Facing the Inevitable: An Analysis of “To Awaken An Old Lady” While most experiences in life are unique to an individual or to a group of people, death is one of the few that is truly universal and inevitable. Unlike its counterpart, life, what occurs after death is impossible to document. It is this uncertainty (along with a yearning for life after death) that results in mixed reactions to the concept of nearing life’s end. In his poem “To Waken An Old Lady”, William Carlos Williams utilizes contrasting metaphors, bleak imagery, and a cognition-mimicking structure to illustrate the despair one feels at the onset of old age. The poem immediately begins with a metaphor in relation to the subject: “Old age is / a flight of small / cheeping
