I keep a daily journal of my life as a funeral director. It also keeps my writing skills intact from my days as a news reporter.
When carbon ends its ¡°lifetime¡± in the biosphere, it doesn¡¯t stop being carbon. It merely passes into a deeper zone. One is reminded here of ancient myths that feature souls, victims, or heroes descending into the underworld, as a dramatic moment in the story. Like those mythic souls presumed to continue to live but in a new form, so carbon transported downward and outside the vibrant biosphere, after ¡°burial,¡± continues to be carbon but somewhere deep and dark, and often hot.
Carbon is buried as detritus from dead marine plankton when it fluxes out of the dynamic surface system in the form of tiny calcium carbonate shells. The coal we mine to burn for electricity is the dead and highly compressed remains of giant ferns and mosses from dinosaur-era swamps. Our precious, diminishing reserves of oil were long, long ago the sediments underneath some of the world¡¯s most productive marine areas ever. Verdant patches of algae grew, then fell into the sediments at such rapid rates of death that even the voracious bacteria alive there could not keep up with the rain from what was their heaven. The sites and rates of death that led to the fossil fuels upon which modern civilization came to depend were historically unique burial traps.
More commonly, carbon that was buried from organic tissue in the form of the bodies of plankton was finely dispersed. Today we see it as the black tincture in rocks such as shale, in contrast with the pervasive white of limestone rock that entombs once-living carbon in a paler shade.
All these buried forms of carbon can eventually spring back up, like the ancient Greek myth of Persephone emerging from the underworld to bestow life to the surface. She was said to rise up annually, as a rite of spring. But carbon¡¯s stay below is typically millions to hundreds of millions of years. Its ports of reentry are the volcanoes and surfaces of rocks that dissolve when exposed to soil, rain, and weather, thereby returning carbon to the surface circulation of active cycles.
How dependent is life in the sunny biosphere upon this resurrected carbon? In the long run, very dependent. Without the reemergence¡ªa kind of biogeochemical reincarnation, if you like¡ªall carbon would slowly and surely exit from the interconnected surface system of life, air, soil, and water. Emergence would be limited to only truly primordial carbon that comes up as a portion of volcanic activity.
- posted on 12/18/2009
I live in harmony with nature. I know the cycles of the year and the cycles
of life. The dead feeds my soul. I work toward a better life and I know
that I am not alone. The Divine is within me. I am a part of the life force
in every living thing, that which has come before and those yet to come.
At this time of year there is so much death around me. The spirits of
relatives and friends seem so near, or perhaps the memories and tears
return more easily. There are the emotions of loss - anger, confusion,
sadness, and even joy for those no longer suffering. It is a comfort to
know that life never ends and that I am a part of the circle.
In another reality this is could be the past, say 1988, I live in the city,
and I've checked my supplies of frozen fish sticks and microwave popcorn.
I do not have to worry about physical exercise until the spring. I have time to sit
and think about this past cycle and the year to come.
I started to write this before the sudden death of a friend. Now as I
finish it,his death is very near and very real. in my grief, I faced my
adversaries - my fears about death, my need to be in control, my anger that
some things make no sense, my attachments in life and my fear of changing
the status quo.
Most deaths make no sense to us. Unless someone dies in old age. we ask "Why did this have to happen?" I know a women who for fifteen years believed God had taken her daughter from her because she hadn't been a "good" mother. Death as God's punishment for our faults? Being kinder or more considerate will not delay anyone's death. it makes no more sense to believe someone died when he did because he was happy, but in our grief we need for things to make sense. We need a rational explanation, to feel we have everything under control. We never will.
Most of us believe we'll live fairly long lives and do most of the things we want to do before it's over. Our egos take a real blow when we realize we have very little control over the most important "decision" about our lives-its length and its ending. I'm not afraid of death itself. There are too many unknowns. What I really fear is that death may come before I'm ready.
I looked at the man in the coffin and I remembered him talking two days before his death about the book he thought he had 30 years left to write. Tears came easily, not just for his book and dreams, but for my own.
I'd rather not think life will end too soon. if I had only six months more to live, what would I do differently to make each day more rewarding, more fulfilling? Some of us would make temporary changes, then quickly fall back into old safe patterns. With sadness we wonder what it would take for us to really want to change.
The irony of living to a ripe old age is having to lose the ones we've loved along the way - not just by death but sometimes by choice. Frequently
we outgrow the people or things we've become attached to. But letting go is
hard. We tend to stick with the known even when we know it isn't the
greatest. Anything seems better than nothing. What if our friends do
reinforce our negativity? If our job leaves no room for growth? If our love
needs something we can no longer give?
In his interviews with journalist Bill Moyers, mythologist Joseph
Campbell repeatedly talked of man's need to find his "bliss", to create
a personal heaven here in this life. The ideal heaven of eternal pleasure after
death cannot be counted on. Infinity is a concept of time and space on the
material, physical plane, Since matter is energy (Einstein) and matter
cannot be destroyed, only transformed, physical death reduces us to
pure basic energy forms. Our energy may live eternally, infinitely, but
after death our ability to feel time and space will end. We'll never know
we're in Heaven. Even if we believe in reincarnation, that our energy form
will come back into another physical life, we have no guarantee that life
will be better, only different. our only guarantee of heaven is to havethe
courage to change our present lives, find our bliss now, here on earth
and help and allow those we love to find theirs by letting go.
I create change, and change is loss. As a magician, l am learning not only
to change my reality at will but to also change the way I perceive my
reality, it is easy to see that one man's beach weather is another man's
drought, it is much harder to watch the beauty in the flames burning down
your house and look forward to the new and different home you will create.
It is hardest yet to willingly put a torch to life as you now know it, to
your very being, your personality, your perceptions of self and the fears
you hold on to that keep you from changing. Once I expressed to a dear
friend my frustration with his seeming unwillingness to change certain
patterns of behavior. He replied that he was forty-two years old and this
was the way he probably always would be. He seemed comfortable and secure
with his definition of self. He had a comfortable, if not blissful, daily
routine, a sense of security in the known, and he saw no reason to change
much of anything. But within a year, the lives of loved ones around him had
changed so drastically that his own sense of self was shattered, out of
control. To quote Helen Keller,"Security is mostly a superstition ... It
does not exist in nature, nor do the children of human beings as a whole
experience it ... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than
outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
Traditionally, the approach of winter, the autumn of life, has been the time of year to face our physical fears. We put on the costumes of death, ghosts and goblins, the skeletons of hunger and the creations of our worst nightmares, and say "You don't scare me!" We also expose a part of ourselves we are normally too afraid to show the public. or even admit to
ourselves we want to feel. We shift our shapes and extend the boundaries of who we are.
So after agonizing for six weeks about what to wear to the costume party,
some of us remove our izod sweaters and put on something really tacky with
fringe, or we cross-dress. We paint our faces as clowns, and maybe it actually feels good to be brazen and to make others laugh. Maybe we become a little less afraid of being thought a clown, of not being what we think others expect us to be. To shape shift, to put on the costumes and act out of character (yet act out a part of ourselves we wish we could be) allows us to push past the limits we set for ourselves. A shy person who dresses
as Groucho Marx, who talks to everyone, who makes wisecracks all night and
gets laughs, can never fully go back into her shell once the make-up is off.
The transformation has started.
When I was a teenager, I wore red a lot. People said it was my favorite
color. Yet now I tell myself I can't wear red. When did this happen? And
why? I know when I started believing I couldn't sing. I'd warble away and
my mother would say, "Surely you can't feel that bad!" But a part
of the adult me wanted to believe I could sing. knew I could sing. So the
shaman in me faced my fear and decided to lead a three-day chanting
workshop. True, I may never be Pavarotti, but no one ran screaming
from the room, and by the third day, I was singing a cappella with a voice
from deep within me I never knew I had. Once I've worn red, and like the
way I feel in red, I will have pushed my limits one step further out, and I
will have come one step closer to removing the words "I can't do that" from
my vocabulary, I can cross the boundaries of reality. I can become my
spirit animal. I can fly, or become one with a rock. I can love and be
lovable. I can pursue any career. The old me will no longer exist. The
dance will have begun.
Number XIII in most tarot decks is the Death or
Transformation card. This rarely signifies physical death, but usually
total change (voluntary or involuntary) and the sometimes sudden and
unexpected, yet logical conclusion of existing conditions. Transformation
is the end of a cycle, a releasing, letting go, a surrender to rebirth and
new beginnings. In the Crowley deck. Death is dancing joyfully, his scythe
releasing bubbles of new life. At the bottom of the card is the scorpion,
who when trapped, stings itself and dies. This lowest level is the person
who can't deal with major change and just wants to curl up and die, or
becomes passive and waits for someone else to come along and make things
better. At the top is the soaring eagle, the person with the courage to
free himself, willing to consciously surrender to the unknown of death and
transformation to change and to grow.
Early in my training, I looked forward to the Death card appearing
in a spread. Now I know how hard it is to surrender to and truly accept the
loss of anything and everything I may hold dear-not just my life, but my
job, independence, friends, family, lover. looks and/or my sanity. Hardest
of all is to lose one's faith at the same time. No one else can go through
this with you. You alone must feel out of control, in pain and
confusion, and fearful of the black hole that exists before rebirth.
To step into this void knowingly, willingly - to change careers, or to leave
a long marriage of convenience which has been killing your soul. and to do
this with no back-up plans - is to accept that within you is a part of the
life force of the universe that will see you through. You surrender your
judgments and preconceived notions of what is best. good or bad, and open
yourself to all possibilities. Your new life has no limits or boundaries.
You are totally free to find your bliss.
The dance of death is the realization that you will survive the loss of who
you thought you were, who and what you thought you needed, what you thought
you could control. You smile with the sad excitement and anticipation of
who or what you will become.
Just as the world around me changes with the cycles of the
day, the season, the years, I too am flowing, ever changing. I have my
times of growth, my times of dormancy and rest. I weather all storms
because I allow myself to bend The winter approaching may be harsh and
seemingly unending, but within me and within the Earth I have planted the seeds of change that will blossom as new life in the Spring.
- Re: Journal of Deathposted on 12/18/2009
Narda, thanks for posting this. you said" What I really fear is that death may come before I'm ready." I feel this way on a daily basis lately. I have no time to wait and waste any more. - posted on 12/19/2009
Reflections on Death
At the beginning of Mozart's Requiem the Pittsburgh Symphony in a recent concert I attended put a commentary in the program noting that while Death was no stranger to Mozart's life, in modern U.S. society we have tried our hardest to make it a stranger to ours. Until recently, when I became a funeral director, I was not an exception to this concept. While I have regularly responded to death from accidents, fires and other disasters, I take part in activities that entail some degree of risk, like the veteran cop who has never fired his service weapon in anger, I have witnessed death more times than most will experience in their lifetime. In my professional life, I regularly am faced with the fact that while society may cry out that it values life above all else, and that it refuses to put a price or limit on how much it would pay to keep life, that society indeed does put a price on life, and reacts badly when this is pointed out....hypocracy at its finest.
There is a community that does face its own mortality. And is willing to write about it. I follow the writing of blogs of soldiers and others involved in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also on The Sandbox, a project of Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury). Along with commentary about the absurd in daily life that is common to every first person account of war there are essays on fears, humor, relief, anguish, and sometimes the understanding that this is a serious business that can result in death.
And occasionally there is an essay by someone who has, like Mozart, prepared for his own mortality. The willingness to acknowledge who you were. Realizing that you had long passed the point where dreams were there for you to reach, but that you have accomplished something in life, and it was worthy of having lived (for most of these writers). A thankfulness for those who you were privileged to live your life alongside. And a recognition that you probably did not deserve to have it so good.
I long since have recognized that some of the things I do are risky. But it has been a choice that is a part of a rich life, full of joy, laughter, truth, and companionship that I would not trade for the safety and comfort of a life spent in fear and worry. Already, I have had opportunity to pass on lessons to others who do the same. And while there are no guarantees in this sort of thing, we treasure the memories and stories that we have been able to add to our families histories.
- posted on 12/21/2009
Death takes no holidays. We all know this but it would be too
painful to acknowledge it during this season of supposed joy. Sometimes
we are reminded of this undeniable truth on a grand scope, as happened
during the Asian tsunami of 2004, which claimed an estimated 230,000 lives, and displaced millions. Its 4th anniversary last year was remembered on December 26 in homes and beaches from Indonesia to India. It is believed to be the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.
More often death arrives on a more modest scale, although the
tragedy is not in any way diminished by the numbers involved. Whether
it be 1 or 100,000, the pain and anguish can be overwhelming for those
forced to confront it. This is even more heart-rending in the case of
children dying.
A recent columnist in the local newspaper wrote in his weekly screed about the death of a little boy in the Philippines from a cause which could have been prevented, if only circumstances, or the fates, or God, had been kinder:
While the rest of the world marked the joyous day of the
Nativity in homes filled with the laughter of children, they passed the
day at the dimly-lit mortuary in the town, quietly keeping vigil over the lifeless body of their youngest child, Gian Carlo, who died from the rabies virus on the
night of Dec. 23. He was five years old.
This is not where children are supposed to be on Christmas Day. At
age five, having weathered the usual illnesses of infancy, little boys
are supposed to be indestructible. A child lying inside a coffin is an
incongruous image for Christmas. The child¡¯s father, Rex, could hardly
contain the enormity of his pain. ¡°Gian Carlo was my tail,¡± he said. ¡°I
walked him to kindergarten school every morning and waited for him
after school. He would then accompany me to work. He made each day
complete.¡±
Sometime in mid-December, mother and child were in a shopping mall
looking for gifts. The little boy complained of having a headache. They
went home, suspecting nothing worse than the onset of a mild flu. Then
the intense itchiness came, radiating from the superficial dog scratch
on Gian Carlo¡¯s back, which had long healed, to his nape and head. The
boy¡¯s head began to swirl and throb as large beads of sweat formed on
his handsome face.
They rushed him to the nearest hospital, but the doctors could not
recognize the early symptoms of rabies infection. The scratch from the
neighbor¡¯s rabid pet occurred in early October. The dog mysteriously
vanished soon later. The wound quickly healed after a few days. Assured
that it was not a bite but just a scratch, the boy¡¯s parents did not
immediately make the connection. Most Filipinos would not have
suspected any link precisely because of inadequate public knowledge of
the sources, symptoms and incidence of rabies in the country. People
continue to die from rabies because it is easy to confuse its early
flu-like symptoms with ordinary ailments. The subsequent appearance of
its distinct symptoms¡ªdelirium, hyperactivity, furious agitation,
hydrophobia, foaming around the mouth, and gradual paralysis¡ªalways
signals the advanced stage of the infection.
Nothing is more unimaginable as suffering, than for a parent to watch a child slowly succumb to death from rabies. The victim struggles against the onset of respiratory arrest. Panic shows in his eyes. And you can do nothing. I believe him. Each time I watch my 8-year-old granddaughter Julia gasp for a little air
when she¡¯s having a simple asthmatic attack, I suspend my own
breathing. Little children are not supposed to die.
But children do die, at Christmas and other times. In a recent memorial
service I organized for bereaved parents, whose children passed away at
various ages and from many different causes, someone pointed out that
even the first Christmas was attended by many such tragic deaths.
Herod ¡°the Great¡± was the ruler in Judea at the time of Christ¡¯s
birth. He was an unpopular king, being a Roman lackey, and he feared
any threat to his power. He killed his wife, his brother and his
sister¡¯s two husbands, to name only a few who he perceived as plotting
against him. And he took the news of a newborn king literally. When
the wise men from the east, whom he had asked to report the whereabouts
of the Christ Child, did not report back to Herod as they were warned
by an angel to take another route, the murderous king decided to take
drastic measures .
¡°Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men,
was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in
Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under,
according to the time of which he had ascertained from the wise men¡± (Matthew 2:16). Little did Herod know that the new king and his parents had already escaped.
Thus, the fulfillment of Jeremiah¡¯s prophecy of the Old Testament in the New Testament: ¡°A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more¡± (Jeremiah 31:15).
Which is why the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
Thus, it has always been. Even as Christians celebrate the birth of Christ
we mourn the loss of those who were called home before their
time.
- posted on 12/21/2009
thanks again, nardo, wonderful writng, keep on the good work.
Death
by emily Dickenson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
- posted on 12/28/2009
This scribble is more cut and dry, but a few years ago, I was fascinated with why death was such a central theme in literature. So off I went to do some research, and this is the result of my labors...
Death and Literature
As scholars often note, human beings can never accurately report on the experience of death, they can only imagine it. Thus it should come as no surprise that death has played such a significant role in literature, where humans use the imagination to reflect, shape, and understand their world. The scholars Elizabeth Bronfen and Sarah Webster Goodwin explain that "much of what we call culture comes together around the collective response to death" (Bronfen and Goodwin 1993, p. 3), and Garret Stewart insists that "death marks the impossible limit of representation, while at the same time, death is an inevitability of representation" (p. 51). In literature, then, death functions as an inevitable cultural exploration of what it means to be mortal. While some scholars and philosophers would insist that humans strive to deny death, especially in the twentieth century, literature reflects a constant process of trying to understand death and all its implications.
Western literature incorporates a number of conceits that are specifically associated with death. These include conceptions of the afterlife, representations of love and death, death-specific literary forms like the elegy, and staple narrative images like the deathbed scene. But in order to appreciate such conceits, one first needs to understand the way literature has reflected changing cultural responses to death and dying.
"Death in Literature" As Cultural History
Most scholars agree that in classical literature and until the Middle Ages death was represented as a natural and expected part of life. The Greeks tended to avoid details about death in their literature, in part because they simply accepted death as part of the human experience, and in part because they wanted to emphasize life. The Greeks did, however, depict death in war, demonstrating their belief in heroic, noble death, and they did emphasize the delights of the next world, and thus the afterlife became more of a focus in their literature than death itself. The sociologist Philippe Ari¨¨s has termed this era's dominant philosophy about death the "Tamed Death," a death that, as in Le Chanson de Roland, (twelfth century) was usually forewarned and generally accepted. Closer to the Middle Ages death portrayals increasingly took place in bed and with family and friends nearby¡ªa set of rituals that has remained quite enduring.
The literature of the Middle Ages also began to reflect a profound shift in attitudes and beliefs about death, primarily by associating judgment with death. Christianity's influence on literature resulted in works showing death as a punishment for one's sins, and thus one's death became the crucial event in human experience. Works like The Pricke of Conscience (fourteenth century) described the importance and the horrors of death. The literature of this period also focused on the significance of Christ's death and his wounds, depicted the Danse Macabre, or dance of death, and emphasized bodily decay and images of the skeleton.
This focus on the body carried into the Renaissance where the performance of death, especially on stage, was tremendously emotional. Death was often conceived as it affected the body, and represented in a histrionic fashion, foregrounding time as a natural enemy. Love and death became opposing forces: love the motivation for working against time, and death the inevitable result of time's progress. Suicide became an ironic affirmation of love and of values that could transcend death. William Shakespeare's tragedies exemplify these ideas about death, as do carpe diem poems like "The Flea" (1633) and "The Sun Rising" (1633) by John Donne and "To His Coy Mistress" (1681) by Andrew Marvell.
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw major shifts in representations of death, due in part to the growing conflict between religion and science. Ari¨¨s asserts that the late eighteenth century offered more visions of both beautiful death and eroticized death. On the one hand, popular novels like Hannah Foster's The Coquette (1797) depict the unwed heroine's death in childbirth as a didactic message extolling the evils of untamed sexuality. On the other hand, literature indulged in an erotics of dying¡ªespecially by incorporating emotional deathbed scenes, Little Eva's from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, (1852) being perhaps the most famous. The scholar Michael Wheeler, however, notes that while such scenes might have been erotically charged, they also represented a space of comfort and of quite literal rest, transformed into eternal rest. The late nineteenth century developed the Victorian Cult of Death, a term used to signify the period's almost obsessive fascination with the subject.
Ironically, most scholars argue that the twentieth century ushered in a culture that strove to distance and to deny death. The literature both does and does not bear this out. Given that the century was filled with war, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and acts of genocide, the literature often reflects a preoccupation with death. At the same time, the literature reveals a developing lack of faith in religion, in science, and in institutions, all things that have helped people understand death. Wallace Stevens's famous conceit "death is the mother of beauty" from the poem "Sunday Morning," (1915) suggests that death may lead humans to create art and life; but such a notion eventually confronted a world where nuclear war threatened not merely the individual or collective life but all that humanity might create. The scholar Lawrence Langer characterizes death in modern literature as inappropriate, absurd, random, unnecessary¡ªyet very much present. The question became, How does one negotiate a world and culture in which such death exists? Many twentieth-century texts attempted to answer that question, and the efforts continue in the present.
The history of death in literature reveals a culture that has evolved from one that accepted death as a natural part of life, to one that invested it with primary religious significance, to one that almost fetishized death, to one that tried to deny it for its now apparent irrationality. Literature suggests that as death has become increasingly less "natural" and concomitantly less meaningful, people have had to find new ways to negotiate it.
Major Literary Conceits
There are a number of standard conceits that one can identify in literature dealing with death, and not surprisingly many of these reflect the time and values in which the literature was produced. Thus, in a time when Western culture saw death as a punishment for earthly sin, the literature often focused on the body and its decomposition, and the image of the skeleton became prominent. And when Western culture was in the midst of the Victorian Cult of the Dead, its fascination with death elevated to an almost erotic level, the literature indulged in elaborate deathbed scenes, foregrounding the emotional impact of death for those surrounding the dying individual, at times emphasizing the relation between carnality and death, but also using the bed as a symbol of both beginning and ending¡ªa place of birth and of one's final earthly rest. However, there are a number of other significant conceits.
The afterlife. In literature, the depiction of the afterlife foregrounds death's role and its significance for the individual and the culture. The most common depictions of the afterlife are versions of heaven and hell. Trips to and from the underworld abound, as the classical conception of Hades directly or indirectly recurs in much later works. It is notable, for example, that in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) the "Hades" chapter centers on a funeral, or that in Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California" (1956) the persona depicts Walt Whitman crossing over into Hades, a presumably better ending than what Whitman would find if he lived in contemporary society. Images of heaven range from a place of peace and glory for figures like John Bunyan's Christian in Pilgrim's Progress (1678) to a sedentary and static space in which angels desperately await the return of a departed God in Tony Kushner's Angels in America (1992). At the same time, since the nineteenth century literature has often questioned the viability of an afterlife, implying that the natural processes of death and decay may be all that occur. Or, as in some Emily Dickinson poems, the afterlife may mean little more than remaining buried in a tomb, contemplating the life one has just passed, a sensibility that anticipated the later existentialist vision of the afterlife in works like Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit (1944).
Antidotes to death¡ªlove, beauty, the imagination. Given the inevitability of human mortality, literature often depicts the effort to challenge death and its apparent omnipotence. Literature has long represented love as a challenge to death, whether in the carpe diem poems and romances of the Renaissance, in the Gothic romances of the nineteenth century (where love faced a constant battle with death), or even in the late nineteenth century where, as the scholar Rudolph Binion notes, the idea that spiritual love remained after death reappeared in literature and culture.
At the same time, artists have depicted the imagination and the creation of beauty as a stay against death and the ravages of time. John Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," (1819) for example, symbolizes art's ability to defy death. And even twentieth-century writers like Stevens, William Butler Yeats, and T. S. Eliot, who faced a world of death on a global scale, looked to the imagination, to beauty and to the literary arts, as a way to forge ahead despite a sense of impending apocalypse. Twentieth-century literature increasingly questioned whether any of these "antidotes" to death would suffice, however, especially as culture used its imagination to develop new and more global methods of creating death.
The elegy. The elegy, or song for the dead, is a longstanding poetic form used not only to honor the dead, but to explore human efforts to comprehend death. John Milton's Lycidas (1637) is an ideal example. Milton's poem mourns the death of his friend Edward King. At the same time, it explores what it suggests that death can take such a young artist. The poem reflects Milton's own anxiety about being a young poet who had taken time to learn and to experience life. The poem thus signifies Milton's fear that his time may have been wasted because he too could be cut down in his prime before he can create the art that will be his legacy. Thus, again one can see how a literary form not only depicts death or responds to it, but also explores death's significance while conveying the prevailing ideas about death for that culture¡ª in this case, that time is life's enemy.
Crisis of faith.
Beginning as early as the late eighteenth century and developing exponentially up to and throughout the twentieth century, literary representations of death began reflecting a crisis of faith, initially of faith in God or religion, but eventually of faith in science, in government, and in society at large. Again, Stevens's "Sunday Morning" serves as a useful example. While the poem asserts that death is the mother of beauty, inspiring one to create, it also suggests that the contemporary culture can only see Christ's death as human¡ªthe tomb in Palestine holds his body; there was no resurrection; and there is no paradise. Existentialism would go so far as to suggest that one's death seals off and defines the significance and meaning of one's life. At the same time, twentieth-century writers like Thomas Pynchon characterize America as a culture headed toward an entropic ending, society and culture winding down in a kind of cultural death. Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" (1959) and Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (1945) depict society's callous treatment of the living and of those who have died to protect the living. Death became especially meaningless when governments and other institutions were involved. And, of course, scientific progress more often than not led to death, whether via the automobile in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1974). In both, the development of this new technology directly or indirectly leads to the death of major characters¡ªor via the war machines and diverse weaponry depicted in numerous works of this century.
War
From classical literature to the present, war has been a staple subject. For most of literary history death in war was represented as noble and heroic. Again, however, since the mid¨Cnineteenth century, literature has seriously challenged this idea, often by depicting death in war as senseless and brutal or by suggesting that such belief is culturally necessary; that is, Western cultures can only send its young men to war if it believes that such death carries nobility. Consistently, however, representations of death in war reflect both our human ability to rise, to defend and to prevail as well as the ability to commit inhumane atrocities. Death in war literature remains one of the most compelling ways in which artists use death to speak to readers about their values.
The undead. Whether one considers the ghost of Hamlet's father returning to speak the name of his murderer in Shakespeare's play (1603), or Victor Frankenstein's creature in Mary Shelley's novel (1818), or Bram Stoker's vampire (1897), or Sethe's dead daughter returned to life in Toni Morrison's Beloved, (1987) literature reveals a fascination with the dead who have in some way returned to the living. The monstrous undead serve a crucial role in literature's engagement with death. On the one hand, these figures foreground a cultural anxiety about maintaining clear boundaries¡ªliving and dead should remain separate, and when humans cross that boundary, they produce something monstrous. But there are often deeper implications. Stoker's Dracula, for example, embodies the Victorian anxiety about the individual's underlying sexuality and desires. Dracula inverts the living: he penetrates his victims to take life rather than to create life. But he also elicits from his victims' desires that must otherwise be suppressed within Victorian culture.
Similarly, Victor Frankenstein's monstrous creature serves as a living, breathing testament to what happens if one strives to play God, and it remains an enduring symbol, reminding readers of the ethical implications resulting from unchecked scientific progress. And the ghost who returns to name its murderer or to remind others of its unfair demise foregrounds the way people are haunted by the sins of their past. In other words, the dead often remain alive in people's collective memory. Beloved, arguably the resurrected daughter who Sethe killed to keep from slavery, clearly signifies the way the history of slavery, and its creation of a life worse than death, both must, and cannot help but, be remembered.
Death is everywhere in literature, in large part because it is a force that individually and collectively people must negotiate. In fact, it is so pervasive in literature that any attempt to provide an overview is inevitably incomplete. However, literature clearly reflects humanity's struggle to understand death, to explore the implications of death for the living, and to use death as a way of questioning the value of life, society, and art.
- posted on 12/28/2009
Hey Nardo, according to the florida department of corrections, more than one hundred people have registered on a waiting list to see an execution.
Have you prepared any of those death-row corpses? Describe your experience.
Found a book on my book-shelve, it is called "The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch". Terribly dry/boring and poorly written. I am very sure that you can write a much better book. I found another one on Amazon, the title seems to be much more enticing and genuine.
Mortician Diaries: The Dead-Honest Truth from a Life Spent with Death - posted on 12/29/2009
Maya, I have never prepared anyone who was executed. There was a section in my embalming textbook about how to go about embalming executed bodies that were electrocuted, hanged, gassed or by lethal injection. Most times, the bodies are donated to medical schools, or just cremated because the family of the condemned does want it, or can't afford to bury. In Louisiana, all the bodies automatically go to the prison cemetery, where the graves are dug by the inmates, who also serve as pall bearers.
Most of the books about funeral service and embalming are not very good, they are boring, dry and not very realistic. PBS a few years ago had a very good documentary on the life of a small town funeral director. It's available on Youtube, along with a whole bunch of other funeral related stuff. I suggest that you check it out.
With monitoring electronics and technology today, coming back from the dead just doesnt happen. Another fantasy generated by horror movies.
During the Dr. Kevorkian hysteria and before Oregon passed the right to die laws, It was argued that since doctors refused to participate in assisted suicides, that morticians be allowed to 'do the honors' To date, nothing has become of it. The funeral industry was against it, because of liability and accountability reasons..
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