Mourning

answer to these questions, however, remains inexplicable. In Mourning Becomes the Law, Rose denounces the duality of oppositions in political thought, and argues this detracts from the difficult work of what she calls ‘the broken middle’. Mending the broken middle for Rose requires deeply personal reflection on the atrocities of War. Rose celebrates Holocaust literature which does not distinguish between victim and perpetrator, for it reminds the reader of both their incrimination and responsibility for the atrocities of War (). Rather, she encourages acknowledging that living in the world constantly involves being implicated in power and violence. Thus, she offers the collective work of mourning (exemplified by the ANZAC Day commemorations) as abberated mourning. it is ‘no work, no exploring of the legacy of ambivalence, [nor] working through the emotions aroused by bereavement’ (Rose: 1996: 70). Where Arendt emphasizes the city, Rose emphasizes the soul within the city. For Rose, the rational city of Athens as a site of mourning results in the unbounded desire for domination. While Arendt emphasizes the centrality of the polis as public space of remembrance, Rose denounces ‘Athens’ (the polis) as a city laden with power and domination. Arendt and Rose approach memory in distinctly different ways. While Arendt emphasizes deeds and actions as they are reified into memory through dialect. Whereas Rose suggests that mourning begins by destroying public spaces of remembrance as…

Those who work for the house display the family’s mourning customs in order to bring light to what they experienced. In image one, the photo pictured is of braided hair of the deceased within a necklace or a broach. This was worn during the mourning process and after the death, in order to carry a piece of the lost with them at all times. It served as a comfort, and also as a small fashion statement due to the intricate braids within the piece. The clothing styles and color choice from the…

court. The theme of “is versus seems” and the imagery of Hamlet’s black mourning clothes, portray Hamlet as an authentic and honest man. Contrary to Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, is exposed as a apathetic charlatan through her wearing the same shoes to her wedding as she wore two months earlier to her husband, King…

For starters, it is true that a black rose represents death and mourning, but to me, it is also a symbol of rebirth and rejuvenation. Half of me says that a black rose represents the end of old habits and begin new and fresh. It also sees this flower as a symbol of resistance and courage. I am courageous and can resist some negative events at certain times, but not all the time. But on the dark side of me, it sees this dark flower as a symbol of revenge and hatred. I know how it feels to be…

The process of mourning is something that is not exclusive to any time or society, but there is great variation in the actual practices that this process creates. In particular, the specific material goods utilized to create an outward show of of this process of mourning is one that not only fluctuates, but is constantly shaped by the surrounding culture. This is particularly evident when examining the system of grief within nineteenth century England. Eventually becoming a society that was…

Homosexuality and Hatred in October Mourning October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard narrates the murder of a homosexual man and the court cases that follow. In the collection of poems, Newman divides both of these events into two different parts. Both parts are narrative-driven and provide the reader with events that happen in both places—the bar and the courtroom. Newman strategically structures several of the poems in these sections to emphasize the major theme of homophobia and…

Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European cultural history also challenged the traditional thinking on the Great War as the watershed moment in the twentieth century. In his book, Winter argued that although the modern forms could help people to express anger and despair through delivering a multi-faceted sense of dislocation, paradox, and irony, they were incapable of healing people. Instead, the traditional literary forms of the Victorian and Edwardian eras…

Personal Response: I really liked reading The Mourning Hours by Paula Treick Deboard. It was really hard to stop reading. The plot took twist after twist and I could never figure out what would happen next. I like when a book is not predictable. Plot: This book was focussed on the Hammarstrom family and the disappearance of Stacy Lemke. Kirsten was nine when her brother, Johnny, and Stacy started dating. Their relationship was not all smiles and toward the end they were fighting more and…

In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Sigmund Freud suggests that when an object of love is lost, the ego recreates an image of the loved one inside the self. This image, or “shadow,” is not fully integrated into the personality, thereby enabling the ego to split off. In this “ego splitting,” a part of the ego sits in judgment on the rest of the ego, criticizing it, attacking it. Suicide is the ultimate expression of this dynamic; because one cannot kill this person, one “kills” them by destroying the…

According to Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” the path of both mourning and melancholia has a similar starting point. With the same influence of the loss of a loved one or a something representing a loved one that would replace the loss, the similarity ends and the differences begins. Most importantly, the ending of both mourning and melancholia does come to a full cycle (at lease in all cases of mourning and in most cases for melancholia) by rejoining the community. When analyzing the mental…