An Analysis Of Lucille Clifton's At Last We Killed The Roaches

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” Gautama Buddha, a figure responsible for the founding of the Buddhist culture, urges that those who experienced a fulfilling life will succeed. However, in this generation, social norms placed on citizens prevent this state of spiritual acceptance. For instance, humans have this certain mindset to crave perfection, knowledge, and power; and, as a result, these needs hinder any attempt to succeed. In other words, humans have the condition to continuously strive for success through the means of power and control. Contrarily, this excessive need to succeed, consequently, segways to conflicts; and, as a result, the solution

On the contrary, programmed humans desire this state since they associate success with perfection. For example, Lucille Clifton’s nostalgic poem, “At Last We Killed the Roaches,” illustrates a child's reflection on her past manipulated actions. Namely, the speaker discloses her revelation of her programmed nature. To elaborate, after exterminating roaches, the speaker points out, “...such cleanliness was grace when i was twelve” (Clifton 7-8). These lines reveal that during a naive time in her life, the speaker had murdered roaches in order to become purified and conformed to society. To reiterate, the speaker reflects on her prior beliefs and understands the wrongfulness of her programmed values. In specific, the word “cleanliness” relates to ideas such as ethnic cleansing, a practice of purifying society through eradicating unwanted races. Nurtured with these beliefs of purification, the speaker followed these ways of life at an innocent age. However, the use of past tense demonstrates the speakers’ contrast of reliance in her once instilled morals, for

Conformity, a crucial element in utopias, authorizes the extermination of individuality between groups, and, consequently, establishes the superior side. “He is our national idol, and everybody else is our national fink,” reveals Zinsser in a criticism of society’s impractical expectations for perfection (p. 3). This quote, accordingly, discloses that society places humans in two polarized groups: the successful and the unsuccessful. However, with factors such as knowledge and imagination, polarization increases between these two groups since those with power can beat this system. Furthermore, through the author’s cynical tone, the reader understands that social norms have, in turn, made the average, insignificant, and only the powerful, strong. As a result, this need for perfection has caused this desire for a nonexistent entity. Therefore, in spite of this need for perfection, humans will never be able to achieve this peaceful, yet equal state. Similarly, in Viktor Frankl’s psychology book Man’s Search for Meaning, the author finds flaws through the “perfect society” while he records his experience at a concentration camp during World War II. In an argument about the importance of failure, Frankl asserts that “without suffering and death human life cannot be complete” (36). Hence, in order to grow as people, humans need to fail in order to