Guest Blogger - Eura C.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Today was the date of the weekly allusions quiz and as always, I put off studying for it until the lunch period before AP Lit. Usually this means that I cram in various names, symbols, and places of origin while trying to finish eating. However, this means that I often do not have the time to sit down and think about how prevalent each and every allusion is in today’s society, even though all of them were told or written down centuries of years ago. As I sat here trying to decide whether or not I should write another reflection on the Inferno, or something about AP test essay grading (which is what we’ve been doing in class lately), my mind wandered back to one particular allusion that had struck me earlier as interesting: the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The more I pondered, the more I realized that today’s society greatly parallel’s John’s prophecy.
Although this forecast found in the book of Revelations may seem overly dire, a breakdown of the allusion proves that we may seem to be in a sort of apocalypse of our own at the moment. One of the horsemen, War, can be applied to today very easily especially with the war in Iraq and horrendous hate crimes occurring in Africa. The political climate is growing tenser and countries are feeling the pressure to create dangerous nuclear weapons to defend themselves. Unfortunately, it isn’t too farfetched to assume that the arms race will result in nuclear war and eventually, destruction of the planet.
The next horseman is that of famine. Although the United States is considered a rich country, there are still many families suffering from starvation. Third world countries in South America and Africa are especially hit hard by droughts and poverty. In Zimbabwe nearly 6 million of the population will be needing food aid (Fleshman 1). Millions more in various parts of Africa are dealing with severe food shortages. This conflict may seem far off on another planet and unimportant to our daily lives but we must think of our fellow brothers and sisters for we are all the same race.
Plague is the following horseman. I could go the easy way and simply mention H1N1, but there are other diseases out there that could threaten humanity. Since 1981, 25 million people have died from AIDS with 2.7 million more being affected in 2007 alone (http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm). The scary thing? The numbers are only increasing every year. The common flu itself is also a major threat; 1 billion new cases are reported annually and 300,000-500,000 deaths occur every year (http://www.flufacts.com/impact/statistics.aspx).
The horseman of death sort of sums up all the other horsemen. He represents the strongest force against mankind. All the horsemen together are symbolic of destruction and the end of the world. Well take a look at what we are doing to our Earth, and the idea of an Armageddon brought on by war, famine, disease, and death does not seem too far off.