Death in Literature Essay

Attitude to death has been always taking a special place in literature, as it’s one of the mot mysterious and contradictory topics in literature. Attitude to death which is proposed by religion and traditional secular consciousness are very different and these differences cause unequal evaluation of death and unequal attitude to death of different people. Death of a close person is a very tragic event in life of an individual due to a number of reasons mainly because of love and attachment, but from the other side in many respects the death for an individual means deliverance and liberation if he a lot during his entire life. Death for a person who experiences moral and spiritual crisis may seem to be the only way out of the situation but nevertheless public opinion, Christian morality and religious teachings do not approve suicide, but instead consider it to be the most fatal sin.

Emily Dickinson touches the problem of death in her famous poem “Because I could not stop for Death”. She describes death in untraditional way, opposing it to immortality and presenting it as gentlemen:
“because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.” (from “Because I could not stop for Death”)

Her narration shows that the trip on the carriage with death in made through her entire life and her words show that she has nothing to regret about. The image of death in the poem is not presented as horror but instead it’s a gentleman who takes poet away from immortality. Emily Dickinson had presented a symbolic theme of death, which doesn’t contradict Christian tradition, she doesn’t present any solution to the problem of death and immortality, nor she criticizes her life. The journey over her life on the carriage with death has nothing similar to repentance, which witnesses about humanism of Emily Dickinson and represents a passive protest against Puritan religious morals: “She had all the elements of a culture that has broken up, a culture that on the religious side takes its place in the museum of spiritual antiquities. Puritanism, as a unified version of the world, is dead; only a remnant of it in trade may be said to survive.” (from Tate, A. “Because I could not stop for Death”)

Instead, we see a direct expression of her feelings and her thoughts in her road together with death. Emily Dickinson presented a conflict of the mind which is seems to be immortal with physical reality of human nature, which has a beginning and end: «She is therefore a perfect subject for the kind of criticism, which is chiefly concerned with general ideas. She exhibits one of the permanent relations between personality and objective truth, and she deserves the special attention of our time, which lacks that kind of truth.” (from Tate, A. “Because I could not stop for Death”)

A very important line is presented in the poem which makes us to think that for Emily Dickinson death is a start of a new life: “The soul selects her own society”.

Death also takes one of the main themes in Faulkner’s novel “A rose for Emily”, as it can be interpreted in different ways. The problem of the changing social and cultural standards as well as a problem of existing stereotypes is described on the particular example of Emily Grierson a young woman from typical Southern aristocratic family.

The events that are told from the viewpoint of anonymous resident of a town of Jefferson in Mississippi show a vivid example of existing stereotypes and conservativism that sometimes borders with absurd and nonsense in modern culture. As the novel describes South after the reconstruction era we get to know that even slavery was abolished and all visual prejudices resulted by slavery and simply the philosophy of Southerners had disappeared, nevertheless people were remaining to be the slaves of out-dated moral and stereotypes. The theme of death in the tragedy of Emily’s life and in the tragedy of her husband Homer also refers to the problem of generation gap, importance of the correct upbringing of children and problems of relations of an individual and society. There is also a deeper psychological message about the importance of right and reasonable upbringing of a child that is essential for his further life and social acceptance. Emily grew in a prospective family in luxury, but her life was restricted by the taboos established by her father a bright representative of Southern aristocracy with strict moral norms: “Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” that’s why “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.”

The death of her father made a deep impact on her personality and in many respects this event had defined her future life. Because of the isolated and strict upbringing provided by Emily’s father, Emily needed a man who would substitute her father: a man who would become her husband and who would take care of her. As a result the first thing she did after his death was a marriage with a boyfriend, who was by the way, a stranger to Southern society of Jefferson, Yankee worker Homer Barron. The society of Jefferson perceived it like a challenge made to them and to their existing morals and norms. As a result Emily put a barrier between her and others by making a marriage choice.

The problem became more complicated because she spent a lot of money on her beloved, allowing him to buy expensive personal articles, and such a behavior was negatively perceived by her surrounding. The society ignored her and laughed at her careless and unreasonable behavior, as well as on the fact that her husband was gay. The dramatic denouement of the story that resulted in the murdering of husband by Emily shows a deep personal crisis and confusion that often happens with one who makes a protest against existing norms voluntarily or not. Murder was the only way out for Emily in order to avoid shame and alienation of the surrounding society. But nevertheless, she became shameful and she alienated herself from the rest of Jefferson’s society. Her life after the death of her husband became little different from death itself as she kept the corpse of her husband in her house and slept with him until her death. Her surrounding was represented by the image of her father, who died and by the corpse of her husband and no one else. Such choice shows her moral and spiritual crisis after she admitted that she made a deep mistake when she married Homer.

This story is a bright example of a modern social and personal problem when a privilege position in society may become a prison for a human and will only make his life complicated and unbearable. Actually the personal tragedy of Emily is only an personalized tragedy of Southern society, a society which became imprisoned by old morality and was not able willingly perceive changes and new moral values and attitudes. Her moral personal death after murder of her husband represents the situation of Southern moral values in modern American society. These values existed only in the minds of people destroying them from the inside as the reality was changing by people were not changing with reality. The burden of traditions, the fear of alienation from the rest of the city and the fear of being judged prompted Emily to the crime, which finally killed her personality and killed the desire to live.

These problems of generation gap, social stereotypes and dependence upon public opinion are eternal and began to contradict especially sharp in the 20th century, when the society was changing rapidly and dynamically. By the description of Emily’s personal tragedy, the author of the story, William Faulkner, tries to convince the reader that social norms are more likely to restrain people, than to give them an opportunity to show their real nature. The corpse of Homer, which Emily kept in her house until she died, is a symbol of personal tragedy of philistinism and hypocrisy, which dominated the minds of people in Southern society. The image of death in Rose for Emily represents a decline of traditional southern society and intolerance based on philistinism and hypocrisy.

Making a conclusion it’s important to note that the problem of death will remain to be a contradictory in literature. For some authors it’s a logical end of human’s life and his transformation into a new form of life as after the death the soul of human obtains liberty (according to Emily Dickinson). For other authors death represents not only death in physical sense of the word but also death of morals, death of human as a personality, which leads to moral degradation. From this point death represents not only physical death, but also moral and personal crisis, which have a more important meaning than simply death.

References

1. Faulkner, William A Rose for Emily Vintage; Reissue edition 1995
2. Birk, John F. “Tryst Beyond Time: Faulkner’s Emily and Keats.” In Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring 1991, pp. 203-13
3. Tate, A. “Because I could not stop for Death” available online: www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickinson/712.htm
4. Dickinson, E. Because I could not stop for Death http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/stop.html