A Shooting Star Runs Through Everything

It is inevitable that we will all die it is a fact that everyone must come to terms with. There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must face death; a friend’s tragic accident, a family member’s passing or their own battles with diseases. When faced with the idea of death people will act in different ways some may find it therapeutic to apologize for the negative they have done, some may want to spend time with loved ones to ease the future pain, and others may decide that their life was not what they believed. The story Death Constant Beyond Love tells us about a man named Senator Sanchez who is living a happy life with his wife and five kids. That is until he is told by doctors that he only has a short time to live. Death is

I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” (Salinger, 172)

The hyperbole in Irving’s writing becomes clear as he begins to describe his main character’s attributes. Irving uses humor to bring attention to certain details to make them memorable. By using exaggeration and metaphor together, he makes a hyperbole, to help contribute to the experience. Irving demonstrates humor being developed by hyperbole when he writes, “The revenue arising from his school would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda”(7). What Irving attempts to convey is, while Ichabod was a school teacher, he did not get paid enough for him to be comfortable, the main reason being that he had a large appetite.

Not long after the opening of this store, Sherman was told by a neighbor of a coming legal issue. Sherman was intending on visiting the town that there was an attorney at, so he agreed to go for his friend and tell the points in the dispute. The subject was complex, so Sherman wrote some notes about it. Whenever Sherman went and stated the case, while referring to his notes. The attorney was impressed by Sherman’s skill at such things, and told him that he should really consider becoming an attorney. After this, Sherman starting studying law. Along with him studying law, he still had the responsibilities of his family. Later, Sherman thought he should close down his shop and join a business partnership with his older brother, who owned a general store.

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

“It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you

Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.” In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis”, he does not mention eternal life or anything religious, but speaks about death. He tells his readers that death is a natural thing and they should not worry about it. William Cullen Bryant, in his poem “Thanatopsis”, portrays a comforting view of death. Throughout the poem, Bryant encourages his readers by explaining that in death they are not alone, that death, like life, is a natural process, and that they will be among some of the finest people who walked the earth.

John Irving begins his novel with one of the most iconic introductory lines in modern literature; introducing a character who is a great source of pain and anguish, yet the ultimate source behind the narrator’s belief in God (Irving 3). In this paradoxical sentiment the theme of the book born, what follows it is a journey that is different from any other. John Wheelwright, the narrator, tells a story of his best friend Owen Meany and what effect he has had on John’s own life, while concurrently interjecting the plot with information about the occurrence in the world around him and how it relates back to Owen. Through the uses of sporadic but continuous plot development John Irving develops a self acclaimed Christ-like character whose

Death is something that people must deal with every day in our world, and there are several aspects of death that sometimes the living do not consider. For example, how does one celebrate or remember passed loved ones? What happens to you when you die? How would you like to be remembered? There are multiple ways to answer these questions, and examining differing points of view can be enlightening.

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.

By biological logic, we human beings will face death sooner or later in our life and death has its very own ways to approach us - a sudden deadly strike, a critical sickness, a tragic accident, a prolonged endurance of brutal treatment, or just an aging biological end. To deal with the prospect of death come different passive or active reactions; some may be scared and anxious to see death, some try to run away from it, and some by their own choice make death come faster. But Viktor Frankl, through his work Man’s Search for Meaning, and Bryan Doyle; in his essay “His Last Game” show us choices to confront the death, bring it to our deepest feelings, meaningful satisfaction. To me, the spirit of the prisoners at deadly concentration camps, Frankl’s Logotherapy theory of “. . . striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” (99), as well as the calmness of Doyle’s brother on his last ride, like an awaken bell, remind us of how precious life is, how we should find the significance in every act of living, determine to live a meaningful life at any circumstances; hence, when death comes, we can accept it without anxiety nor regrets.

Irving uses the pseudonym to create a persona in the name of fiction. This rising form of literature seats itself well in the Romantic Movement where creativity is honored over reason. Irving wrote about a guy named Rip who was really a big hearted guy, always ready to help others in need, but didn’t always take care of his own priorities. He lost some of his motivation from his nagging wife to carry out what needed to be done to take care of his family. After he slept for 20 years and in the absence of his wife, he is finally relieved of being hindered and heckled by his wife. Hawthorne shows the value of being honest by an example of Young Goodman Brown who was susceptible to suspicious acts. If you go behind someone’s back, more than likely it is not a good act to carry out and more times than not, you will probably get caught and suffer some sort of consequence. Poe shows us that fear is a

John Irving’s childhood reflects many of the themes throughout A Prayer for Owen Meany. He was

Washington Irving existed in a historical of revolution; which he stimulated; everyone was trusting on him to take their views off the regular life and send it into the creative world of Irving’s creative stories. His capability to maneuver a reader's mind sawed through his explained use of imagination in “Rip Van.”

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.