Without You: A Memoir Of Love, Loss And The Musical Rent

“Life changes fast, life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” This is the first few lines of Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking, a poem she refers back to on many occasions to emphasize the humanity of death. “It was far, far too pale, and still, and, well, dead, yes dead. She was dead, dead, dead, dead…” This is a quote taken from Anthony Rapp’s autobiography, Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent, which also shows an example of the humanity of death. Although they bear the same topic of death, the differences between the way Joan Didion and Anthony Rapp reacted to the deaths of their loved one is clear. These differences can be seen through each author's reactions, observations, and commentary throughout their works. While reading through either of the works, a reader might come to notice that a …show more content…
An example of Didion's use of observation can be seen from the quote, “People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness.” This quote is relevant because of how it embodies the humanity of death and how Didion felt about it. On the other hand an example of Anthony’s observations are surprisingly similar and can be seen from this quote, “I looked in the mirror again and saw an insane person staring back at me - a wild-eyed, red-faced, insane person.” This is similar to Didion's observations on how people look after experiencing a death of a loved one. This is an important comparison because it shows how even though people experience the death of a loved one in different ways the symptoms of grief are still the