Allusion (ə-ˈlü-zhən):[1] A reference/representation of/to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art . . . “a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage”. It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection . . . ; an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference.[2]
Don’t fear the reaper if you want to be a hero—on those days of infamy when unsuspecting people are laid to waste, you’ve got to get out there and meet the enemy face to face. Fear is not your friend in these circumstances. Fear is normal. Fear is natural. Fear may save your life, but it won’t win a firefight with a determined enemy. Ok, fear is not a crime. But, unmanaged it may push you to desert your post and fail to do your duty, and have your camp overrun, your comrades blown away while you cower in a bunker, holding your weapon, shaking with shame.
But you don’t have to worry about that. You work for Google. The only way you’d join the military is if you were drafted—more or less forced to serve. But, it does not matter—you’re almost 80–you’re barely hanging onto your job, unwilling to retire. But you remember back in the day. 1968. Your brother Billy joined the Army while you went to college on a deferment from the draft. Billy ended up in the 101st Airborne. He was killed in an ambush only 3 days after arriving in Vietnam. He received a Silver Star and was buried with military honors in your home town. When they played taps you almost cried. Billy was kind, He was a great brother. He was dead.
You became a pacifist for many reasons—in Billy’s memory, but really, because of your gnawing, unremitting fear of dying—of being killed in a hail of bullets from the enemy’s guns. Bleeding. Writhing in pain. Feeling the warmth of your blood as you drift off to death—everything gone into the darkness of the end. Like Billy.
You said goodbye to Billy at the bus station. The last time you saw him he was lying under a sheet of glass in a coffin in a funeral home, the day before he was buried. He looked healthy—trim, and peaceful.
It’s time to get back to work. To clear your morbid thoughts. To making Google proud. Buried in the years, there are memories that never go away. They intrude. They are there. They just float into consciousness unexpected, unsought, unwanted, hated. They are you. As you get old and stand in the shadow of death, they bring no comfort. Rather, they bring regret, but still, they don’t overshadow the desire to live induced by the people you love and the people who love you.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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