On Natural Death By Lewis Thomas Summary

The author of “On Natural Death” by Lewis Thomas begins his essay by being lighthearted about death and progressively gets more into depth with the aspects of death for different living things and whether or not they detect pain. This is to objectify the fact that death is destined for all living things and that it shouldn’t be planned or feared but instead, it should be accepted. The first strategy Lewis Thompson uses is denouncing books about death. Lewis emphasizes that death is becoming planned with there being “so many new books about dying” placed next to “the health diet and home repair paperbacks”. Lewis insinuates that the topic of planned death is considered ordinary to where it’s placed next to everyday topics and accepted by society who doesn’t think twice about it. He begins to criticize the idea about approaching death a certain way by …show more content…
Regardless of the dead tree, the “tree surgeons” came by and “took it down branch by branch” with “everyone singing”. This comments on the idea that not all death is considered to be tragic and morbid when there are men happily swinging axes into something dead. Lewis uses the strategy of comparison to compare the elm tree and a field mouse and wonders if his death is any “different from the passing of our elm”. He complies with the idea that “ an elm tree” lacks “pain receptors” meaning the tree has an inability to feel pain, thus having a painless death. Lewis draws back to the dead field mouse, “dangling tail-down from the teeth of a gray cat”. He appeals to the audiences desire to sympathize with the idea of a painful death by including logical scientific information about the “peptide hormones” being “released by the cells in the hypothalamus” and how “there is no pain”. Lewis soothes and entices the reader by explaining how natural response for a painless death works for a tiny, vulnerable mouse and a grand