Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mrs. Scharf
APEL Period 2
13 March 2017
Death: the dark, closed door at the end of the illuminated tunnel of life. As the
clock inside a body ceases to tick, the time is up. What is left are the loved ones who
mourn over the lifeless corpses of the ones that they once knew, the ones that they
have now lost, the ones that they will forever cherish in their memories; they are now
the ones who rest in scattered, disintegrated remains or in bone piles in their graves. In
his letter, She Would Have Enjoyed It, George Bernard Shaw, however, breaks this
normality as he remains awed and unafraid by the cremation of his mother, yet his
overflowing affection felt towards her remains alive in his spirit despite the fact that she
is portrayed through the utilization of parallel structure in the beginning of his letter. To
open, Shaw states that people do not have the guts to watch a loved ones body face
the fury of the flames through the phrasing of: People think that that the door is the
door of the furnace... and People are afraid to see it... Shaw generalizes the usual
responses of people, as they are terrified, unwilling to face the reality of death and
typically feel the one-sidedness of grief that is bestowed upon them once death takes its
toll. He then refutes those general assumptions by adding on to the paralleled style,
transforming those complete phrases into periodic sentences with his own
isnt as horrific as everyone perceives it and even emphasizes the beauty of a velvet
coffin which makes its way into the plain little chamber of cement and firebrick.
Through the simplistic, casual diction of the chamber, this demonstrates that he is not
frightened like everybody else, but is intrigued and interested by the whole process of
transporting a body into it, not allowing this event to intimidate him. Shaw later explains
that there was No heat, no noise, no roaring draught, no flame [nor] no fuel spewing
out of the enclosed space, but it looked rather cool, clean [and] sunny. Unlike the
were a relaxing, tourist-infested vacation spot by Shaw. The oven created for engulfing
bodies allures him with its settle heat; the heat is even compared to ribbons of garnet,
making the cremation chamber unseemingly less demonic than the fires of hell. It is
sure that Shaw had now accepted the fact that his mother was gone by hiding his
intimate feelings of longing for her, but is joyful that her spiritual self will remain with him
even if her physical self will no longer be around. Through the use of parallel structure,
George Bernard Shaw is ready to accept the fate of his mother by admiring the