After The Ice by Paul Crenshaw

After The Ice is about Paul Crenshaw’s emotional battle with the death of his young nephew Keith at the hands of Keith’s stepfather, when he was only Seventeen.  Crenshaw’s makes parallels in his essay with this tragic event and his own children in his present day life.  Paul Crenshaw is a writer and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Elon University.    This essay takes place within Crenshaw but the setting does take place in the home Keith was killed in even though Crenshaw was never in it he pictures exactly what plays out within the home.  I believe Crenshaw wrote this essay as a way to heal from this misfortune even though it is far in the past it still haunts him.  This also makes him want to help other people understand what happened and how to cope with these events.  I believe Crenshaw wrote this essay mostly for his own closure.  I also believe he had other people dealing with tragedy in mind for his audience to appeal too.  For people that have lost someone and have no way of dealing with it or understanding why it has happened.   Through out the essay Crenshaw used vivid imagery and the different seasons’ weather to illustrate the healing process. Crenshaw uses winter to symbolize the death of Keith and the bad things that has happened to him.  He hits hard with winter imagery when explaining the crunching of ice under his tires and the ice on the landscape while he is driving to the hospital to see the lifeless body of his nephew. The imagery of the birth of his own daughter represents the rebirth of himself and the rebirth seen every spring.  Crenshaw accomplishes his purpose of helping the reader understand loss and deal with it better.  He does this by using his contrasting imagery of winter, the death of Keith, and spring, the birth of his daughter, to explain that there will always be loss but there can always be life if you don’t let yourself get caught up with death. With winter comes death, while spring comes with life.

Prevention

"3.3 million reports of children being abused or neglected in 2008."

National Child Abuse Prevention Month - Office of Children & Families in the Courts." Home - Office of Children & Families in the Courts. Office of Children & Families in the Courts., n.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2013.