Sudden Extinction
I enjoyed this short story’s message
and use of imagery. The author describes the brachiosaurus and triceratops in a
way I never thought of but it makes perfect since and you are able to
understand the image as you are reading. The narrator compares the brachiosaurus
to a candle; he says “The Brachiosaurus’s brain, for example, sat atop his
tapered neck like a minuscule flame on a mammoth candle.” If you know about
dinosaurs you know the Brachiosaurus was the largest thing to ever walk the
earth, with a neck about 3 times larger than a giraffes. However in relation to
body size the head and brain of the reptile was much smaller. The narrator says
“My Favorite is Triceratops, his face a hideous Rorschach blot of broad bone
and blue hide. The museum of Natural History owns a replica that doesn’t do him
justice. One front foot is poised in the air like an elephant sedated for a
sideshow. And the nasal horn for shredding aggressors is as dull and mundane as
a hook for a hat.” To me the narrator was describing the triceratops bony
facial features that included the two large horns protruding from its forehead
and one smaller horn jutting from his nose. The image the narrator gives you is
that of a powerful creature, however the narrator then says it the horns are
now as useless as a hook for a hat. I believe this meant that the dinosaurs
were once a powerful species with large horns and teeth, but now they are
extinct and put on display and the once ferocious horns are remnants of the
past just like the once popular hooks for hats. To me the narrator of this
short story was not just talking about the extinction of the Dinosaurs but our
extinction as well.
The narrator says “There are guys at
my gym whose latissimus dorsi, having spread like thunderheads, cause them to
inch through an ordinary door; might the dinosauria have grown too big for
their own violation?” I believe with this sentence the narrator compares us to
dinosaurs. Saying that maybe us are humans are growing too big for our own good
and maybe that is what caused the dinosaur’s extinction. The narrator then says
“Once, I imagined our exercise through X-ray eyes. Our skeletons gaped at their
own reflection. Empty eyes, like apertures, opened onto an afterlife.
Lightning-bright spines flashed from sacrums. Phalanges of hands were splayed
in surprise. Bones were glowing everywhere, years scoured down to marrow, flesh
redressed with white.” To me this whole paragraph is the narrator also comparing
us to the dinosaurs, but also explaining we could share the same fate. To me it
means that no matter how strong we are we all are just made up of bones. Just
like the dinosaurs were large strong beasts, they too were just flesh atop of
skeletons and they perished, just like we as humans might, despite our physical
prowess.
The last paragraph of the short story
talks about the human’s extinction. The narrator says “And I knew our remains
were meant to keep like secrets under earth. And I knew one day we would topple
like monuments, stirring up clouds of dust. And I almost heard the dirge of our
perishing, thud after thud after thud, our last titanic exhalations loud and
labored and low.” To me when the narrator mentions that we were meant to be
like secrets under the earth, it means that our bones will be kept under the
earth until they are excavated like the dinosaur’s fossils. The narrator also says
we are going to topple like monuments one day. To me this means that just like
the largest and tallest creature, the Brachiosaurus, humans too will fall and
our great skyscrapers will crumple to the ground returning to dust after our
extinction. In the last sentence the
narrator talks about our last breathes as humans become extinct and fade into
past.
Ok, good response here.
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