Ambiguity Of Death In A Formal Application

The Ambiguity of Death Since the creation of man, certain primal urges have been imprinted into the human being's psyche. Out of many of those the instinct of death is included, probably stemming from the necessity of killing to obtain one's food. The instinct of death remains today and has been changed, adapted, suppressed and exemplified. In "A Formal Application" the ironic theory of applying death as a way of life is portrayed through a man's act of killing a bird. The poem flows through the practice, planning and execution of a common bird. The climax of the poem comes when he refers to his act of violence as an "Audubon Crucifix". Through various examples in history he validates this unnecessary crucifix. "A Formal Application"
By this practice he automatically tells us that he wants for this action to happen perfectly. By perfecting his skills he confirms to us the importance of this act to him. In the first stanza he begins to learn how to inflict pain with his knife by throwing it. He molds a kitchen utensil into a fatal weapon by enhancing his throwing skills. The second stanza shows his progression from merely throwing the knife, to hitting a target. The last stanza involves him targeting a moving object. This indicates he will be inflicting harm on a living thing with his weapon of
Initially, he states "I shall coordinate conditioned reflex". This is the first indication of his reasoning behind this blatant disregard of living things. By developing his learned trait of killing he now feels he has "qualified" as the Modern Man. The second stanza offers a grotesque description of the murder. Then the speaker confirms his infatuation with gaining superiority through death by naming this killing the "Audubon Crucifix". This name contains the word crucifix because, according to the popular belief, the only death that brought life to this earth was when Jesus Christ was crucified. Religious connotations are involved in the name because by justifying and validating his violent act he can feel like a "Modern Man". In the third stanza he goes even further in an attempt to relate his somewhat small scale kill to the few major slaughters of our history. First, with the word pious he again relates to religion by referring to his title as holy. Then he adds three examples of dramatic violence. The first of which is Arbeit Macht Frei, an ironic motto for the holocaust meaning work brings freedom. In the concentration camps prisoners were worked so brutaly, almost all of them died, therefore death becomes freedom. This idea supports the speakers application of life by saying death is the only freedom and by killing you are given the power to grant that freedom. The last two examples