Death In Modern Day Literature Essay

Death is never something easy to talk about or even understand as adults, much less as a child. As adults children feel the loss of a loved one, or the emotions of a divorce, but may not know how to understand, accept and deal with these types of situations. Death is the one thing in life that is a sure thing, it is inevitable and a natural part of the human life cycle. Having a better understanding of death will help prepare persons whether child or adult to cope better and the only way for this to happen is to have the knowledge of these issues. According to Moss, (1972), “Dying has replaced reproduction as the hush-hush topic between parents and children, and to a large extent in the modern literature for children.” Long ago, children were not shielded from death as children are currently. Children were intimately involved in activities and emotions that accompanied death and from this, were able to understand and be able to deal with it. Over the years,
“As infant mortality rates decreased and other social and religious …show more content…
Knowledge is not something we should run from by rather embrace. However, because of this same fears, misconception and denial of parent’s, modern day literature authors, “works reveals an unwillingness to accept what has happened within the text. Death becomes both taboo and foreign for most modern children and authors illustrate this concept in their texts by their characters struggling to accept death.” As explained by (Sasser, 2008). Children need to be taught that every living thing must die eventually. They need to be aware of this to avoid having to draw their own conclusions and misconceptions about death and therefore, would avoid damage to the child’s emotional and intellectual development. Literature can aid in this awareness