Poetry Analysis: Fifteen Million Plastic Bags.
Fifteen Million Plastic Bags, by Adrian Mitchell is a very eerie poem with a very apocalyptic sent lingering all around it. This poem is very chilling and almost unsettling with its apocalyptic sent that lingers al around, especially for having a name like Fifteen Million Plastic Bags. .
Mitchell is depicting a short story about a man and what he is seeing in, what seems like, a world plagued by bloodshed, due to arms race that has resulted in a Cold War. This man is walking into a warehouse full of fifteen million plastic bags, which are obviously body bags. Everyone that is in existence in this war is afraid to stand out or stand up against the injustices that are commencing. It's almost as if everyone is having to conform to the "man without a voice" standard, and are dying due to that action.
The overall theme of this chilling poem is one that is condemning conformity. This is shown through the description that "[five] million bags were six feet long, [five] million bags were five foot five, [and] [five] million were stamped with Mickey Mouse." The largest bags are for the men, the next size down is for the women, and the ones with Mickey Mouse are the children. These bags show all the people who decided not to stand up and stand out in a crowd of followers and just had to go along with the rest of the people just like them. A common symbol, in a way, among children is Mickey Mouse, the average height for women is "five foot five," and a common height for men is six feet. In this warehouse no one stands out, all the children are the same as each other according to the bags, and it is the same with the others. You don't see any bags that are six foot two, or any bags that are five foot eight, because every conformed to one another and no one stands out like that. They are all, in death conforming. Then the man goes and takes his "bag from the hanger" and pulls "it over [his] head," because he too is feared by the Cold War situation, just like everyone else.
