To An Athlete Dying Young Essay

Words: 553
Pages: 3

The crowd goes wild! This is what you hear when someone was done something extraordinary and people want them to know how amazing they are. In the poem To an Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Housman he leaves three messages that make us wonder if the life of an athlete is truly all it is said to be. Housman discussions how an athlete grows old physically, how best records are beaten daily, and how one is easily forgotten. These are his thoughts of being an athlete and how it is better to die young. To get started, Housman’s first message from the poem To an Athlete Dying Young is how no matter how good you are when you are young; everyone ultimately becomes old. Housman says “And early though the laurel grows. It withers quicker than the rose.”(Pg.1092 Line 11, 12) He is likening an athlete to a rose. Housman says originally we are like a laurel, a tree that symbolizes victory, young and bendable and ready to fight and compete, but slowly we get older. Although as we get older, which occurs earlier than we can imagen, we wilt like a rose. So our petals, our abilities, gradually fall away like the petals of a rose. Housman considers how dying young would be more pleasant than, being amazing and then forgotten once you are old. …show more content…
Housman points out that if you die young you “cannot see the record cut.”(Pg.1092 Line 14) You would be dead so you wouldn’t have the agony of watching as someone younger then you and more athletic beat one of your records. You wouldn’t have to feel the sting of people asking who you even are and if you were decent at all. Housman is sure it would be better to die young then watch as your life works are stomped