Analysis Of Death Swallowed Up In Victory

Death Swallowed Up In Victory Everyone is familiar with the theme of death. “According to experience, death is the stopping of a behavior, the stopping of expressive movements and of physiological movements and processes…It is a departure, a decease, a negativity to the unknown…a departure without a return”(Levinas). Regardless of belief, death is the one equalizer common to man. There are countless stories attempting to illustrate or explain both the feeling and the nature of death given many various outcomes, fortunate or unfortunate. One point remains consistent through all of them: death is inevitable and no one can avoid it. Despite the fact that no man has ever evaded death, several people throughout the ages have unsuccessfully …show more content…
This story starts with a merchant’s servant buying goods in a marketplace in Baghdad. He is jostled by someone in the crowd and recognizing the person to be death. Riding home in a panic, he asks his master if he can flee to a location called Samarra. The master then goes back to the market place and sees death. When the merchant questions Death about his servant she replies “I was startled. I had an appointment with him in Samarra and did not expect to see him here.” The story ends there, and it is implied that the servant ran to his fate and died in the process of trying to escape his …show more content…
No matter what you do, it remains inevitable. In appointment in Samarra, the servant eludes death and in doing so, he hurries directly to it. Likewise, the presumptuous Physician strives to avoid death by supposing that his “relative,” Godfather will not execute him and that Death has the power to light a second candle, giving him a second chance at life, but the results are false and the Physician ends up dead. At the end of the stories, the Physician and the servant were dead, implying that life after death is hopeless or nonexistent. There was no way to redemption or ability for them to control the situation. When thinking from an atheistic perspective, this is true, but is that actually the case? Why is there no mention of eternity? If there was, perhaps there could have been a better ending; one filled with hope and redemption as opposed to a dismal conclusion. In Godfather Death, it is implied that the candles length preordains the end of the person’s life. While death controls the life of the Physician when he drops the Physician’s candle, it appears that he does not control the lives of the other candles due to the fact that the story states that the candles were constantly flickering into existence and flickering out, symbolizing the constant birth and death of humans all over the world. If Death does not control the candles,