The Man Who Was Afraid Of Nothing Analysis

Escape. Delay. Reverse. Control. All things that, at some point in our lives, we wished we enact upon death. Yet, it’s not possible, and within the bounds of reason, it never will be. Death is inescapable, as shown in these two trickster myths, The Man Who Was Afraid of Nothing and The Land of the Dead. In these myths, by using both personification and metaphorical representations of death, the way of thinking narrative of the finality of death is shown as those interacting with it attempt to control it.
In the myth, The Man Who Was Afraid of Nothing, we see a physical interaction with death contrasted with a metaphorical one. In this man’s fight with death, death is initially defined as something that is conquerable. You see a strong man …show more content…
Initially, we see death as a negative as the wife’s body is quite literally consumed by it: “They put her body on it and burned it, and by the time her husband returned that night the body was all consumed.”. Death envelops her, and later consumes her husband as he follows her to the land of the dead. As the wife leads the man to the land of the dead we see another sign of the value of death in that, not all can receive it: “If they have lived bad lives, the rock falls on them and crushes them.”. One could quite literally be crushed by the weight of their sins, proving that death was seen as a possibility, not a guarantee or something to take for granted. At the end of the myth, the most interesting interaction with death occurs as the man awakens alone, as the woman has left him. Similar to the previous myth, the man and woman attempted to control death. He stayed with his wife, hunted with the dead, and hoped to be with her though they lived in different realms of reality. Yet, in the end, death decides. The woman decided to leave him as it would be too long before they could be together. This also suggests a way of thinking narrative that, not only do the living have to let go of the dead, but the dead must let go of the living. In the story we see a woman pull a man into a place where he doesn’t belong and everything pushes them apart, everything makes it …show more content…
Though there have been countless attempts in history to control it, to delay it, death will always come to you in the end. These trickster myths allowed the reader to temporarily live in a reality where death could be controlled. In one myth you could defeat the skeletons, in another, you could bring your husband with you as you passed to the land of the dead. Yet, in the end, the trickster myths always brought the reader back to reality. The man was met with the metaphorical representation of death, the woman was left with a man she could not be with. These myths showed a way of thinking that death is inescapable, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Death will come, and when it does you must accept that it