OOn the Death of Friends in Childhood

1067 Words5 Pages
The death of a friend during one’s childhood is a tragedy. This fact is virtually inescapable. It’s an experience unlike any other. People are primarily concerned with death in how it affects those familiar with the person that has passed on. But, rarely addressed is the fate of individual that is now deceased: where they are, what they are doing, and where one can find them. This very concept is what American poet Donald Justice attempts to detail in his poem “On the Death of Friends in Childhood.” The poem is rather short in length but there is much more than meets the eye upon initial glance. Through heavily counterpointed and irregular rhythm and meter, careful diction, and imagery, Justice is able to make a profound statement about a less grim side of death. When children die, it is unexpected and is accompanied by an odd feeling of truncation: they never gain responsibility, never marry, never grow old, never get a job, never get sick, and never lose their innocence. We remember them, as they were, children on a playground. The only identifiable meter of this poem seems to be iambic pentameter, the quintessential form of English poetic verse. Justice’s reason for choosing such a dominant style of meter is to make a statement about the commonality of death. Death, whether it befalls to infants, children, teenagers, adults, elderly persons, is still death. Nothing is intransient. It is something to be expected and in reality, a part of life. As the theory of opposition mandates, there cannot be life, if not for death. The death of a friend within one’s childhood may be a saddening experience, but it should not be received exclusively with abject woe, for it is inevitable. One of the most noticeable aspects of the poem is the difference of line length and more specifically, the high percentage of hyper and hypo metrical lines. Due to this choice and his
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