Patrick DePeters

CORE Final                                                                                            December 16, 2006

Introduction:

Because death affects every living organism, many authors have tried to define just what death means and how to react to death. The books that we have studied this semester look at death from a variety of perspectives, including scientific, religious, humanitarian, socialistic, and philosophical. From these perspectives, death is argued as being essential to natural evolution, crucial to spiritual freedom, an ultimate punishment, a sorrowful ending, an inexplicable circumstance, a last resort to a painful existence, and a means to social cleansing, among others. I will compare and contrast our readings to Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom’d. This poem is an elegy in response to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Whitman’s words not only reflect his personal grief and sorrow for the death of the President, but also serve to soothe his sadness and help him accept the reality of death. For Whitman, the celebratory, sympathetic song of the gray-brown bird aids the healing process because it becomes clear to him that beautiful life still exists after death. While the scientific, philosophical and social perspectives provide well argued logic, I find the most convincing attitudes to be consistent with Walt Whitman’s; that is, those that are sensitive to the innately humane emotions elicited from death such as sorrow, guilt, misunderstanding, and serenity. In Section I of this essay, I shall group together the books that have a perspective of death parallel to that of Whitman. In Section II, I will contrast the varying perspectives of death presented by the other authors. In my conclusion, I will explain why I thought the Age of Iron was the most convincing attitude towards death.

Section I: Grouping and explicating the attitudes parallel to that of Whitman

            In When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom’d, Walt Whitman must personally accept the tragic death of a beloved man. In the poem, he writes that death, or the “long black trail,” is like a gloomy cloud over the life around him, including the bountiful crops, lively activities and people. As the poem progresses, Whitman is better able to understand and accept the death of Lincoln, which is also representative of the thousands of senseless deaths that characterized the Civil War. The sadness that comes with the corpse of a loved one is assuaged by the beauty of nature that surrounds Whitman, even though the nature is distant from understanding sorrow of the situation. The message is that life goes on, and though mourning can be appropriate for a short time, celebrating the life of the deceased is more fitting.

            This humanistic attitude towards death is similar to that found in Fountain and Tomb by Naguib Mahfouz. In this novel, both life and death are sacred and celebrated. The denizens of the ally believe that those who have died have moved on to a better place, where they can “water the gardens of Paradise” (22). The cemetery is a place of joy, as there are festivals held there, and visits to the tombs happen on a regular basis. The narrator had trouble dealing with his first friend who died, and he commented that the visits to the cemetery “lose their delight” (22). He says that the “sight of the place makes [him] wonder what lies beneath the tomb, and its silence depresses [him]” (22). When this friend died, he said “It is death…and I tell myself that what is happening is strange and terrifying and dreadful” (26). He mourns death for a short period of time, just as those around him do. He said “The word death is repeated all around me. I see that it’s parting without end so I cry with the mourners, and my heart suffers more than its age can bear” (21). The pain of being permanently separated from his friend makes him emotional, but as he matures, and his faith guides him, he comes to accept death as something not only inevitable, but also peaceful. In the alley, religion helps people to understand and accept that for which they cannot answer themselves.

Similarly, In The History Boys by Alan Bennett, the death of Hector is mourned upon, but concurrently celebrated. The death of this one person was symbolic of something greater. Timms quotes, “We are mulched by the dead, though one person’s death will tell you more than a thousand” (106). This is because a thousand deaths are very impersonal, whereas the death of someone that is close can be very meaningful as one reflects on the little anecdotes that would otherwise be forgotten. After Hector died, the students finally realize that Hectors methods provided “the only education worth having” (109). Hector finally says “That’s the game I wanted you to learn. Pass it on” (109).

In Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee, death defines the attitudes of the characters because genocide is all around. The South African town does not celebrate death; instead, it is plagued with death and its sadness. The genocide—or, literally the race massacre that is horrifically killing many people has defined the protagonist’s life as she writes to her distant daughter. Originally isolated from this horror of her own community, Mrs. Curren is appalled and sickened when she witnesses the “iron-hearted rage” for herself. The spiteful death of her servant’s son and the destruction of a black township in the greater community elicit fear, disdain, sympathy, and helplessness. She says, “It hardly seems possible to believe there is a zone of killing and degradation all around me. It seems like a bad dream” (119). This realization withers away at Mrs. Curren physically and mentally, and she views death as a kind of salvation from a wretched life. Because most of the deaths in the novel are by way of murder, the novel refers to the dead bodies as being “very heavy, like lead or like that thick, airless mud you get at the bottom of dams” (124). By objectifying the bodies, Coetzee has aptly shown the incongruity of once lively young men lying lifeless, breathless, and emotionless on the cold ground.

In Genesis, death is the ultimate punishment that God can give a human. If God’s people of this world did not do as god commanded, they would be destroyed. Early in the story, God warns Adam, saying “From every fruit of the garden you may surely eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die” (8). Natural death, however, is recorded and accepted as being part of God’s plan, even though it can be sorrowful and painful dealing with the loss of a loved one. Each human must eventually die, and his lineage can be traced back to those who died before him. Genesis also contains the notion that life results from death.

            In The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, the troubled protagonist seeks death because it will give her eternal safety and security from the despondency in her life. Just as her sleeping medication would temporarily distance her from her troubles, death did the same, though permanently. Ironically, Lily’s whole life was devoted to the climb of the social latter, but she ultimately ended up at the very bottom—dead. It seems that Lily was fated to die prematurely because she just couldn’t find true happiness in the world in which she lived. The dichotomy between her personal aspirations for love and happiness and wealth could never assimilate, and death, therefore was the only answer for tranquility.

Section II: Grouping and explicating attitudes in opposition to a humane vantage point.

In direct contrast with Whitman’s poem is the profoundly philosophical work of Plato’s Phaedo and Symposium. The entire work Phaedo is about Socrates confronting his imminent death. Socrates is not afraid of death because he is a philosopher, and a true philosopher has dedicated his life to the afterlife, and should therefore not be afraid of death when it is near. He has spent his entire life distancing his sole from the prison that is his body, and so the most complete separation that is death will not be a shock to Socrates. The philosophy is that your physical body may die, but your soul will live forever; which is why philosophers are not concerned with worldly distractions. Instead, they are focused only with Forms such as Wisdom and Truth. Socrates contends that possessions of the physical world such as beauty and love are ephemeral, and so one should strive for the timeless values of the afterlife.

Though a philosopher should accept death openly, he should not try to kill himself. This is because life on earth is a service to the Gods, and it would be wrongful to be joyous when leaving this life for another one. For Socrates and other philosophers, death provides the only cure from the confining illness that is life, but a man must wait for his life to be taken from him. The philosophers optimistically believe that better relations with the Gods and closer friendships will exist in the eternal life of the soul. Though Socrates friends and kin mourn his death, they are not afraid because Socrates is so convincing and pacified. They are proud to have known Socrates because he is “the best, and also the wisest, and the most upright” (67).

Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents attitude towards death is both philosophical and scientific—but it is most concerned with things of this physical world. According to Freud, every human has a death drive and an eros, or life, instinct. These two instincts are in direct opposition to one another. Accordingly, it is natural to be aggressive and destructive, but the values of our society suppress these instinctual drives—at least temporarily. When looking at the history of civilization from a broader scope, these drives have undoubtedly controlled the shifts in power, the structures of society, and the composition of future civilizations. Freud says, “I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man, and…it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization” (81).  He goes on to say “this struggle [between the death instinct and eros] is what all life essentially consists of, and the evolution of civilization may therefore simply be described as the struggle for life of the human species” (82).  Freud’s view of death is far less personal than that of Whitman and the other aforementioned authors.

Likewise, Charles Darwin’s On Evolution is very scientific in scope because it regards death as natural and essential to the evolution of all species. All organisms must eventually die, but those that are more fit will reproduce the most—therefore passing on traits that are favorable to the environment. Darwin writes about natural selection, “the preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations” (176). In his words, “rejection” essentially means death of the less agreeable variations. His concept of “survival of the fittest” is best explained in his words: “Every single organism…may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals” (168). Darwin, as a scientist, clearly regards death as being impersonal and critical to the well-being of evolving populations.

InKarl Marx’s essays, including Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology and Capital, Marx’s view of death is quite mechanical and practical. He believes that life is a reflection of economical forces, and if those forces are dependent on the means of production. A laborer can only provide his means of production while he is alive, and so death is an extraction from the pool of available labor and therefore means of production. While a large amount of deaths is significant and can negatively impact the economy—an individual’s death is of infinitesimal impact. Social classes, high and low, have been in opposition with each other throughout history. The existing structures begin to become incompatible with the productive forces of the economy. The oppressed class will start a revolution and the existence of that subordinate class will be destroyed, or die.

Conclusion:  My reasoning as to why I find Age of Iron the most convincing and final thoughts

I found the Age of Iron to be the most convincing view of death because the circumstances of the death are real, and the emotions are sincere. Mrs. Curren distracted and blinded herself from the true nature of the death and degradation around her. It is a tragedy of our time that there are more indolent bystanders who recognize the senselessness of genocide, but find it easier to pass the responsibility of the problem to someone else. Likewise, Mrs. Curren felt that the mass murder of people in her community was too big, and too severe of a problem for her to understand and handle. She could not bring herself to recognize how young, once innocent boys of her community could slaughter other neighboring men. Mrs. Curren felt very guilty that she has passively witnessed the dilapidation of her community, and finds death the only means to ameliorating her internal pain.  In the end, the result was despondency, torn soles and death. Some of the books ignore the inherent emotional connection with death, and instead look at it from a scientific or philosophical lens, but I find that the attitudes regarding death that are parallel to Walt Whitman’s are the most humane and appropriate for poignant topic.