In her article, writer on death and grief Debrah Oryzysyn throws light on the writings which

express grief, lamenting on death, death bereavement and death memoirs. In this article she
provides an analysis about the existing themes on death studies. Through the memoirs of
deceased she accentuates different writer has tried to develop the understand of their life. The
memoirs of individuals she has concerned for her article are either about their own life or about
their loved ones. She identifies how the convey grief, mourning, and lamenting about the certain
incidents of their life and death.

She encodes the memoirs written by Burman. From the memoir she infers death provides
meaning to life. As the author quotes life is tragedy filled with joy. I little incedent about the
death gave him insights to value life and an attitude of gratitude. Another memoir by Philip
Rose, Patrimony explores the relationship of father with his son, it expresses the writing of
honor, and writing for living and dead. Book about the death written by Herald Brodkey while he
was dying of AIDS provided him comfort and and the very idea of death provides creativity in
his writing Swimming in the Sea of death is a memoir of Susan Sontag about the life and death
of her mother.1 Another scheme of scholars Lander, Napier Fry, Brander and Acton envisage
diverse art forms can be used to engender love, hope and interaction with the dying and their
caregivers.2

The article does not provide historical perspective but instills wide understanding about the
lamenting and emotions associated with death through the contemporary writings. The scheme of
scholarship urges to utilize the understanding to study emotion in history.

In her article the social life of death Jonah Steinberg starts her article with a death scene of a
street boy on a railway station due to train accident. The boy who had no social legitimacy by
name, by kinliness, even in social eye died to train accident jonah suggests that train was only
the vehicle responsible for his death but actually the structural violence, alongside history,
poverty, social disintegration, landlessness are the factor responsible to bringing him in such a

1
Debra Oryzysyn (2014), Writers on Death and Grief, Death Studies, 38:10, 685-687, DOI:
10.1080/07481187.2013.869466

2
D. A Lander., S. D. Napier, B. F. Fry, H. Brander, & J. Acton, (2005). Memoirs of loss as popular education: Five
palliative caregivers remember through the healing art of hope and love. Convergence, 38(4), 121–139.
palace where he was called responsible for his own death. The social illegitimacy kinliness are
the factors which make the death of a street boy ungrievable. Through the death of the boy jonah
tries to identify the meaning of life of a street child whose death was an embodiment of an
observer’s experience of Indian poverty. According to her death reveal about the values assign
by society to life. The attitude of society towards the death of kinliness boy helps understanding
a general trend of society about social structure and social legitimacy. The scenario presents that
children are recognized with the primacy of kin absence for the formulation of self identity.
Death of kinliness who does not hold lineage is expected and acceptable by society. the
understanding of purity and pollution, binaries of space, place, and age matters in the time of
death of children.

Jonah suggests that the cosmologies of purity are imbricated with the economies of purity and
they share a blurry boundary. The incident of death and treat by the society provides a window to
analyze the assignation of roles by the society. The job of managing the corpse in Hindu society
is considered most impure jobs. By religion it is assigned for lowest caste to carry and handle the
corpses and rituals are done by the castes who are considered most polluted and impure. The
kinliness children were given the job to handle the corpse of boy and pollutedness was
considered a part of their life at the veracity of their age, economy and history. The children were
occupying a place which was demarcated as polluted and impure and the meanings were
assigned by the virtue of post-colonial and global political economies not birth ascribed statuses.
How the vagabonds were assigned this role of dealing the death? Jonah asserts that being the part
of demarcated domain, society marks them as pollutive and polluted and dealing death is their
domain. Children on the streets were occupants of domain of death and it corresponds to the
status of their life. This makes them feel that there is no difference between life and death for
them. Therefore the death of the boy was not grieve able by his followers but only lamentable.