Afterlife

Many books focus on the living and how their lives impacted a certain event or country. Katherine Verdery, an American anthropologist shares her interest with the “lives” of dead bodies. She focuses on how their deaths, their burials and commemoration of their lives itself is a political act. It is a question of sovereignty and national identity of countries when they decided where to bury the corpse, or where they erect statues in remembrance of the person. The book sets out to bring…

Emily Dickinson is one of the most famous poets of early America. She wrote many poems during the Civil War and the period where many people were heading to the West. Death was prominent in society and much of her writing is about death. Her writing about death is different from that of authors because she writes casually about her own death as she would any other event in her life. She is not writing about her physical death, but rather a lack of life. Dickinson’s “It was not Death, for I stood…

Amidst the diverse experiences of humanity, the uncertainty of death is a universal truth. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, courage, fear, and shame play a pivotal role in how humans react to death. The soldiers in the novel struggle with having the courage to confront their innate fear of death. Failing to overcome this fear causes the soldiers to feel shame as a result of the underlying guilt from realizing their cowardice. However, in order for them to be truly courageous, it is…

“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…

A rebel, pioneer, recluse, and one of the founders of an idea that would sweep the world. No, it is not Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson is one of the most influential writers of the industrial era, as she was one of the first writers to use the concept of transcendentalism in her works. This means writing about all aspects of life, even the mundane, the vulgar, and the ugly as she realized that this style of writing more closely resembles life than the classic, formal style…

Does Death Induce Equality? According to English poet, Phillip James Bailey, "the sole equality on earth is death". Bailey's criticism on the extent of equality parallels Patrick Suskind's compelling commentary on equality in his novel Perfume. Suskind furthers the notion that death induces equality, through the manipulation of two techniques: total disregard for human life and the insignificance of the manner in which death occurs. Suskind establishes a connection between Grenouille, the…

I like this poem because of the existential themes that Edward Hirsch tackles, such as: mortality, divinity, temporality, and individuality. I can see all the images that the author describes, and feel that I am a part of the poem, too. Even though it is a short poem, it can transmit so many emotions. I think that this poem is about an old man in a wheelchair (“Wheel me down to the shore”), who feels that he is about to die. Dying is humanly, it is the normal cycle of life; therefore you can…

The poem “Upon a Fit of Sickness” interprets a strong message that every human being should realize. As anyone could know, a poem can have many symbols and creativity to relate to the main theme that hits the most. This poem, in particular, can illuminate idea dealing with death. Anna Bradstreet writes the poem to show that she finally understands of her timing for death due to a sickness. She now knows that nothing can change the fact that all humans will die, even her. She uses biblical…

An Explication of “Death” by Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson’s poem “Death” is structured in quatrains, four line stanzas. It is in Iambic meter, so each foot has one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The first and third lines of each quatrain have eight syllables, and the second and fourth have six. This means the first and third lines of each stanza consist of four feet, so those lines are in Iambic tetrameter. The second and fourth lines have three feet each, making them…

To An Athlete Dying Young Just as the title sounds this poem is about an athlete who dies young. But throughout the poem A.E houseman looks at the brighter side of dying young because of how he will be remembered. As I grow older and more mature I examine how important fame has become to my generation. Everyday People do things in regards of that it will catch them a lot of attention and that possibility of fame where people envy them and want to be just like them. Now death on the other hand is…