The play Everyman may have been written many years ago, but its lessons are still relevant today. Generally, the facts of death are very traumatizing and in fact unthinkable. This leads the modern day Everyman to ignore its significance, dying without acknowledging or reflecting on their lives here on earth. It is based on this fact that this paper aims to show the position of the author of the play “Everyman” regarding death.
In his poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”, A.E. Housman makes a quite different approach on death. People have different perspectives on death, but more often than not, it is viewed as an undesirable event that people wish to avoid. The speaker in the poem, however, praises a young and famous athlete for dying before he became old and forgotten. This can be interpreted two very different ways. One can assume Housman believes that the only way for athletes to capture the glory is to die when at the peak of their careers. One might criticize him for having such a pessimistic view of life, but we must realize that we are among many people who give those athletes the feeling of disgrace as they are no
The short story “The Death of Dolgushov” by Isaak Babel is a gut wrenching story, at times literally, about the dilemmas of killing. Babel, a master of the short story, challenges readers’ morality by contrasting two soldiers plights. On the one hand, a soldier, Dolgushov, pleads that he has “had it (241),” meaning that he wants his comrade to kill him after being mortally wounded by machine gun fire; while on the other hand, another soldier, unnamed, cannot bring himself to kill Dolgushov. Throughout the story, war is depicted as a game until a soldier gets seriously hurt. This device, combined with the vivid imagery associated with both soldier’s plights, complicates how readers’ judge the act of killing and war in general.
Seeing an increase in light pollution and a decrease in natural darkness, Paul Bogard in his essay “Let there be Darkness” uses logic to persuade the reader to preserve darkness. Opening the essay with a personal experience from the past, he convinces the reader of the danger of light pollution. The author uses statistics, pathos, and science to support his thesis.
Journalist, Norman Mailer, in his essay, “The Death of Benny Paret”, describes his firsthand account of the beatdown, and ultimate death of the professional boxer. Mailer’s purpose is to integrate a logical, formative description of the events that took place with his emotional reaction to witnessing the profound death of a man who he supported and revered. He adopts an excited tone, which fluctuates throughout the piece and eventually turns somber, and somewhat bitter, in order to both inform and to channel the emotional rollercoaster he experienced on this night to his audience.
Ambrose uses realism in his writings by giving vivid details of the thoughts of this civilian who is caught by the Union soldiers and is about to be hanged. “Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him” (457). This shows us how a man’s loyalties can affect him greatly, especially when he chooses a path that can ultimately lead to death.
Welterweight champion Benny Paret was renowned for his ability to receive a hit, and had taken years of punishment in order to obtain his championship. Yet he proved, he was the greatest every time he stepped in the ring. However, all good things will come to an end. In the past two years, the fifteen round fights began to destroy his body. Eventually, it all would result in a tragic end. As the story draws to a close, the genre and the theme unfold. It becomes clear the author is emotionally invested, which allows for an in depth and personal view of the story. In the end, we are able to relate more than one would simply assume, and the lesson we learn is we are not the gods we all attempt to be.
“What the dead don’t know piles up, though we don’t notice it at first,” is an insight in Roger Angell’s descriptive memoir, “Over the Wall” (414). Emotional responses, stimulating thoughts and solid feelings are elicited through the use of personal reflection, regarding the death of his wife, Carol. This literary nonfiction, memoir uses the present tense, a constant tone, and an informal view to help add immediacy, by keeping the reader involved step by step as the author connects his personal present and past experiences regarding death. Readers are continually intrigued by Angell’s literary nonfiction essay, with provoking thoughts focusing on death, while using figurative language to keep Carol alive, with the use of vivid personal reflections and descriptive personal experiences.
The strength less dead are the athletes whose “name died before the man”(20). Housman emphasizes through the imagery that it is better to do while one is still remembered since the glory will stay with him and not fade away. “To An Athlete Dying Young” glorifies the athlete through the use of imagery while “Ex-Basketball Player” uses it to emphasize the athlete’s fading glory.
For many years, some people would say dealing with the death of a loved one can be hard. In today’s society, many people have dealt with that pain. Even though individuals can respond differently dealing with the murder of a loved one but taking justice into your own hands can relieve the pain that it has caused on the family. Why it is that death can cause so much pain to the ones we love? Using the biographical and psychological critical strategies to analyze “Killings”. Focusing on Andre Dubus past how is it connected with the story and psychological strategy of the mind of someone who is hurt by death.
The theme of early death is accompanied by sorrow in Housman’s poem, and can be seen as a reflection of Housman’s own experiences with death throughout his life (Holzberger 2-5). The death of Housman’s mother, Sarah Jane Housman, on his twelfth birthday showcases the early death of the poet’s mother, and what William G. Holzberger believed was a first of many personal catastrophes that would poison the poet’s chances of a normal and happy life (Holzberger 2). The poem presents a young runner in the prime of his life, and much like Housman’s mother, they were both suddenly taken by death. Another instance of early death in Housman’s life was that of his close friend Adalbert Jackson (Holzberger 5). The death of Jackson, who was also in his prime, mirrors that of the young runner’s death, and highlights the theme of early death in the poem as well as the poet’s own life.
“The opening pages of chit chat, the reply to Time magazine, the celebrity-talk about Lowell, Macdonald, Goodman, the fierce competitiveness – all this tells us from the beginning that this is Mailer’s story” (Dickstein 149). By choosing to depict acts in which he took part and from his point of view Mailer is able to make the validity of his statements implicit – he actually saw what he is writing about. At the same time though, questions of how much Mailer’s bias is affecting the novel are raised. Mailer is able to address these questions of possible bias by making it exceedingly obvious when his bias is at play. As Hellmann notes, “Calling himself ‘the Novelist’ and self-consciously using the contrivances of novelistic form, Mailer makes us view the facts of his work as both reliable (in that we are fully shown their source in his firsthand observation) and doubtful (in that we are constantly reminded that they result merely from such observation)” (39).
Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm. “Godfather Death.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 12-13.
This essay will focus on the theme of death in this story. There are lot
Likewise, this journal discusses the mystery of death as depicted in the play Hamlet. In the repercussion of his dad 's death, Hamlet gets obsessed with the notion of demise. All through the play, he considers demise from awesome various perspectives. He supposes both the profound result of death, represented in the phantom and the substantial stays of the dead, like the decaying corpses in the cemetery. And since death in the play is the cause as well as the consequence of vengeance, then it is intimately tied to the subject of vengeance and justice.