Personification In My Number, By Billy Collins

expressed that all death is the same, and one will go out of the world

Throughout this poem there are multiple ways Hall connects the poem to its core meaning. Located within the title, the word ‘dead’ is used to describe the machine. Being dead is the ultimate end of a life and that uncertainty of death sparks fear among many people. The inclusion of this certain word is used to set the tone of the poem as dark and gloomy and obtain the readers interest. Another method used by Hall to convey the theme of death was through imagery. The entire second stanza is a description of the pilot’s skeleton strapped within the crashed plane. Having such a graphic image portrayed, Hall is able to essentially shock his reader with the gruesomeness that death produces. One of the last things the reader may decipher from this poem is that life, just like war, is a trap. Within the third stanza, the pilot is said to be taking a train to work and is “held/ by the firm webbing” of the train. The webbing infers that the pilot, although not trapped in his plane, is trapped in the roles put forth by society.

Where there is life, there is death. Writers around the world have tried to define death; to give it meaning and explain its impact. A common literary device known as personification is often used to attribute human-like characteristics to death in an attempt to show their interpretations of death. Personification allows us to “use insight about ourselves to help us comprehend such things as forces of nature, common events, abstract concepts, and inanimate objects” (qtd. Quinn). In Billy Collins’ “My Number”, Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Death has been personified into characters that range from civil to malicious and content to discontent. “My Number” is about a man who is fearful of what he believes to be a cunning and cruel Death.

The next four lines address death with symbolism and personification to establish the idea of not fearing the unknown future. In line 5, the voice talks about the life cycle

The subject matter of death isn't the theme of this poem. The poem prevails truth being disguised and manipulated over documented history. This not only opens the mind into questioning whether historical events truly happened the way historians say it did, or whether documentation can prove a justification of truth, but it forces the second idea to raise questions whether any of the history being told is true at all. The poem "Richard Bone" carries out this idea strongly. The reason this poem plays an interest in my mind is that it synthesizes to current events happening every day in the real world in a variety of ways. The poem places the tactic of truth versus false and how reality plays with this fundamental game with scenarios of

Personification is necessary to the story because it allows the reader to get a better understanding of the characters. From this conversation with Whitney and Rainsford, we receive more information about Rainsford and his ideas about life and hunting. Rainsford shows apathy towards his game and believes the creatures he hunts have no feelings. “Rainsford presumes that hunting is a sport involving no more moral consequences than a game such as baseball; he further demonstrates his naivete by assuming that his victims, big-game animals, have no feelings” (Dunleavy 1). Later these ideas Rainsford has about hunting game and their ability to emote is compared to General Zaroff and his ideas about hunting humans. While Rainsford displays indifference towards his animal hunting game and how they feel, General Zaroff has a similar belief with his hunting of humans. General Zaroff has become bored with hunting animals, “ ‘ Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call a sporting proposition. It had become too easy.’ ” (Connell 6). However, his solution to his boredom is sinister, instead of hunting animals he hunts humans due to their ability to reason rather than use instinct. Much like Rainsford, General Zaroff had no feelings of pity or resentment for hunting his game. Not only does he get enjoyment out of hunting game which has more cognitive complexity than an animal, he also seems to see it as his right to rid the Earth of those subordinate. “Life is for the strong, to

Bryant uses phrases such as “stern agony,” “breathless darkness,” “eternal resting place,” and “silent halls of death” to strike fear in the reader. These various phrases also apply a crucial tone to the poem. Death is a dark and distressing part of life. “The all-beholding sun shall see no more / in all his course.” (171). In these lines Bryant states that once man is complete with his course of life, he will no longer see light. This known fact raids a sense of fear of death. This next quotation states that people who die and buried will end in the same burial place, which is the ground. “Thou shalt lie down / with patriarchs of the infant world-with kings, / the powerful of the earth-the wise, the good, / fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, / all in one might sepulcher.” As previously stated, Bryant describes all people as equals. He states that everyone has the same burial place. The ground is the place all dead bodies proceed to after death. The visual form of these words arouses a sense of sadness. Throughout the poem Bryant changes the tone to state although death is a dark part of life people should enjoy life until death calls them. “So live, that when thy summons come to join / the innumerable caravan.” (172). This line supports the point of living life until death calls. Throughout the poem, Bryant uses pathos to elaborate on the elements of death.

In “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, Dickinson personifies something I never thought could be personified: death. In the poem, death is a “he” who is on a carriage ride with the narrator to the narrator's death. In lines one and two, Dickinson writes, “Because I could not stop for Death-- He kindly waited for me.” This is personification because death cannot literally stop to wait for someone. Here, death is not associated with its usual connotations such as fear, but with peace and kindness, which is ironic. In line three, the poem reads, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves-- And Immortality.” In this line, immortality is also included in the carriage ride, contrasting death. This is personification because immortality

Billy Collins is considered one of the most popular poets in America. He is an accomplished writer; he has twenty-two poetry books published and was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. In Collins’s 1991 poetry collection Questions about Angels, the poem “The Afterlife” describes the fantasies people have towards the afterlife that many have when alive. It addresses a variety of beliefs people have towards the afterlife: belief in reincarnation, those who find themselves “in a big air-conditioned room full of food and chorus girls,” and more (line 17). Collins uses imagery in the poem to reach and speak to the readers of the poem. The afterlife is considered a touchy subject in most societies conversely, Collins deflates the unease with his satirical yet harmless nevertheless ending the poem in a serious, melancholic tone.

1) The first poem that appealed to me is named My Number (page 15). It starts by describing stunning ways death reaches people. Collins personifies death throughout the poem, and describes him as, “Scattering cancer cells like seeds,” (line 7). Collin uses imagery throughout the book, although here, in this poem as he depicts cancer cells being scattered, that really stuck with me. Cancer is a subject not often talked about in comparison to a casual task like gardening.

Personification is a type of figurative language one uses to give abstract ideas human-like characteristics. Dickinson uses personification in this poem because it allows the reader to understand death in a more intimate way. Death became so real to her and to her contemporaries because of the time in which she lived. Through her life experiences, the poet became intimate with death. Because of all the disease and epidemics in her lifetime, many of her loved ones passed away. These deaths were very "intense breaks in her life" (Murray). Some critics suggest that the death of her cousin was the inspiration for this poem (Semansky). In any event, death had a large impact on Dickinson's life. This impact explains why she writes so descriptively about it. In this poem, death is personified as a gentleman caller taking the lady out for a carriage ride. This personification gives the reader a better image of the writer's idea of the coming of death.

The Poem begins with a personification of death as "kindly" (3). By doing this, the speaker introduces a portrayal on death that might have conflictions. Most of the times, death has a negative connotation. Whether it is an inevitable or tragic view, it opposes to what is seen in the poem. The speaker accepts death as a friendly invitation when the time is right, rather than something that is bound to happen. The speaker then joins immortality, personified as a passenger in a carriage. Immortality simply cannot be a passenger as it is a non-living thing. The reasoning for this could be that immortality ties together the link between the speaker and death, ultimately introducing the voyage to come. The first stanza sets a precedent of a meter to follow throughout most of the poem. The first line contains eight

This appears to be a reference to God, and they expect to see a display of God’s power as the speaker is brought into the hereafter. This is the only mention of the afterlife in the poem. Even this mention of the afterlife has more to do with the process of dying and being brought into heaven then what happens after death. The focus is not the unknown after death, but what happens as one dies. The event that everyone is waiting for is the death of the speaker. They want to see something amazing, and do not seem to concerned with what happens to the speaker after the passing.

In “Man Has No Nature,” Jose Ortega argues that man must earn his life metaphysically. Ortega’s strongest argument towards this belief can be seen as the process that one must go through to earn their life. Ortega has the ability to, through only four pages of writing, describe man’s nature and how that seems to effect his choices. In this paper, I will make evident all of Ortega’s evidence that, man must determine what he is and then make him that belief in order to earn his life metaphysically.

    Anna Akhmatova used extremely well structured figurative language in writing this poem. She mainly used metaphors to write the poem. One of the biggest personification in the poem is, “I compose happy verses about life’s decay, decay and beauty”.  It is personification because life can not decay, it is not a living thing or even something real. It’s a big part of the poem because even though death is ugly and puts people in a bad place in life, there is always a happy side to it. There will also be a good reason for something happening no matter how bad the situation is. It makes you look at the title of the poem because death is extremely hard to get thru. When someone close passes away people have to teach themselves how to move on. The personification of death’s beauty shows that by learning how to live without that person, there will be a brighter reason as to why they passed away. People can be depressed or they can see that the person left the cruel world they were living in to live in a happy place.