying light/ stretchers are laid out/ the mangled lifted," (9) incorporate the onlookers full involvement in the scene as though he or she were encountering the vehicles wreck as seriously as the mischance casualty. This immediate connection between the utilization of realistic symbolism and the bystander is the thing that makes a circumstance that is without solace and quietness, a circumstance that nobody can get away; voyeurs by

The uproar trims the lyric with character and adornment, which promote the reason for including the spectators in the abomination that is the car wreck. While the primary line of the poem is laden with imagery, it is likewise brimming with similar sounding speech usages. Such as, "its quick soft silver ringer beating, beating"(1), and "down the dark one ruby flare" (2). Shapiro composed his work as unmetered but the restatement of the "b" and "s" sounds give the poem a driving beat. "With the stubborn saw of common sense" (26). This particular line utilizes alliteration which makes sentiment associations and development throughout the piece. The resonant utilization of alliteration moves us into the body of the poem, where the reader is numb toward their own circumstance, facing the point where we, the spectators, can not separate ourselves from this startling sort of death. The end of the poem serves as an extraordinary spot which depicts the inquiry, "… Who shall die" (31)? This, the volta of the lyric, is promoted by the vital utilization of inquiries and abbreviated line length. Shapiro utilizes this line as a question of how demise picks its casualties and the arbitrariness of an auto wreck. He experiences a few distinct