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Dylan Vallat

Professor Orta

English 123

2 February 2018

Accepting Fate

In the poem 4AM by Gil Cuadros, from a series of six poems called The Quilt Series,

published in 1994, in San Francisco, the narrator has to finally learn to accept that his beloved

John has been taken from him by AIDS. The poem 4AM in this sequence of poems truly stands

out, because this is finally when the narrator comes to terms with the reality of John passing

away. These poems are the narrators five steps of grief, all in his own order but finally learning

to accept at 4am when John passes for good.

Denial happens early on in the first poem, called 911. When the narrator gets home and

doesn’t know how to react when John is beginning to show his signs of slipping away. The way

the narrator says, “I came home. John was delirious” (Cuadros), represents a sort of panic or bad

situation. In my day to day life, I never hear somebody call another person delirious. From what I

have seen, when somebody talks to someone who isn’t there, they are thought of as as “crazy”,

when someone is so drunk that they can’t move, they are “done” or “gone”. What I am getting at

is that delirious is such a interesting word because it represents someone who is internally

broken, like clinging on to some completely impossible goal. Like John’s goal is to live, but

everything life is throwing at him is taking a piece of him with it and bringing him faster and

faster, to his end. But, he doesn’t want to believe something this horrible could exist

Depression is shown in the form of the second Poem, ICU. It is known that if somebody

is depressed by the length and occurrence of sleep. Depression drains the body, so when
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somebody is depressed, they don’t have the physical capabilities to move, or interact with

people. So when the narrator explains that “It was to easy to lie back in the chair” (Cuadros), he

means that these events that are happening are weighing him down so mentally, that he feels he

needs rest to ease all the pain in his world. The narrator begins to slip away into his own

dreamscape of guilt, wondering what life would be like without John, contemplating suicide. He

describes in detail of how he would end his life. The narrator is so depressed and weighed down

in his life that he is thinking of taking himself away from the world. Personally, I have never had

depression, But I have friends who can’t talk to anyone in their family. So they talk to me about

problems in their lives and that they are not happy in this world. Friends feel they trust me

enough that they can have serious conversations with me about life situations.

In the third poem, REM, the narrator shows signs of bargaining by releasing the locks on

John’s bed to attempt to set him free because of the way he feels as if he betrayed him. Also John

trying to make a bargain, says “No I don’t want to die!” (Cuadros), three times as if yelling at

somebody about to kill him. There is a phrase in life that is “make a deal with the devil”, this

means that a debt of life is owed for any wish of choosing. In the scenario of the poem, John has

already made a deal with Death to take his life on a certain day. But, now that those short days

are coming up he has changed his mind, that he is not ready to die, as he yells at Death to stay

away and that he doesn’t want to die. The problem is that fate can never be escaped because the

universe always wins.

In the fourth poem called RM#, I get the sense that the narrator is frustrated and angry. In

the beginning of the poem, the rapid line breaks represent frustration. In my life, when I become

short tempered, I generally begin to speak loudly, but very small phrases. Hinting to the

choppiness of the pauses, which each represent a shout. The narrator was angry with all the steps
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and people he had to go through to see John everytime he was moved to a different hospital

room. When my dad was in a major motorcycle accident and in the ICU for 2 weeks, I realized

fast that even though I was in a whole wing filled with people that are on death’s door. I truly did

not care about anybody in that wing except my dad. When a nurse left the room to go take care

of the next patient, I would get scared that he was going to go into shock or something, So I

would get mad at the nursing staff to take better care of him.

And finally, in poem number five of the series named 4AM, the narrator finally gets the

acceptance he has always needed. The narrator puts on the red sweater that John got him for his

birthday. This almost foreshadows that John was going to become a “part” of him sometime

soon. And deep down inside the Narrator chose that for a reason, because he had finally accepted

that John was going to pass away. This allows the narrator to brace for the worst when 4AM hits

the clock. Although the narrator loses the person in the world that he holds dearest to his heart,

John still lives on through the narrator. The narrator may never fully be the same after the loss of

his partner, but he has finally accepted that John is gone and that there is nothing left to do, it is

completely out of his hands.

This Poem series brings out a lot of memories of my life back when my brother was

alive. The combination of the imagery of a person deteriorating away, being named John, and

reading this poem in february which is when he was born, really drove those memories into my

mind. John in the poem has AIDS which is eating away at his life quickly, while my brother had

cerebral palsy which slowly ate away at his mind to the point where he couldn’t remember how

to eat for himself, or drink, or do anything. At the end of the fifth poem when “at 4AM sharp, I

began to howl.” (Cuadros), I believe the howl represents the narrator letting go of all his grief,

and finally accepting that his loved one lives among the angels. My brother John has always
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been with me as my guardian angel while I was growing up. How my brother has become to me

is how the narrator feels now that he is letting go of all his negativity and celebrating the life

John lived. Not focusing on just the last part.

Works Cited

Cuadros, Gil. City Of God. San Francisco, CA, City Lights, 1994