Summary Of Dead Armadillos By Gail White

Gail White’s “Dead Armadillos” discusses the idea that no one truly cares about something until they are faced with the possibility of losing it. Armadillos are used to make this point because they die in multitudes every day and it does not seem to faze anyone and has become an excepted event in life. The poem then goes to explain how when too many armadillos have died, causing the world to only be left with a few of them, they will be considered important.
Armadillos have become a common fixture to the roads of America along with many other animals that have been generalized as road kill. Often times, the armadillos are just looking for food when they happen across a busy highway and are met with an untimely death. The metaphor comparing the literal armadillos to “small blind knights/ in armor” ( 9-10)

cast a new light on the armadillos as brave heroes going into battle to fight for their survival rather than small rodents simply crossing the road at the wrong time. The assonance of the phrase “blind knights” (9) helps to draw more attention to this metaphor. The image of when armadillos “collide / with a ton of moving metal” (6-7) evokes the senses of both sight and touch and brings the harsh reality of the death of an armadillo into focus. More emphasis is placed on this image through the alliteration of “moving metal” (7). The visual image of “They’re on my daily route” (8) helps the audience understand the abundance of these armadillos because they are seen by the speaker every day.
After showing the terror of the deaths of the armadillos, the poem goes on to show how no one is bothered that the armadillos are dying. The speaker of the poem claims:
No one cares.
There is no Save the Armadillo
Society. The Sierra Club and Greenpeace
take no interest. There are too
damned many armadillos (10-14).
The mentioning of The Sierra Club along with the Greenpeace shows the dramatic extent of how insignificant armadillos are through connotation. “The Sierra Club and Greenpeace” (12) are environmental organizations that work to preserve nature; however, they are often viewed by society as groups that will go to extremes to save every animal that is put in harm’s way. The speaker saying that even these groups do not care about armadillos dying further goes to strengthen the argument that the abundance of armadillos makes their deaths seem completely unimportant.
The poem concludes with the point of how when the armadillos are near extinction, they will seem more valuable.

The simile comparing the beauty of the armadillos to money in the phrase “beauty, / like money, is worth more when it’s scarce” (14–15) makes the act of not caring when an armadillo dies seem more shallow. “When we’re down to the last half dozen, / we’ll see them with the eyes of God” (18-19) is a hyperbole because people will take notice before the number of armadillos reaches that extreme low and it makes the situation seem worse than it actually is. The assonance of “last half” (18) and the alliteration of “When we’re … we’ll see them with” (18-19) draw more attention to the hyperbole. The poem uses “eyes of God” (19) because of the connotation associated with it. In this case, the poem relies heavily on connotation because the speaker is not referring to literally looking through the eyes of the Christian deity. To most individuals seeing something from the perspective of God means that they see it as significant because God views all of his creations with adoration, whether it be something as big as a mountain or even smaller than an

armadillo.
The poem “Dead Armadillos” by Gail White shows how people only care about something when they are faced with a reality that they might not have that thing much longer. The speaker of the poem is a person who is aware of how people tend to place more emphasis on things that are scarce and throughout the poem, the speaker has a somewhat critical tone about the way the situation seems to be simply brushed under the rug. By showing how the death of the armadillos is hardly given a second thought because they are numerous, the poem touches on the more shallow side of society.