Response to Total Eclipse

Kelsea, I am amazed at how simply you put the argument. I was confused if the author thought the eclipse to be a positive event in her life or a negative event in her life due to the fact that she described it filled with death and horror, like when she describes that "from all the hills came screams." The contrast to this is when the college student compares the ring to a "Life Saver" and she says "it was good to back among people so clever." Why would she describe something so incredible, which she wants people to appreciate as a wonder of the world, as death and doom?
I also do not understand when she says that the boy was a "walking alarm clock." She says that the only thing we teach our children is "to wake up," but she goes on to say that we become like "will-less dolphins". Clearly, she wants to communicate that people do things out of routine and do not appreciate the important things, like you mentioned Kelsea, by using the example of the cars going to work. Why then, I ask myself, is the boy the "alarm clock"? Why has the total eclipse "all wrong" when it should be the wakening moment of appreciation? Is she trying to convey the same idea as "you never know what you have until you've lost it"? Did she try to compare it to death because she felt like she could no longer appreciate what she would have if she were alive?
She declares all of the observers dead, "alone in eternity", "remember[ing] [their] living days wrong." Why, I ask again, has this shocking moment killed them instead of bringing them to life? Why, did all of them "hurr[y] away" and "never look back"? I understand that she says that people do not want to leave their comfort level, that "one turns [...] even from glory itself [... to] hurry for the latitudes of home." But why did she do it as well? Why did they not appreciate that last sliver of eclipse, which they will only have a chance to see again in 2086, if they were ever to live one hundred years...? She is so confusing in trying to transmit her emotions, but at the same time does a wonderful job at creating imagery.