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On The Fear Of Death Analysis

Decent Essays

In her essay, On the Fear of Death, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross discusses the “changes that have taken place in the last few decades, changes that are ultimately responsible for the increased fear of death...” (On the Fear of Death, Page 2). Furthermore, Kubler-Ross emphasizes this increased fear, with the discussion of the treatment for the severely ill. Kubler-Ross claims that severely ill patients are “often treated like a person with no right to opinion,” and goes so far as to say “it would take so little to remember that the sick person too has feelings, has wishes and opinions, and has...the right to be heard” (On the Fear of Death, Page 4). It is with this claim that Kubler-Ross overlays the continuing problem of avoidance and objectivity …show more content…

There is a “mechanical, depersonalized approach” for our defensiveness. This mechanical approach, the increasing use of “infusions and transfusions” are the cause of the objectifying perspective on the severely ill (On the Fear of Death, Page 6). The ill person no longer becomes a personal problem, but financially concerning object of death. With new technology in hospitals such as heart machines, medical mechanisms, and multitudes of medications, the severely ill is isolated and depersonalized to the point of becoming an object of great concern and nothing more. If a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he will be treated. Doctors and nurses will busily work around him. The man will only overhear discussion of his condition to his family members and nothing to him. It is at this point that the man with terminal cancer is now just an object being treated. This is turn it for the doctors, the nurses, and the family to distance themselves from death and to busy themselves with the condition of this ‘thing’. Fear is most increased with its face to face. Therefore, avoiding the ill and making it a thing, may depersonalize the ill enough to limit the reminder of death's

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