Dialogue of Personal Identity and Immortality

Gretchen Weirob is a philosophy professor who happens to think logically for every given situation. Recently she was involved in a motorbike accident from which she sustained some major injuries, leaving her only a few days to survive. Her reverend friend, Sam Miller and her former student, Dave Cohen came to visit her at the hospital. Weirob asked Miller to comfort her, to give her some hope that there is life after death, a way that will make her survive after she lives her body and it decomposes, that there would still be a Gretchen Weirob. They agreed from the first that Weirob will not be convinced by Miller but she will take it into consideration if Miller happens to prove or give a slightest, imaginable possibility that there is life

There is survival after death where the death becomes parts of the soul and the body.

The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death” (Rajneesh, n.d.). This short story narrates about a woman named Martha Bes that apparently died. The main character is debating whether or not she is alive or dead. Also she goes about asking what God wanted her to do. “The book of Martha” written by Octavia Butler uses literary elements to present the overall message what is God’s purpose in life.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The real question of life after death isn 't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.” The idea that death is inevitable is well known by everyone, yet no one is certain as to what happens afterwards. Even though the subject of life after death has been argued for centuries by many philosophers and theologians. In the article Sign Here If You Exist, Jill Sisson Quinn adequately employs figurative language, rhetoric questionings, and personal anecdotes to demonstrate a controversial argument on the topic of life after death.

“Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others…..He made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, so that, passing through death, it can now live forever. I saw my Mother’s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it. I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s (his wife) tears again, and felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.”(359)

Many authors use storytelling as a vehicle to convey the immortality of past selves and those who have passed to not only in their piece of literature but in their life as an author. In Tim O’Brien’s work of fiction The Things They Carried, through his final chapter “The Lives of the Dead,” O 'Brien conveys that writing is a matter of survival since, the powers of storytelling can ensure the immortality of all those who were significant in his life. Through their immortality, O’Brien has the ability to save himself with a simple story. Through snippets of main plot event of other chapters, O’Brien speaks to the fact the dead have not actually left; they are gone physically, but not spiritually or emotionally. They live on in memories as Linda lives on in the memories of O’Brien and as many of his war buddies live on through his stories. He can revive them and bring them back to the world through his writings and through these emotions or events he experienced with them and with their deaths can make them immortal. Through the reminiscent stories of Linda and O’Brien’s war companions and himself, O’Brien conveys that storytelling allows people to reanimate others who have died and past selves to create an immortality of humans.

With a respectable argument against the idea of pharmaceutical advances eventually leading to immortality, Lexchin uses multiple forms of rhetoric, mostly logos, to sway the readers. He sets our deep fantasies of someday being able to live forever against our rational minds and backs up his case with sound logic and viable examples that leave us no doubts about human limitation.

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

According to Ullmann-Margalit (51) while dealing with the subject the agony of doubt deliberates that it is among the most confusing issues to deal with. Most people do not want to die, at least not now, and the debate of holding on to the inevitable and that of letting go heats up. Questions arise concerning the social, religious and ethical factors that have to be taken into play while considering end-of-life or right-to-die and thus bringing complexity to an otherwise easy decision. But the most crucial question to ask is: are those in support of the right-to-die justified in their movement? This will be the question that will be addressed in this argumentative essay.

Midway through the funeral service, the disembodied voice of Tyler said, "I'm seeing, I seem to see, my own funeral. And they're telling each other stories about me. Veena, Rikuto, Amily. Each of them told the story of a different life, a different death. It's like a dream, but it's not a dream. And I'm not alone, there's someone here with me, a woman. I can't see her, it's as if she's standing beside me, or all around me, talking to me... She says I'm not dead. I'm not sure that I believe her".

Sarah herself said at one point “…I have no idea what it was all about”. My take on her comment was that although she came to accept her inevitable death, she did not have any philosophical answers to give anyone.

In Tim’s first up-close and personal encounter with death, Linda, his girlfriend, dies of cancer before turning ten. When Tim attends her wake and sees her body, he is unable to cope with the reality of her death. Instead, he imagines that she is awake and normal and having a conversation with him. Through this conversation with a dead person, Tim comes to realize that his imagination - the stories that he makes up - can keep people alive after their deaths. If he remembers Linda’s corpse, that is all she can ever be, but if he continues to have conversations with her, to imagine her alive, to tell stories about her, then she remains alive as he portrays her. Though told at the end of the book, this vignette becomes a lens through which Tim views death throughout and explains why Tim, the character, and O’brien, the author, tell stories about dead friends. Tim tells stories about death - the death of his friend Kiowa, the postwar suicide of Norman Bowker, the corpse of the man he killed, the tragic accident that killed Ted Lavender, and Linda’s battle with cancer - to preserve the life of people he

“A child lost lives again.” She now knew the meaning of the tarot reader’s message—reincarnation. She often wondered who it would be, Kelly, Patrick, or someone unknown to her. It was a controversial topic and she never brought up her own experience with Dr. Bernard nor had she returned for any further session. She knew first hand that it was real and that this would be her last life. There was nothing left to resolve.

Therefore, Williams’ asserts the immortal life would be undesirable, or unlivable since we will inevitably exhaust our categorical desires (100).

Within this novel, Morrie embraced his mortality with “love, acceptance and open communication” as he gave the reader a glimpse into what he considered to be “The Meaning of Life.” Using Mitch Albom as a vessel to pen his “own culture values,” Morrie was able to define the contradictions between others vision of “popular culture values” and his style of truly living through “life, death and reincarnation.” With the use of materials obtained from the course, this writer was able to summarize various observations about Morrie’s “final lecture” on life, death and family amidst his perceptual understanding that reorganized “aging as growth and not