Apostrophe

Apostrophe
Apostrophe means a direct address to someone or something. Millay wrote this poem before World War II. In this poem, Millay is addressing the human kind or humans called "sapiens". War was beginning to become taxing on her and many other people's senses of what humanity is.

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**(On reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)** Edna Millay had already gone through one World War, which had ended in 1918. "Apostrophe to Man" was not published until 1934, five years before the decleration of World War II. However, the evidence of a second World War occuring was apparant with the rise of communism in Italy and in Germany, and spreading across the Eastern Hemisphere.

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=== Expunge   === transitive verb

1 **:** to strike out, obliterate, or mark for deletion 2 **:** to efface completely **:** destroy 3 **:** to eliminate (as a memory) from one's consciousness -Merriam Webster Dictionary

"Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the/ Distracted cellulose"
Millay's sacarsm and blatant disgust with mankinds readiness to go back to war, nation against nation, is evident in lines such as the one above. The voice in the poem is evidently not pleased with the thought of the world going back to war, so for her to write that she wants them to build such horrible destructive things again is the sarcastic undertone of the poem.

The substance Millay writes about in her poem, ammonia, is used for many means during times when war is not plaguing countries, towns, or nations. However when war is present ammonia is a key ingredient in soldiers weapons, "In war it is indespensable, a basic ingredient in the manufature of explosives. . ."(Maisel, 98).

up of three parts of hydrogen and one of nirtrogen." -Albert Q. Maisel
The other substanced used by Millay to describe the weapons used by the military forces was that of "cellulose". Cellulose cotton when combined with nitric acid creates cellulose hexanitrate, or, more commonly, gun cotton, which is a high explosive sometimes modified until it becomes blasting gelatine and the smokeless powder used in war (Shaw; 375).

"exhort, Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed; Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize "

Again the sarcasm continues, and Millay is dusgusted with the inhumane and robotic structure of the military, and simply the inhumanitiy of human beings. Right before this line the death of soldiers is mentioned in such a gruesome way, she then goes onto metion how "man" pushes the ideas of war, they appear to be sad ("pull long faces") and yet to stubborn in their stance to stop the violence. The idea of war has become a natural thing of life, a publicized event, and one the should be pushed forward at every cost, even at the expense of young men.

Homo called sapiens.
Millay's conclusion of the poem shows her last and final words of disgust and contempt for the human race by discrediting us of any intelligence. The word sapiens is the what seperates us from the rest of the animals; we have to ability to think on a higher level. However, according to Millay at the time of the World Wars humans were not being wise at all. To Millay at this time, war was a sign of ignorance and a primitive characteristic of man, and therefore man did not own up to the the name of sapien. []