The second and third stanzas explore the emotions felt after the car crash from the perspective of a witness. A major theme from “Auto Wreck” is death. The poet is exploring the random and illogical nature of mortality by contrasting the car crash with other forms of death (war, suicide, disaster, cancer) that are more understandable. Karl Shapiro focuses attention on the unadorned, literalist description of a common event or experience. In the first stanza, which comprises the first fourteen lines, the reader is situated, as it were, in front of an ambulance that is speeding toward the scene of an automobile accident; the reader is kept informed by an omniscient voice, which scrupulously provides both sensual and metaphorical detail that brings the reader uncomfortably close to both the horrifying event and his or her own matter-of-fact response to its
The second and third stanzas explore the emotions felt after the car crash from the perspective of a witness. A major theme from “Auto Wreck” is death. The poet is exploring the random and illogical nature of mortality by contrasting the car crash with other forms of death (war, suicide, disaster, cancer) that are more understandable. Karl Shapiro focuses attention on the unadorned, literalist description of a common event or experience. In the first stanza, which comprises the first fourteen lines, the reader is situated, as it were, in front of an ambulance that is speeding toward the scene of an automobile accident; the reader is kept informed by an omniscient voice, which scrupulously provides both sensual and metaphorical detail that brings the reader uncomfortably close to both the horrifying event and his or her own matter-of-fact response to its