Poetry Response to Ogden Nash's "A Caution to Everybody."

A Caution to Everybody

By Ogden Nash

Consider the auk;

Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.

Consider man, who may well become extinct

Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.

This poem speaks to me because it cautions against the Naïveté and over-ambition of man, and how eventually man is going to lead himself right into extinction. The short length and simple rhyming structure, and also the use of the made-up word “thinked” instead of thought all contribute to the poem’s silly, childish nature. The childishness of the poem illustrates, how just as a small child thinks that they can do anything in the world without any sense of limitations, man thinks he can advance himself endlessly and act without thinking of the limitations and consequences.

The Auk is like a flying version of a penguin, and by forgetting how to fly it becomes a symbol for the kind of people who fall behind and become obsolete. Many people think that the only way to live is through advancement, that the only risk is in falling behind the times. The symbol of man learning how to fly before he “thinked” is a metaphor for man’s quest to constantly further themselves intellectually and technologically without being able to fully comprehend the ideas first. When I read this I think of the example of the invention of the car. When cars were invented, people grabbed ahold of this new, fast technology, and since they did not have the full knowledge about car safety and the consequences, millions of people died in car crashes. To me, this is an example of something that man’s “learning how to fly” symbolizes, and I think that this poem is trying to say that man will keep repeating these kinds of mistakes until we are extinct.