Theme Of Death In Poetry

Death is inevitable. For some, obsessing over not knowing when and where it might occur can often drive them to insanity. However, for others, it is simply a transition into a more perfect eternal life. John Keats and Henry Longfellow portray the concept of dying in two distinct perspectives in their poems “When I Have Fears” and “Mezzo Cammin.” Despite differing viewpoints, they use techniques such as verse, verse form and language to portray the same theme: Death will occur at an unknown time and how a person chooses to cope will impact the rest of one’s life.

Death is a very dramatic period in a person’s life, but the loss of a wife can drive a man to depression or insanity. In the poem, “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, it talks about a unnamed man that is filled with heartbreak and sorrow as he grieves over the loss of his beloved wife named Lenore. Weary and weak; reading a book to get the thought of his lost love off his mind and nearly falling asleep. There came a tapping on his door, but he didn’t care much for it and just ignored it. However the tapping continued, and he couldn’t ignore the tapping no more.

However, her perseverance only extends to her plans for death. She furthers this by describing her "whorish heart". Her usage of "whorish" signifies frequent thoughts of death as a desirable outcome, though she still views it as an imperfect solution. Due to its substantial negative connotation, “whorish” also implies infidelity and irrational thought. Accordingly, the woman’s heart is the site of all her emotions, and holds great anguish due to being “ripped out” when the boy was born.

United Through Death Death is inevitable, an ever-looming presence that often scares children and adults alike. Try as one might, no one can ever escape death 's embrace. Sometimes, lives are cut too short, as in the case of Scotty in Raymond Carver 's A Small, Good Thing, and other times, people yearn to die, like Eber in the Tenth of December by George Saunders.

As a young child, Sek-Lung has difficulty understanding his grandmother’s speaking of death. He describes the moment it became clear she would die narrating, “I fell against her and cried, and there in my crying I knew she would die,” (Choy, 4) As the reader listens from Sek-Lung’s perspective, they can relate to either Grandmama, who greets death like an old friend, or Sek-Lung, who is beginning to grasp this new concept. Grandmama personifies death, saying, “That is my body fighting with Death. He is in this room now,” (4).While she describes it as a battle, she also seems to hold a sense of peace with the concept.

In ‘The Interlopers’ we see both Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz each wish the other to die, “as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other...”. As it would turn out, misfortune falls upon them both, fulfilling each man’s request in a twisted and ironic way that neither anticipated. ‘The Story of an Hour’ shows irony in another way. At the beginning, we are told that Louise Mallard’s husband has died and her friends fear that she might die from the shock of the news. However, at the end she does die of shock when she finds out that her husband has not died.

I also found that interesting because the sense of expecting death seemed to make Jonathan desperate. Throughout this section, he mentions that he is expecting death, and it seems like he prefers death over constantly waiting for it. Another passage where Stoker reveals Jonathan 's response to death is when he says, "He might kill me, but death now seemed the happier choice of evils" (Stoker, 59). I also think that this scene where he witnesses the woman begging for her child could serve as a reflection for Jonathan. Like the woman, Jonathan is clinging on to his last bit of hope, yet seeing the woman and realizing that there is no hope for either of them sort of makes him feel defeated.

Humans learn about the simplicity of their lives and how easy that life can end in a blink of an eye. The constant thought of death is crushing and makes life seem pointless. Humans start to realize that there is nothing they can do to truly escape death, and death starts to be a big part of their lives. It surrounds the world in all aspects of life. Truthfully, it is tough to go a day without seeing, hearing, or thinking about death.

Death occurs in many scenes throughout the book. Unfortunately, Liesel is surrounded by the most of it. Liesel started out her life with only her mother and brother. Her brother and her were traveling with their mother by train to be given over to foster parents because their mother didn’t have the ability to care for them anymore. On their way there,

What is vastly contrasting, however, are the results of this manipulation seen as each poem develops to form vastly divergent interpretations of death; Poe’s “Spirits of the Dead” grows turbulent and melancholic, while Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” becomes relaxed. Interestingly, however, the speaker of “Spirits of the Dead” eventually comes to terms with death and accepts the mystery that clouds it, and in the poem’s final moments, Poe employs a similar use of imagery to Dickinson in its tranquility. Furthermore, Poe’s abstract exploration of death is expressed not in a clear and logical “journey” as Dickinson’s is, where throughout, the speaker guides the audience through a consecutive sequence of events. Instead, Poe predominantly explores the psyche in reaction to mourning, an already deeply abstract approach that is not necessarily grounded in physical reality.