Sill -

Maybe he was born on 'em,
The ropes of life--
Constantly fighting like the sap he was.

And maybe this was what I wanted all along--
I wanted Willie to die.
I built him up single handedly
and wanted him to fall,
With my compulsive suggestion to Duffy
and a pack of cigarrettes--
I killed Willie Stark.

When it was all over he would have left me anyway,
Whether it was for that Lucy
or that high and mighty Stanton woman.

So what if he was on the ropes?
Aren't we all?--
Oh wait, there's that Eagle Scout
Do-good Samaritan Jack.
We all know he can do no wrong.
No sins, faults or swaying
when it comes to Scout Master Jack Burden.

This has been in the damn making since Day One,
Since he even agreed to play
in this warped game of Russian Roulette.
But I pulled the trigger--
Indirectly or directly,
I dont give a damn.
Willie's dead due to my hand.

The dice were loaded
and the horsemen were in place.
Pushing Humpty Dumpty off that wall was no feat.
He was asking for it.
He never fully appreciated me--
If he ever did, I would be surprised.

I was never enough for him--
He would never leave that Lucy for
a real woman like me.

Even after he's dead and six feet under
He still has his seersucker suit hands around me.
Even after all these years
that sucker still clouds my thoughts.

No matter where I go,
The only one damn thing for sure I know--
that Willie Stark, that complete sap--
He will forever haunt me until the inevitable end.

Time is closing in.
The hourglass is just about out.
All those packs of cigarrettes never made the Boss disappear.
The great irony of it all?
Those cigarrettes ended up killing me slowly,
Making my lungs disappear rather than his apparition.

In my last few hours, I had to share this.
With someone, with anyone--
And I still kept my word to Jack Burden,
I never did tell a soul 'till I told you, Sill.
You're all I got in this world I can call family.

I dug my own grave
and I'm gonna lay in it.

AtKM Allusion Paragraph

Robert Penn Warren utilizes the use of allusion to create inner connections between the characters of All the King’s Men and Greek mythology. Cassandra holds the power to tell the future, however no one believes of gives her statements any standing ground; Jack Burden ignores Cass Mastern’s attempts at portraying the hidden truth of life-- that all events are connected and everyone affects each other. Even after reading Cass’ words, Jack cannot begin to fathom their true content because he has an inability to comprehend the knowledge and full experience of learning from consequences. Due to this fact, Jack’s opinion will never be proven otherwise without having to obtain his inevitable downfall upon hearing of Anne Stanton’s relations with Willie Stark. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus who was left behind without truly knowing his father, is a mirror reflection of Jack Burden himself. Throughout Jack’s journey he struggles to find out who his true father is among the three hopefuls. It isn’t until Judge Irwin’s death that Jack finally accepts that the Judge was his father, the man who always acted as the fatherly neighbor and stand in for the Scholarly Attorney when he abandoned Jack’s mother. These allusions, although hidden from those ignorant to any Greek mythology, provide a sense of universality bridging the span of hundreds of years, giving the reader a more accurate portrayal of characters within the novel.

College Essay

Spending my free time in the community was never a passion of mine: I much rather preferred to go out with my friends and enjoy wasting time with them. Considering Verot had a service requirement, I realized I had to do something in order to get the points so I could move on to the next grade. Starting in the summer of freshmen year, I began to volunteer at Lee Memorial Hospital’s Gift Shop. My indifferent attitude towards the community did a complete 180 after my first summer experience; I realized that the families buying cards and teddy bears were everyday people and that their loved ones very well could have been my own. Oftentimes the customer would need a shoulder or an ear and would explain what exactly happened to their loved ones. By listening to these accounts first hand, I have been given the power of empathy: the customer’s pain is my pain and I wonder how their husband, friend, child, or neighbor is recovering. Due to the Spanish pigment in my skin, I have had to become a literal translator on many occasions. Helping others, especially those with a language barrier, had never been so tough. Not only did I have to brush off the dust from my rarely used Spanish, but I also had to utilize it correctly to convey the correct prices, directions, and meanings to the customer. Through hearing their thanks, I realized how much I truly enjoyed helping them because I knew I made a difference in their day; I got to their level, treated them with the utmost respect, and spoke to them in their native tongue instead of being an ignorant American teenager and waving them off, saying in a poorly constructed accent “No hablo español.” I succeeded in my quest of helping them, which gave me a sense of fulfillment which I soon realized was what I really wanted out of life. This epiphany led me to explore my future career choices even at the early age of fourteen, the age where the entire world is set before you and the future is far off. From volunteering at a hospital and seeing first hand the smiles of those who get flower deliveries, I knew my place was at the hospital. Mixing the indifference along with my ability to empathize with others, a doctor would be the perfect choice. My sense of completeness when I’m working first hand with the community, when I see the patient’s face light up like a little kid’s on Christmas, and when I help others to the point where they tell me “God Bless You” my heart just swells and it makes me realize how much I truly love this. Because of the countless hours spent volunteering, my apathetic view of the world and life has been changed; I often thought that the world was inherently an evil place full of death and violence, but upon seeing those who stand up against all the odds that say they will fall have lifted my spirits. When I walk into the Bright Idea Gift Shop or any public place, I speak with complete politeness and feel the happiness cascading out of me even when I try to hide it. It’s only then that I realize that invisible ink doesn’t work when your heart is see-through.

AtKM Found Poem

Eyes red but tearless with a lethal innocence,
Lying paler than the winter sunlight in the motionless ooze,
The neon sign began to flare on and off again to the time of my heartbeat.

It was nothing more than one more dead end;
Some bad luck with the dice.

My strange loveless oscillation between calculation and instinct continued.
I floated effortlessly away like a balloon,
Twisting slowly like a piece of frayed rope,
Trying to open the envelope.

Lying with admiration of the dying day,
You felt in the stillness that you were breathing into yourself
the last shrunk-up whispers still hanging in the air.
The toils of mortal compulsions become clear
in the last preserving glaze of ice--
Separateness is identity.

And I realized that I could never hate him without hating myself,
Even if he had a confident to-hell-with-you, satirical smile.
And I thought: All right, you smile like that-- you smile like that.
The end of man is knowledge, those poisonously hard candies--
I earnestly advise you to burn them and be baptized to get born again.