Innocence Case

Varsha Swaminathan

Mrs. Emerick

Sophomore English

27 March 13

Innocence

First time parents are both nervous and immensely excited to see their new born. The poems "First hour" by Sharon olds and "The Alien" by Greg Delanty both display the innocence of a newborn baby before it faces the evil of mankind. In "First hour", the new born baby as the narrator, is new to the world and wasn't consumed of evil or fear yet. In "The Alien", the nervous parents are anxious to teach their 'Martian; about life and can't wait for him to grow up. Both the poems, "Alien" by Delanty and "First hour" by Olds both convey that birth is innocent and pure until it is destroyed by human kind with anger, fear and love.

In "First Hour" by Sharon Olds, a new born baby is taking its first breaths, realizing that it didn't have a definition yet. It didn't understand love, or belong to anyone yet. It was free and it didn't have to face the fears or deal with the problems that adults usually deal with time to time: "I hated no one. I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone" (Olds 17). But when the first hour ends and he is taken to his mother, he starts to feel human and loved: "I was not very human. I did not know there was anyone else. I lay like a god, for an hour, and then they came for me and took me to my mother" (Olds 22).

In "The Alien" by Greg Delanty, parents are anxious to make contact with their baby. They're both excited about the pregnancy but also scared to teach it about life and watch their kid grow up. Parents love their kids and the parents from this poem are no different. The narrator mentions that they'd even die for their kid, and gives their everything to their newborn: "we'd die for you even, that we pray you're not here to subdue us that we'd put away our ray guns, missiles, and attitude and share our world with you, little big head, if only you stay" (Delanty 17). The poem relies on motif. The baby is compared to a Martian/ alien and the entire pregnancy to the Milky Way: "Our alien who art in the heavens, our Martian, our little