Eugenesis – William McIlvanney

Eugenesis is a poem written by William McIlvanney, based on what I suspect is his depiction of humanity in the not so near future. Instead of taking you through the whole poem word for word, what I’m going to do is take a few good examples of metaphor, simile and personification and use these to discuss the effectiveness of McIlvanneys depiction of humanity.

Firstly I am going to discuss similes, one of the first similes you come across when reading this poem is “The rockets lay, like molar monuments“. This is almost both simile and personification, due to the use of the word “lay” suggesting that they lay the way in which people would, but I will be focusing more on the simile side of things. The part “Like molar monuments” catches my eye the most and gives me a lot more to think about. This gives off the illusion that the rockets were dotted around the place, in no particular order, lifeless and motionless but because of the use of the word “molar”, it suggests that no matter how motionless and lifeless they are, they’re still strong and sturdy.

“it was too late, the world ran like a rash” is another simile, this time suggesting that something devastating must have happened for the world to suddenly run off. “Ran like a rash.” Gives the effect that they ran quickly, as if scurrying cautiously, it also shows that the population of the world didn’t just disappear, the spread out across the face of the earth before fading away subtly. I also believe that “it was too late” helps McIlvanney because it gives the readers somewhat of a rhetorical question to consider, did the humans know this was happening? Did they try to prevent it, but failed?

Before going further into the structure of the McIlvanneys Eugenesis, I’d like to point out a couple of things. Throughout it, he is continuously warning readers about dangers posed by