Summary Of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's Poem 'Will'

“There is no chance,” wrote Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.” These words are from her poem “Will,” a favorite of my Aunt May. Though Mrs. Wilcox’s words on chance and destiny never really caught my ear when Aunt May read it to me so many times, those words resonated in my head December 9, 1994, a day that I will never forget. On that day, I stood before Judge Stanley Pivner to testify against my best friend, Wyatt. The workings of fate are strange indeed: Wyatt and I had been friends since kindergarten, when we went to Suzuki violin lessons together. We had been the best of all possible friends in grade school, helped each other through the troubled junior high years, and

I didn’t know what to do; I followed his directions when he told me to stand guard. Quickly and skillfully he cut the lock holding the door shut, then opened the door. It was pitch-black inside the shed; Heracles was evidently asleep. He called out the beast’s name; something stirred inside, there was a yawn, and Heracles came shambling out. I had never seen the monkey before;
I was surprised at how friendly and well-mannered he was. He scrutinized us, looking for some kind of a handout I guess – how was he to know what Wyatt had in mind? Wyatt was impressed with Heracles’s friendliness: he told me that this was going to be easier than we had thought. The monkey good-naturedly followed us back to the parking lot. With a little work, we succeeded in getting him into the back of the pickup truck. Wyatt threw a tarp over him, we got in the cab, and we started off, my brain full of anxiety.
Heracles, though, didn’t seem to like the back of the truck that much. Somehow, he managed to get out from under the tarp; with a bound, he had jumped from the truck to the parking lot. Something tripped in Wyatt right then; to this day, I’m not sure what it was. I suspect it was the