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Analysis Of Ritvo's Poem To My Litter

319 Words2 Pages
In “Poem to My Litter,” Ritvo wrote about how doctors split his tumors and scattered them in the bones of twelve mice (3-4). Here he managed to convey very surreal and strange images through plain language. It’s the work of a very accomplished writer with an unusually vivid imagination and a surprising sense of humor. This is someone who have accepted his fate and diagnosis, and his writing addresses his terminal illness head on, without pity or melodrama. Ritvo speaks of “litter” which is not only composed of mice who have, like him, endured experimental cancer therapies, but the children Ritvo has never had. Stating “I want my mice to be just like me, I don’t have any children. I named them all Maxes”. (23-24) Naming them after himself,
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