Death is not inevitable

In “Spring Storm”, William Carlos Williams symbolizes water as death to depict that

death is inescapable. This poem is about a severe storm that occurs during spring caused a

day-long heavy rain. The rainwater faces many obstacles like the snow on the surface of the

ground, lichen or moss in the gutter, and grass near the embankment. However, even though

there are many barriers to the water path, finally the water still finds its way to its terminal.

Williams uses water as a symbol of death. This is because no one can not prevent from being

passed away, likewise the water that will always find its way to the destination even there are

many obstacles. Williams emphasizes this idea by he writes “Still the snow keeps/ its hold on

the ground.”(7-8), “through green ice in the gutters.”(14), and “from the withered grass-stem/

of the overhanging embankment” (6-17) to be a representation of the action that trying to

resist death, but all of the action can not commit their purpose which is blocking the death.

This shows that no one can resist death. To elaborate this idea, Williams writes “But water,

water” (9), “cuts a way for itself” (13) to implies that no matter how hard a person resist, it is

still a useless action. Therefore, Williams uses the poetic device, symbolism, to symbolize the

water as a means to represent his idea that although a person resists the death hardly, death is

still inescapable and unavoidable.

In the poem, “Complete Destruction” William Carlos Williams reflect his belief that

we can’t escape from the death by the uses of a poetic device "irony", the tone, and the

structure of the poem itself He writes a poem in two equally separated stanzas that contain

four-line each. This poem setting is during a frozen cold day, the dead cat is buried under the

ground. Later on, the narrator set a fire to the cat box in the backyard. While the cat box is

burning, there are many fleas that survive the fire. However, all of those survivor fleas died

because of an intensely cold ambient temperature. Williams writes an ironic statement

“Those fleas that escaped/ earth and fire/ died by the cold.” (6-8) to shows that the even the
fleas can resist death during the box was on fire. Nevertheless, all of the escaped fleas still die

in the end. This reveals that no one can escape from death. Furthermore, Williams also

highlights this statement by he writes it in the last stanza, at the ending of the poem.

Moreover, in the irony statement, it consists of the narrator action only, no emotion is shown

through the statement at all. This creates a tone that indicates that invocating for the living is

useless because death is uncaring and irresistible. In addition, aforementioned about the equal

stanza, Williams utilizes this to illustrate that life is associated with death. He wants to tell

that everywhere there is life, then death will arise to take away that life. Hence, the literary

device irony, the tone, and the structure are used to elaborate on his idea that death is

inescapable.

William Carlos Williams employs the symbolism of a leaf as a representation of life

to illustrate that death is unavoidable in one of his poems: “Willow Poem”. In this poem, it is

about a life willow tree located nearby the river during summer to winter. Its leaves start to

change by its color and turn to crimson tone. As the leaves become paler and paler, it starts to

fall on the ground. Some of the willow leaves drop into the river and the leaves flow follow

with the water current. When the season perfectly changes to winter from summer, there are

no leaves left on the willow branches. Williams uses the willow leaf as a symbol of life, this

is because all the leaves are fallen down from the tree. The action of a leaf fall down from a

tree bud can be represented as the death of a leaf. This show that death is inescapable due to

all of the willow leaves is fallen down from the willow. Williams writes, “as if loath to let

go,” (9) to show the unwillingness of the leaves because it does not want to plummet down

from the tree branches. However, leaves still fall down from the tree branches. It cannot cling

to the tree branches anymore. This shows the feeling of do not want to die, but no one could

not resist death. Furthermore, he writes “oblivious to winter./ the last to let go and fall/ into

the water and on the ground.” (12-14) to explains that there are no survivors from the death.
Likewise, there are no leaves left in the willow tree anymore. Hence, Williams’s idea that

death is not inevitable is demonstrated by the uses of the poetic device: symbolism.