McDonough and Poe

 In McDonough’s poem, “Accident, Mass. Ave,” we read about an altercation between a man and a foreign woman following a minor accident in Boston. The interaction between the two people illustrates how quickly humans react when something unexpected happens. At the beginning of the poem, both people behave in angry and accusing ways as a first instinct to the accident. As the poem ends, both the man and the woman realize how minor the accident truly was and direct their focus to the well-being of each other. In the world today, sometimes it takes experiences like these for people to genuinely understand what is important in life. 

 In the short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe tells a story about the relationship between Fortunato and the narrator. This story revolves around the rivalry between these two men and a plot of revenge against Fortunato. The narrator manipulates and tricks Fortunato throughout the story until he finally buries him alive. At the end of the story, Poe adds that the place where Fortunato died remains untouched after half a century. 

Reading both of these stories for class after a long weekend is quite coincidental considering the events that occurred. I drove to pick up my friend from college on Saturday and brought two other friends with me so I would not have to drive alone for an extended period. My one friend always jokes that I am a bad driver, however, he never fails to get into a car with me driving it. This day, he joked saying that he was driving my car home because he was a better driver than me. I am very possessive over my car and get too nervous to let anyone else drive it. The two of us are extremely close so this playful rivalry does not offend either of us too much. I never gave anyone any reason to believe what he says about my driving until Saturday. I was driving down a big empty road in the middle of nowhere with my three friends in the car. I looked at my GPS and saw that my turn was closer than expected and frantically turned right, not realizing how fast I was driving. The tires screeched and we almost swerved off of the road trying to avoid oncoming traffic. If my car were any bigger, we would have definitely flipped over (luckily, nobody got hurt and there were only two other cars near us at the time). My friends yelled my name in a panic over what just occurred. I immediately started having an anxiety attack and had to pull over. My one friend who always jokes about my driving definitely screamed the loudest. When I pulled over, he jumped out of the back of my car and opened my door for me. I was staring at my steering wheel in shock trying to catch my breath. He pulled me out of the driver’s seat and directly into a hug. I collapsed into his arms as he reassured me everything was okay and that we all were alive. This experience relates more to the poem “Accident, Mass. Ave” because we both had an immediate reaction that we overcame when we saw the bigger picture. We looked past any tension or “rivalry” we had in the past, came to our senses, and realized what was truly important: our safety. 

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