Essay on Death in Gabrielle Zevin´s Elsewhere

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ends with the death of the main character, Edna Pontellier. Stripping off her clothes, she swims out to sea until her arms can no longer support her, and she drowns. It was not necessarily a suicide, neither was it necessarily the best option for escaping her problems.

The prominence of a few themes - amputation, fate and death - create the catharsis required in a tragedy, mainly incidents which “arousing] pity and fear,” (definition). The repetition of these eerie and morbid themes keep them at the forefront of a reader’s mind, and put them in an uneasy emotional state, leading to a sense of catharsis at the end of the long, marathon novel. One main motif through the novel is that of amputation, and armlessness, which come to symbolize loss, helplessness, and the way in which sometimes one’s hands are bound, at the will of something greater. For example, after Owen accidentally kills John’s mother, he borrows John’s stuffed armadillo, a prized playing toy, and returns it without its claws, rendering it “USELESS TO JohN QUOTE,” which Owen means to signify “QUOTE ABOUT IM AM GODS MESSENGER.” This theme is touched upon many more times, and becomes somewhat of an obsession for Owen, who repeatedly removes or adds arms to female figures, including John’s deceased mother’s dressmaker’s dummy, a large catholic stature of a saint, which he desecrates. In irony, or perhaps a fate Owen had foreseen, the novel concludes with Owen losing his arms, protecting a group of Vietnamese children, in his last act of heroism. In addition to the theme of amputation, the theme of fate, and predestiny from God, is woven throughout, particularly perpetuated by Owen, who sees himself as God’s instrument. Owen consistently reminds John of the certainty of fate, and is angered when John does not share his blind faith. Owen believed “there were no accidents; there was a reason for that baseball - just as there was a reason for Owen being small, and a reason for his voice. In Owen's opinion, he had INTERRUPTED AN ANGEL, he had DISTURBED AN ANGEL AT WORK, he had UPSET THE SCHEME OF THINGS (page 102).” Is it Owen’s blind

Nesbit, a close friend of Miranda’s family, died in her house. Before she died Miranda had a conversation with her. Mrs. Nesbitt told her that Miranda’s family could take all of her food, and take her furniture to burn during the winter to stay warm. This became a very stressful time for Miranda because someone that she was really close to died. Even though they were saddened by the death, they were still the beneficiaries of Mrs. Nesbitt’s stuff. Afterall they were very grateful to have her belongings.

Owen Meany’s supernatural qualities along with his desire to sacrifice himself for others contribute to him being viewed as a religious figure. In the novel, Owen is depicted as a supernatural, superior being, but his selfless facet is the quality which actually makes people associate him with religion. The way in which Owen uses his power to sacrifice for others is the characteristic which separates him from others with similar power. Since Owen is considered supernatural, he makes sacrifices to provide assurance of his faith. Owen confirms this notion when he exclaims,“‘WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE,’” while he himself is dying (Irving 626). This shows that Owen knows in this moment that he is using his supernatural abilities to sacrifice himself

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a crucial statement is declared about how he views the inner workings of men, as well as how men interact with women in society. The narrative is based around the horrific murder of two defenseless women, which seems to have been committed by a mystery “beast”. Poe demonstrates the primitive violent forces that exist within people, particularly men, which have the ability to escape in shocking ways, often against a woman. Poe uses violence as a negative, inhumane act, in order to reinforce the innate brutal impulses that are just under the surface of all male beings.

Owen did not start out as the perfect hero; in fact, Irving takes a very typical road and develops Owen’s character through series of events that lead up to his taking of his place as the Christ-figure hero (Guerin). Owen starts out as a coward – albeit a coward who refuses to act like one. For instance, he pees his pants when his female cousin is in the same closet as him (Peterson). He is also the source of both the main sorrows of the novel, his own death, and the death of Tabitha Wheelwright, acting as the exact opposite of a hero. He undergoes a metaphorical rebirth to mature into the Christ Hero; who gets his arms blown of by throwing grenade out a window to save some Vietnamese children. The catalyst for this rebirth is paradoxical in that is actually a vision of said rebirth; in the form of Owen’s vision and subsequent dreams about the circumstances surrounding his death. Irving does this to fulfill the other part of the hero archetype, by giving

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

A different option would have been that Edna decides to live the life of an artist. She could

Along with “Introduction to Poetry,” in “The Lanyard,” the speaker recalls making a lanyard at camp for mother, and illustrates the powerful memories and connections ordinary objects can bring. By repeating “and I gave her a lanyard” (20), “and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard” (26), “And here is your lanyard” (29), or “and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp” (34), Collins emphasizes the humor and irony it rouses simultaneously: although his mother “gave [him] life and milk from her breasts,” all the narrator could give was “a boxy/ red and white lanyard” (19, 17-18). Collins creates a comical effect as the speaker continuously derides his gift; thus comparing the greatness of the mother’s nurture and the meagerness of what he could return. However, Collins narrates an irony that “this useless, worthless thing [he] wove/ out of boredom would be enough to make [them] even” (41-42). Though the two-tone plastic strips speaker braided are trivial, the action of giving touches his mother’s heart, and showed the genuine love towards each other. Collins’ usage of irony is also described in “Forgetfulness”: “It has floated away down a dark mythological river/ whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall” (14-15). Yet the speaker only recalls the letter “L” from the entire name due to his “forgetfulness,” it is, however, possible to discover the rest of the

Owen also uses language of terror and powerlessness for the speaker as the poem progresses. Describing the soldier the speaker has seen fail to attach his gas mask, he says, “I saw him drowning” (14). He dreams of this encounter repeatedly, “[in] all my dreams, before my helpless sight/ He plunges at me” (15-16). In his dreams, he is not only powerless to aid this man, but

Boom! The door flies open and a handsome knight runs into the room and yells, “Come my lady we must go now, for he is on his way”. The lady jumps to her feet and says “My love whom is on their way?” he responds, “your husband is on the way and he has heard of our romance”. The couple joins hands and quickly runs through the castle hoping that they are not seen. Suddenly the king jumps from a dark shadow, stops the couple in a sudden halt, and says, “Where do you think you are going?” With no response from the lady, the king reaches to his side and pulls a rope that releases a large bucket of acid onto the queen and her secret lover, which eats their bodies flesh within minutes only leaving the two skeletons holding each other’s hands. This

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-born psychiatrist who spent two years of her professional career gathering information from terminally ill patients to create the premise for On Death and Dying. “It is not meant to be a textbook on how to manage dying patients, nor is it intended as a complete study of the psychology of dying.” (Kübler-Ross, 1969). This book was written as a call-to-action; to raise awareness of the voice of the dying. Not only is there stigma surrounding the topic, but also numerous misconceptions concerning the emotional journey of the terminally ill. The Kübler-Ross Model creates a framework for those interacting with dying persons, to help caretakers better understand the transitions that are taking place, resulting in higher-quality care. This model is comprised of five stages, which can be experienced in a variety of combinations. Prior to the first stage, the patient must be delivered the news of their illness or the severity of their illness, which usually results in shock. Denial is the first stage noted by Kübler-Ross. Denial and isolation are normal responses to overwhelming emotions and serve as a temporary response until the individual is ready to accept reality. Although this defense mechanism is normative, it is important to note that it isn’t necessarily healthy, and that some never move past this stage. As reality sets in, pain beings to emerge and manifests itself in the next stage: anger. Rationality takes a

‘He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed’ as a result an image is created, the responder sees that Owen’s mental condition has him viewing everything as death. This was caused by his PTSD and Shellshock, which was what prompted his treatment at Craig Lockhart, but it really reveals to the responder that these implications last a lifetime.

Owen personifies death, giving him readily identifiable human characteristics as spitting and coughing, but in a way that accords with the gruesome nature of death since he spits “bullets” and coughs “shrapnel.” What is really striking is that the soldiers welcome death's claim of their lives; they “chorused if he sang aloft” and “whistled while he shaved [them] with his scythe.” Although evoking the death-as-a-reaper conceptualization,

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to