The Final Crossing Death and Dying in Literature

Han&Triplett_cpi_cb_DAEMRCH-DD.
QXD 8/3/2015 11:08 AM Page 1
Studies on
Triplett, eds.
Han and
Since ancient times, writers and poets have grappled with death, dying, grief, and
mourning in their works. The Final Crossing: Death and Dying in Literature compiles fifteen
Totifs
hemes and
in-depth, scholarly, and original essays on death and dying in literature from around
the globe and from different time periods. Written from a variety of critical perspec-
tives, the essays target both scholars and serious students. Death and dying is an
M iterature
important area of study for a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry,
in
sociology, gerontology, medical ethics, healthcare science, health law, and literary
studies. The Final Crossing is a landmark compendium of academic essays on death and
dying in literary texts, such as the Iliad, Hayy
. . ¯ Hamlet, The Secret Garden, and
ibn Yaqzan,
L
The Grapes of Wrath. This collection of essays not only brings an international flavor,
but also a unique angularity to the discourse on thanatology. The novelty of perspec-
tives reflects the diverse cultural and intellectual backgrounds of the contributors.
This diversity opens up a fresh conversation on a number of age-old questions related
to “the final crossing.” In this volume, readers will find an intriguing array of topics
The Final Crossing

for further reflection and research.
John J. Han is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Missouri Baptist Uni-
versity, where he also chairs the Humanities Division. He is the editor of Wise Blood:
A Re-Consideration (2011) and serves as editor of Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal
and Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal. His articles have appeared in many journals and
essay collections, such as Journal of Transnational American Studies, Literature and Belief,
The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck, Steinbeck Studies, and The Steinbeck Review. Author
of five haiku collections, he has also published poems in periodicals and anthologies
worldwide, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and World Haiku Review. He earned his
M.A. and his Ph.D. from Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska–
Lincoln, respectively.
C. Clark Triplett is Vice President for Graduate Studies and Academic Program
Review and Professor of Psychology/Sociology at Missouri Baptist University. He
The Final Crossing
earned an A.A. from Hannibal-LaGrange College, a B.A. from Southwest Baptist
University, an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, an M.S.Ed. from
Death and Dying in Literature

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis Univer-
sity. He also studied at Concordia Seminary, the University of Ulster in Northern Ire-
land, and the Harvard Institutes. A licensed counselor, he has published academic
articles and book reviews in Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal.
124 Edited by
John J. Han and C. Clark Triplett
PETER LANG
www.peterlang.com
Han&Triplett_cpi_cb_DAEMRCH-DD.QXD 8/3/2015 11:08 AM Page 1
Studies on
Triplett, eds.
Han and
Since ancient times, writers and poets have grappled with death, dying, grief, and
mourning in their works. The Final Crossing: Death and Dying in Literature compiles fifteen
Totifs
hemes and
in-depth, scholarly, and original essays on death and dying in literature from around
the globe and from different time periods. Written from a variety of critical perspec-
tives, the essays target both scholars and serious students. Death and dying is an
M iterature
important area of study for a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry,
in
sociology, gerontology, medical ethics, healthcare science, health law, and literary
studies. The Final Crossing is a landmark compendium of academic essays on death and
dying in literary texts, such as the Iliad, Hayy
. . ¯ Hamlet, The Secret Garden, and
ibn Yaqzan,
L
The Grapes of Wrath. This collection of essays not only brings an international flavor,
but also a unique angularity to the discourse on thanatology. The novelty of perspec-
tives reflects the diverse cultural and intellectual backgrounds of the contributors.
This diversity opens up a fresh conversation on a number of age-old questions related
to “the final crossing.” In this volume, readers will find an intriguing array of topics
The Final Crossing

for further reflection and research.
John J. Han is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Missouri Baptist Uni-
versity, where he also chairs the Humanities Division. He is the editor of Wise Blood:
A Re-Consideration (2011) and serves as editor of Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal
and Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal. His articles have appeared in many journals and
essay collections, such as Journal of Transnational American Studies, Literature and Belief,
The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck, Steinbeck Studies, and The Steinbeck Review. Author
of five haiku collections, he has also published poems in periodicals and anthologies
worldwide, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and World Haiku Review. He earned his
M.A. and his Ph.D. from Kansas State University and the University of Nebraska–
Lincoln, respectively.
Review and Professor of Psychology/Sociology at Missouri Baptist University. He
The Final Crossing
earned an A.A. from Hannibal-LaGrange College, a B.A. from Southwest Baptist
University, an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, an M.S.Ed. from

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis Univer-
sity. He also studied at Concordia Seminary, the University of Ulster in Northern Ire-
land, and the Harvard Institutes. A licensed counselor, he has published academic
articles and book reviews in Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal.
124 Edited by
PETER LANG
www.peterlang.com
The Final Crossing
Studies on Themes and Motifs
in Literature
Virginia L. Lewis, Edward T. Larkin, and Hugo Walter

General Editors
Vol. 124
This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series.

Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.
PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
The Final Crossing
Edited by
PETER LANG
New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin
Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The final crossing: death and dying in literature /
edited by John J. Han, C. Clark Triplett.
pages cm. — (Studies on themes and motifs in literature; v. 124)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Death in literature. 2. Grief in literature. 3. Loss (Psychology) in literature.
4. Mortality in literature. 5. Literature—History and criticism.
I. Han, John J., editor. II. Triplett, C. Clark, editor. III. Title: Death and dying in literature.
PN56.D4F56 809’.933548—dc23 2015014327
ISBN 978-1-4331-3015-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4539-1553-0 (e-book)
ISSN 1056-3970
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
© 2015 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com
All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
T able of Contents
Acknowledgments ��vii
Introduction ��1
Part One: Death as a Reflection of Cultural Meaning and Symbolism

Chapter One: Gravesites in the Stories of Herman Charles Bosman:
An Exploration of History, Memory, Ritual, Identity, and Landscape��9
Carol Leff
Chapter Two: “Mouthed Graves Will Give Thee Memory”: Burial Sites and
Poetic Immortality in Renaissance Verse�� 23
Colin Yeo
Chapter Three: Christian and Muslim Concepts of Death and the
Afterlife in Postmodern Agnostic Poetry�� 39
Marwan A. Nader and Myrna A. Nader
Part Two: Death as a Literary Device

Chapter Four: The End of Language? Representations and Effects of
Death and Dying in the Fiction of Julia Kristeva and Susan Sontag�� 57
Heather H. Yeung
vi | t able of contents
Chapter Five: Death as an Instrument for Social Criticism in

Young Italian Literature�� 71
Daniela Chana
Chapter Six: The Secret Garden at the Back of the North Wind: The Life and
Death Journey in Frances Hodgson Burnett and George MacDonald�� 87
John Pennington
Part Three: Those Left Behind
Chapter Seven: How Men Grieve: A Contemporary Allegory of the
Grieving Process in Sir Orfeo��101
Rebekah M. Fowler
Chapter Eight: Haunting and Melancholia: A Reading of the
Revenant in Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty”��115
Carolyn Ownbey
Chapter Nine: Those Left Behind: The Non-Endings of Primo Levi’s If
This Is a Man and Aharon Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss��127
Kelly Leavitt
Part Four: Death and Postmodernism
Chapter Ten: In The Driver’s Seat: Death and Isolation in
Muriel Spark’s Postmodern Gothic��139
Hannah Farrell
Chapter Eleven: Death and Dying as Literary Devices in Brite’s
Exquisite Corpse and Palahniuk’s Damned ��155
Claudia Desblaches
Chapter Twelve: “Stories Can Save Us”: Rewriting Death in
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried��171
Lori F. Smurthwaite
Part Five: Death as an Expression of Personal Experience
Chapter Thirteen: Tears and the Art of Grief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
James Brown
Chapter Fourteen: Quick and Long-Lasting: Death and Dying in
John Steinbeck’s Fiction��207
John J. Han
Chapter Fifteen: Death-Defying Women: Art and Transcendence in Cather ��221
Debra L. Cumberland
About the Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

About the Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the scholars who contributed their original essays for this
volume. Without their participation, collaboration, and gracious patience, this
book would not exist. Thanks are also due to Glory Castello, Abigail Crain, Rachel
Hayes, Rebecca Klussman, and Jessica Kostelic for proofreading and copyediting
service, and to Curtis McClain for assisting us with the page-setting of the whole
file. We express sincere gratitude to Dr. Ginny Lewis, our series editor, whose
meticulous reading of the final draft enhanced the quality of this book. It was also
a delight to work with the acquisitions editor at Peter Lang, Michelle Salyga, who
expertly guided us through the final process of publishing this volume. Finally, we
are grateful to Missouri Baptist University for its support of this project.
Introduction
john j . han and c . clark triplett
Death and dying is an important area of study in a variety of disciplines, including

psychology, psychiatry, sociology, gerontology, medical ethics, healthcare science,
health law, and literary studies. One of the modern pioneers in thanatology was
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004), a Swiss-American psychiatrist whose book
On Death and Dying (1969) famously presented the five stages of grief (denial,
anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Her model is now challenged, most
notably in Ruth Davis Konigsberg’s The Truth about Grief: The Myth of Its Five
Stages and the New Science of Loss (2011), yet Kübler-Ross’s book was a seminal
work that revolutionized the way we view the process of dying and bereavement.
The year 1970 saw the publication of two important journals on death and dy-
ing, Death Studies and OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, both of which are still
published. In the same year, Hannelore Wass (1926–2013), a German-American
scholar, began to teach death and dying at the University of Florida. These days,
almost all colleges, universities, and seminaries offer the course. The Association
for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC), which evolved from the Forum
for Death Education and Counseling, also meets on an annual basis.
However, the issue of death and dying is as old as human history. Throughout
the history of world literature, writers and poets have grappled with the issue of
human death and dying. Texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia evidence
early humans’ preoccupation with death. The Pyramid Texts (2464–2355 B.C.)
envision the afterlife of dead kings who fly into heaven and eat the gods. Death is
also a central theme of the Mesopotamian text The Epic of Gilgamesh (2700 B.C.–
c. 600 B.C.), in which the main character experiences shock and depression after
2 | john j . han and c . clark triple t t
the sudden death of his companion Enkidu. Gilgamesh realizes his own mortality,
seeks eternal life in vain, and is finally resigned to human destiny. Other ancient
texts—the Vedas, Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament, among others—address
the subject of death and dying with alacrity and courage.
Countless poets, fiction writers, dramatists, and nonfiction writers of the later
generations have also addressed death and dying in their works—sometimes as
a central issue, other times as a tangential issue. Nevertheless, it is inevitable for
a literary text to deal with death because it is an integral part of our human ex-
istence. Disparate works such as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485),
Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Siegfried Sassoon’s The Old Hunts-
man and Other Poems (1918), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), Ian
McEwan’s Atonement (2001), and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2006) testify to
the pervasiveness of the theme of death in literature.
Death has served as an important literary device for many texts. An obvious
example of this is the use of the elegy. Poems like Catullus’ (c. 84–54 BC) Carmen
101, Thomas Gray’s “An Elegy Written in the Country Church Yard” (1751), and
W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1939) use death as a tool for express-
ing sorrow and lamentation over someone’s departure from this world. Death as
a literary device is also exemplified in the death of heroes in tragic works, such as
Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (429 BC) and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601).
More recent examples include The Vampire Diaries, a vampire horror series of nov-
els by L. J. Smith.
In the Eastern world, many pre-modern poets in Japan, China, and Korea
composed poems mourning their own deaths. Japanese Death Poems Written by Zen
Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death (1986), compiled by Yoel Hoffmann,
illustrates the various emotions people experience during their last moments
on earth. In 2011, a similar collection appeared in the United States: Dreams
Wander On: Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness. Edited by California haiku poet
Robert Epstein, it compiles approximately 400 haiku, tanka, and longer verses
written by present-day English-language poets.
Recently, interest in death and dying has taken an even more somber turn.
This interest is reflected in the postmodern emphasis on the demise of the self-
articulated as “the death of the subject,” the “death of the author,” and the “termi-
nal identity.” This posthuman loss is expressed most acutely in the works of writers
such as Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan, 1959), William S. Burroughs (The
Soft Machine, 1961), John Barth (Giles Goat-Boy, 1966), Philip K. Dick (Do An-
droids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968), Samuel Beckett (The Lost Ones, 1970), and
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow, 1973), all of whom wrestle with the conse-
quences of the absorption of humanity into the technology machine. A number
of these authors apply cybernetic theory to the structure and style of their work.
The greater impact of the end of humanity in these works is the crumbling of the
foundations of truth and meaning.
i n t r o d u c t i o n | 3
As death and dying came to attract keen attention from various fields of
study, thanatologists have frequently turned to literature in their study of death
and the phenomena and practices related to it. Considering that death and dying
is a prominent theme, motif, and symbol in literature, it is no wonder that they
find literary works resourceful. Our aim in editing The Final Crossing: Death and
Dying in Literature was to collect scholarly essays on death and dying in literature
for those who might be interested in this fundamental but largely ignored topic in
literary studies. The current volume is a collection of seventeen original academic
essays on death and dying in world literature, including British and American
texts. Contributions come from scholars with a background in literature, cultural
studies, or humanities.
The essays are grouped in five thematic categories. Part One, “Death as a
Reflection of Cultural Meaning and Symbolism,” discusses the ways in which
death-related texts contain cultural and social meanings. In her study, Carol Leff
analyzes four short graveyard stories by Herman Charles Bosman. In Bosman’s
texts, graves symbolize memories from the past and thus serve as a means of ad-
joining people, time, place, and culture. Colin Yeo, on the other hand, focuses on
burial sites in early modern English poetry. He investigates the imagery of death
and its ability to produce feelings of grief, sadness, and melancholy in Renaissance
verse. Meanwhile, Marwan A. and Myrna A. Nader discuss Elizabeth Bishop’s
postmodern agnostic poetry on death in light of Christian and Muslim beliefs.
Bishop’s poem “Crusoe in England” echoes Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which
in turn was influenced by the twelfth-century Hayy ibn Yaqza-n by Ibn Tufayl.
Another poem, “The Man-Moth,” shows the influence of both Dante’s The
Divine Comedy and the eleventh-century Kitāb al-Mirāj (“Book of the Ascen-
sion”). The Naders emphasize that a common theme among religions is death as
a focus of existence.
In the second part of the volume, “Death as a Literacy Device,” three essays
examine death’s impact on a story’s outcome. Through her comparative study of
Julia Kristeva’s novel Possessions and Susan Sontag’s novel Death Kit, Heather H.
Yeung explores how death resides beyond the limits of the senses and of language.
Meanwhile, Daniela Chana investigates how death serves as an instrument for
social critique in young Italian fiction from the late 1990s. Based on the strange
brutality illustrated in stories such as Simona Vinci’s “In Every Sense Like Love,”
Chana argues that macabre images of death are often tools for criticizing restric-
tive morals or double standards in society. Another study, by John Pennington, dis-
cusses George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and Frances Hodgson
Burnett’s The Secret Garden with emphasis on their comparable representations of
death. In MacDonald’s text, which mixes fantasy and realism, death is not some-
thing to fear; indeed, there is more life in death. Likewise, Burnett’s realistic novel
represents death as something to embrace. Both authors create a luminal space in
which the living can interact with the dead.
Part Three, “Those Left Behind,” investigates the experiences of individu-

als whose lives are deeply impacted by death, as well as the coping mechanisms
to which they adhere. Rebekah M. Fowler, for instance, discusses the stages of
grief—as expounded by John Bowlby and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross—in Sir Orfeo,
a Middle English narrative poem. Fowler’s study reveals both the timelessness of
death’s emotional impact and the comfort of grief ’s eventual subsiding. Another
scholar, Carolyn Ownbey, takes a different route in her examination of melan-
cholia through Seamus Heaney’s poem “Casualty” (1979). In the poem, Heaney
reveals a psychological trauma caused by a loss of his acquaintance in sectarian vi-
olence; his pathological mourning appears as the only appropriate response to such
trauma. Ownbey explores this kind of interminable melancholia through Jacques
Derrida’s figure of the ghost and his engagement with the idea of mourning and
melancholia in general. Finally, Kelly Leavitt discusses the non-endings in Primo
Levi’s If This Is a Man (1947) and Aharon Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss
(1988). In addition to discussing two contrasting narrative approaches to survi-
vor texts, Leavitt’s study analyzes the problematic aspects of memory and trauma,
which are transferred from victimized author to text.
Essays in Part Four, “Death and Postmodernism,” approach death through
the eyes of the late twentieth-century movement. In her study, Hannah Farrell
explains how postmodern Gothic works, such as Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat,
differ from traditional Gothic writings in their treatment of death. In traditional
Gothic tales, death is an obstacle that must be overcome before the loved ones can
be reunited. In contrast, Spark’s novel shows that it is only by seeking death that
the protagonist forms significant personal relationships. Farrell notes that, over
time, the standards of romance and reality have substantially changed. In her study
of two postmodern novels, Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse (1996) and Chuck
Palahniuk’s Damned (2011), Claudia Desblaches provides an intriguing perspec-
tive on the role of death as taboo. After discussing the figures of death, the practice
of death, and the ways to handle death’s incomprehensibility, she concludes that
both novels invite readers to understand death as a gift—as a vivid entity to face
and embellish before we all perish. In the final essay of this part, Lori Smurthwaite
discusses how the blurred line between truth (memory) and fiction (imagination)
allows for a “story-truth” in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. Accord-
ing to Smurthwaite, indeterminacy in his novel reflects the postmodern assump-
tion that the truth of experience is fragmented and cannot be contained within a
single unified perspective or narrative.
In the final part of the volume, “Death as an Expression of Personal Expe-
rience,” three scholars explore the ways in which a text reflects its author’s, or a
character’s, personal experience with death. One contributor, James Brown, dis-
cusses the near universality and cultural specificity of mourning in Homer’s Iliad,
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary. The essay
i n t r o d u c t i o n | 5
considers the representation of tears and mourning in the three texts and explores
some problems relating to the public expression of emotion and the shaping of its
forms. Meanwhile, John J. Han focuses on John Steinbeck’s preoccupation with,
and intimate knowledge of, death and dying. As a humanist who does not believe
in the afterlife, Steinbeck advocates intense living, quick and painless death, and
euthanasia in his fiction and nonfiction. Han concludes that Steinbeck’s works are
a window into post-Christian fiction that approaches death and dying from a more
humanistic, less religious, angle. Finally, Debra L. Cumberland examines death in
Willa Cather’s fiction. Cather’s characters accept the inevitability of death; for her,
it was not so much about death, but about how life was lived. Characters in Cather
thus teach us more about how to live than how to die. Cather imbued the heroic in
her novel with a sense of vocation and purpose intended to provide meaning both
to themselves as well as to those around them; for Cather, defying death meant to
live fully and gloriously.
Dozens of scholarly books on death and dying already exist. However, the
majority of them are written by non-literary scholars who turn to literature as
an important medium for discussing death and dying as a sociological, psycho-
logical, and ethical issue. There are few book-length works on death and dying
in literature written for literary scholars and students. Leslie A. Field’s Love and
Death in the American Novel (Criterion Books, 1960; rev. Stein and Day, 1966) is
an early book-length work that partially discusses death in American fiction. In
1988, Marian S. Pyles published Death and Dying in Children’s and Young People’s
Literature: A Survey and Bibliography (McFarland). In addition to the author’s in-
troduction and a bibliography, the book includes six chapters: “Folklore,” “The
Death of a Pet,” “The Death of a Friend,” “The Death of a Relative,” “One’s Own
Death,” and “Conclusion.” Although the book is regarded as an important study of
thanatology in literature, it is limited to children’s and adolescent writing. Also, the
author’s discussions are focused exclusively on death as an expression of personal
experience.
The most recent critical contribution to the theme of death and dying in lit-
erature is the volume Death and Dying in Bloom’s Literary Themes series (Blooms
Literary Criticism, 2009). It is a collection of 20 essays that explore the motif of
death in such classic literary works as Farewell to Arms, Heart of Darkness, King
Lear, and Lord of the Flies, among others. Each writer examines not only how the
theme of death and dying reflects the particular cultural values of the time (such
as the fear of death and religious doubt of modernity), but also enduring and uni-
versal metaphors not bound by specific cultural categories that are often revealed
in great works. Although Bloom’s book is meaningful as the first compendium of
writings on death and dying in literature, the essays are of uneven lengths (any-
where between 3 and 23 pages), and many are reprints of previous publications,
one of which is from 1917. Almost all the texts under discussion are by American
or British authors; the only three non-Anglo-Saxon authors are Aeschylus,

Remarque, and García Márquez.
To the best of our knowledge, The Final Crossing: Death and Dying in Litera-
ture is the first compendium of original scholarly essays written by contemporary
academics. It uniquely compiles in-depth, original essays from around the world
and from all different time periods. This collection brings not only an internation-
al flavor, but also a unique angularity to the discourse on death and dying. The
plurality of perspectives reflects the diverse cultural contexts of the contributors.
This diversity opens up a fresh conversation on a number of ancient questions re-
lated to the final crossing. Readers will find an intriguing array of topics to ponder
for further thought and research.
This volume will interest not only literary scholars but also psychologists,
counselors, ministers, and other professionals who deal with thanatology. The lit-
erature on death and dying provides an important narrative framework for dis-
cussing the indescribable emotions related to the end of life. Authors who use the
metaphors of death and dying in their texts offer an emotional context for dis-
cussing the processes at the end of life. It is our hope that this volume will expand
discussions of the important mystery of death and dying—a topic that will never
cease to intrigue the human mind.
part one
Death as a Reflection of
Cultural Meaning and
Symbolism
chapter one
Gravesites in the Stories of

Herman Charles Bosman
An Exploration of History, Memory,
Ritual, Identity, and Landscape
carol leff
introduction
Herman Charles Bosman (1905–51) was a South African writer who wrote main-
ly in English about small-town Afrikaners. His short stories appeared regularly in
local literary periodicals and have more recently been published in edited collec-
tions of his works. Many of Bosman’s stories are situated within the South African
War1 period and its aftermath. Stories of death and burial occur repetitively in his
narratives, yet very little has been written about this aspect of Bosman’s oeuvre.
Burial sites in the selected stories that follow serve as repositories of memory and
history, and as presences in the South African landscape. The grave, as Gitte Pos-
tel explains, is “the tangible point where historical, geographical, economical, and
ritual time and space coalesce” (105). It is with reference to this definition that the
significance of death, burial, and mourning will be investigated in four of Bosman’s
stories in particular: “Veld Story” (2000 [posthumous]), “Brown Mamba” (1935),
“Funeral Earth” (1950), and “Unto Dust” (1949).
For each of the stories examined, the narration of burial or the significance
of death with regard to the story as a whole will be considered. What do family
graveyards in the South African veld signify on a deep, cultural level? What is loss?
What is lost? What remains? Who remembers? What is the abiding significance?
Questions such as these highlight a concern with Bosman’s gravesite stories as a
means of reinforcing a certain rootedness in history, with the gravesites serving
as repositories of memory. In the course of this analysis, several Bosman scholars
10 | c ar ol leff
and critics will be referenced, and reference to Sigmund Freud will also be made
where relevant.
Gravesites are indeed an important part of the South African landscape, mak-
ing possible a sense of connectedness between people, time, place, and culture.
These stories are relevant even today, as South Africa is a nation still struggling to
come to terms with the burdens of the past.
m o u r n i n g , m e l a n c h o l i a , a n d c r e at i v i t y
Why might gravesites be important in Bosman’s work? Bosman’s oeuvre displays

evidence that a concern with death remained with the writer throughout his life.
Valerie Rosenburg illustrates it thus in her biography on Bosman:
[…] there were other images and dreams which haunted Herman Bosman wherever he
was—the rain-washed gravestones with half obliterated names, the love he felt doomed to
pursue in the certain knowledge that he would never find her, and above all, the theme of
death that held him in thrall through a lifetime twisted by its presence. (36–37)
Irrespective of what some other critics might feel, Rosenberg’s comment is inter-
esting in that it illustrates just how much Bosman’s real life affected his creative
life. In her review of Rosenberg’s biography on Bosman, Cherry Clayton begins
thus:
Herman Charles Bosman was born in 1905 and died in 1951; he wrote a number of very
good short stories, some middling to good essays and many bad poems.
He killed his stepbrother, at least three or four, but probably more, unborn children, left
his second wife dying in hospital after aborting twins, accused her of causing trouble when
she ran away from the hospital to seek him out, and possibly was responsible for the death
of his first wife after yet another abortion.
He was also a liar, sometimes using reports of being dead or dying to extract money from
his family, so that his ‘favourite’ uncle died grieving for his lost nephew. (Gray 75)
Clayton’s summary is a harsh rendering of Bosman’s life, although it makes for

interesting reading. The presence of death appeared to be constant in the life of a
man who did not purposely seek it out. In Bosman’s case, the influence of death
produced not melancholia, but creativity, and this is partly what gave rise to the
abundance of stories written by him.
In his essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud writes that “mourning is
regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some ab-
straction which has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal
and so on” (243). It will be evident how the selected Bosman stories deal with
loss and mourning of those very “abstractions” just listed. María Melgar, in her
g r avesites in the stories of h e r ma n c h a r l es b o s ma n | 11
essay “Mourning and Creativity,” suggests that although Freud did not discuss
the “relationship between mourning and creativity,” “unresolved mourning” does
indeed have positive effects that do “stimulate creativity” (110). It is possible that
Bosman’s “unresolved mourning” in his own life was instrumental in providing
a stimulus for his creativity, which is illustrated in the narration of lives lost and
mourned in his stories.
“veld story”
In the introduction to the collection Old Transvaal Stories, Craig MacKenzie

comments on Bosman’s “sustained exploration of the morbid” by saying that he
“was not blind to the dark underside of life on the platteland ” (14). As is seen in
many of Bosman’s stories, and specifically in the four stories discussed here, what
many regard as “morbid” is actually fascinating for Bosman. One such story, “Veld
Story,” which appears in the above-mentioned collection, is quite possibly a tell-
ing in Bosman’s own voice (as he does not use his usual narrator, Oom Schalk
Lourens, nor any other narrator). Bosman begins the story by stating that
[t]here is a fascination about old cemeteries of the kind that are dotted about the South
African veld, family graveyards at the foot of koppies; small plots for burial grounds that
were laid out during the past century, in the old days when amongst the harnesses and riems
and trek-chains in the wagon-house, or by the side of the sacks of mealies in the grain shed
there was always, on every farm, ready for use in emergency, a coffin. (83)
It is interesting that Bosman presents the cemeteries here as part of a pastoral

landscape, in which “the harnesses and riems and trek-chains” or the “sacks of
mealies” lived alongside “a coffin” (83).
In many of Bosman’s stories that feature gravesites, the surrounding bush and
shrubbery are often described, and it is the oleander that features prominently in
this text. This plant, in Latin Nerium Oleander, is also known as the “selon’s rose,”
which—although beautiful—is deadly, and thus is well-suited to a cemetery.
In “Veld Story,” Bosman depicts the graveyard on a farm that originally
belonged to the van Heerden family, and he ponders their forgotten history,
since the van Heerdens have not lived in that area for many years. He goes on
to describe jars, vases, and urns that are lying in the graveyard—items that “held
a peculiar fascination because they belonged to an irrevocable past,” (84) that
is, a past that is not only irreversible but also irretrievable. When Bosman won-
ders about how these decorative items had previously been used, there is also a
yearning for a lost past. For instance, there is a bowl he describes that had “no
doubt graced the sideboard of a dining room some three-quarters of a century
before” (84).
12 | c ar ol leff
Bosman wonders about some of the graves that he encounters in the cemetery,
where several tombstones all “bore the same date,” and he notes that “seven mem-
bers of the same family had all died within the same fortnight” (85). He writes,
I wondered what had happened. How had they all come to die? It must have caused a stir
in these parts, many years ago, an entire family dying out like that, within so short a period
of time. It was something that must still be talked about, on winter’s evenings when, the
day’s work done, people sat around the open fireplace in the kitchen and talked of strange
things. (85)
The story relates that “the whole family had died of enteric” and the father “had
trekked away” (85). Since the van Heerden graves are those of a mother and her
six children, the reader is left wondering how it was that only the father survived.
What might have happened? This question is echoed within the short story enti-
tled “1899” written by Olive Schreiner. In the story, Schreiner tells the tale of two
women who died in short succession, the older woman dying first and the younger
dying shortly afterwards, having taken care of the former until her death. The
reason for the younger woman’s death is uncertain, but after the two were found,
they were buried side by side: “there is no stone and no name upon either grave to
say who lies there […] our unknown […] our unnamed […] our forgotten dead”
(179). This preoccupation with memory and honoring the past is one that haunts
many writers, as witnessed in the works of both Schreiner and Bosman.
In “Veld Story,” Bosman seems to be suggesting that history is at risk of being
forgotten. The longing to understand what happened to the van Heerden family
is a universal longing; it is a desire to unearth a lost history and to preserve the
stories for future generations. Alas, there is very little that remains to tell the story
of the van Heerden graveyard other than Bosman’s own account. The final two
paragraphs of the story describe the family graveyard once again:
On the way back I repassed the graveyard. I also found the place where I judged the Van
Heerden homestead had been. And some distance away was a spring, choked with gaudily
coloured weeds and long thick grass of a brilliant green. A donga dense with all sorts of
vegetation, blue lobelia and river reeds and rushes and kweekgras and yellow gazanias. And
in this muddy water, slowly flowing towards the dam where there are wild ducks, must have
been bred the enteric germ which half a century ago caused seven new mounds to be raised
in the barbed-wire enclosure besides the unpruned oleander.
Red and pink buphane also grows by the side of the donga that leads from the spring to
the dam. (86)
This is how Bosman’s story ends. It is interesting that poisonous plants, like the
oleander, thrive in the choked, muddy spring. A silent, unseen danger lurks in the
spring—the very spring from which the van Heerden family drew their water. Iron-
ically, gazanias were traditionally used to treat sickly babies. Lobelia, an alien plant
brought in to South Africa by early European settlers, is also known by several
other names: “pokeweed,” “emetic weed,” “vomitwort,” and “gagroot.” This plant
was traditionally used to induce vomiting in those who had accidentally ingested
poison.2 Boophane Disticha (or “buphane” in the story) is also known as “bushman
poison bulb,” a plant that was used traditionally to poison arrows and mummify
remains. The fact that Bosman mentions all these plants by name suggests that he,
like the people of the land about whom he writes, knew well how previous gen-
erations used plants medicinally, which is why he notes that in this “muddy water
[…] must have been bred the enteric germ” (86). Enteric bacteria are germs that
cause gastric complaints such as food poisoning. Given this reading of the text, the
ending leaves the reader with a disquieting sense, and many questions linger con-
cerning what really might have happened to the family in “Veld Story.”
“brown mamba”
In her biography on Bosman, Rosenberg mentions the writer’s early impressions

of the Marico. In 1926, Bosman wrote the following about the snakes of that area:
There is one thing I don’t like about Marico, and that is snakes. There are no fewer than
eight species […] and if ever you are bitten by one and they don’t apply antidotes immedi-
ately, there’s only half-an-hour between you and the funeral parlour. There is less, even, if
the undertaker is at all quick about it. Yet the farmers are incredibly callous in this matter.
They leave their doors open at night; they lie down just anywhere in the long grass; and
they even put their hands into dark tool-cupboards. […] (qtd. in Rosenberg 38)
In the above lines, it appears that Bosman made light of the dangers of snakes,
yet his story “Brown Mamba,” which first appeared in 1935 in The South African
Opinion and more recently in Craig MacKenzie’s collection Mafeking Road, gives a
rather different impression. This chilling tale relates a frightening encounter with
a deadly snake:
But when a man is bitten by a mamba it is different. Then it is the Lord’s will that a prayer
should be said over his open grave, and that a hymn should be sung before the hole in the
veld is covered up again with the red earth. (82)
Here the image of the open grave in the veld is powerful. The sense of human
connectedness to the land is imbued with sacredness, and the pathos that is recog-
nizable in much of Bosman’s work is evident. This sense is immediately undercut
with a critique on racism a few lines further on, when “the two white men stood by
while the kaffirs3 dug the grave” (82). Death and burial are narrated in this story as
a solemn occasion, yet Piet Uys appears casual and callous throughout:
To Hendrik van Jaarsveld his companion’s words sounded harsh and grating. He wished
Piet would keep quiet. Like the kaffirs. They knew that death was a solemn thing. And
14 | c ar ol leff
the veld knew it too. The veld was still—very still. Always the veld is still in the presence
of death. (83)
What is interesting in this passage is how Bosman connects the “kaffirs” to the
“veld” with regard to the solemnity of death. The implication here is that Hendrik
prefers the company of the kaffirs to that of his own people during such a solemn
occasion. Hendrik continues to feel irritated by Piet, whose words “sounded harsh
and grating” (83), and he is soon overcome by a feeling of disquiet:
Suddenly Hendrik grew afraid. It was a vague fear he couldn’t understand. But it made him
feel very lonely. He seemed to be alone under the sky with the dead herdsman. The corpse
and he seemed to be alone together. Piet and the kaffirs were apart from him somehow.
He remembered having had that same feeling once before when he had shot a ribbok. […]
It was then that that strange feeling came to him, a feeling of intimacy and understanding
with the dead ribbok. Now, when he was standing over the herdsman and getting ready to
lower him into the grave, that queer sense of companionship with the dead came to him
again. It was frightening. (83)
This passage highlights Hendrik’s fear, a fear that he is unable to comprehend, a

strange fear that makes him feel alone and alien and yet at the same time intimate-
ly connected with nature. This fear immediately brings to mind Freud’s sense of
the “uncanny”4 as described in his essay of the same title:
The subject of the “uncanny” is a province of this kind. It is undoubtedly related to what
is frightening—to what arouses dread and horror; equally certainly, too, the word is not
always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to coincide with what excites fear
in general. (219)
Further on in his essay, Freud writes that “an uncanny effect is often and easily
produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when
something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in real-
ity” (244). In Bosman’s story, Hendrik experiences exactly this sensation of some-
thing both strange and familiar; it is as though he imagines and creates his reality,
as though he has a premonition of his own impending death. As will be evident
later, there are other instances in this story where the sense of Freud’s “uncanny,”
or unheimlich, is prevalent.
Bosman depicts Afrikaners generally as being very religious, and prayer is
important to them as illustrated in the following passage:
The white men stood together on one side of the grave. The kaffirs crowded together in a
bunch on the other side. They were all bare-headed. Piet Uys did not pray long.
“Amen,” Hendrik said when Piet had finished.
“Amen,” the kaffirs said after him, self-conscious on account of their unfamiliarity with
the white man’s burial rites. They were Bechuanas, and had a different way of disposing of
the dead. (84)
Uncharacteristically, Piet “did not pray long,” and there is an allusion to his casual
attitude regarding burial rites. Hendrik and the “kaffirs,” however, continue to be
more respectful than Piet. It is worth noting here that traditionally, the manner
in which the Bechuanas5 would bury their dead was by placing them in a sitting
position in their graves, facing the sunrise, and mourners would throw the chyme
of a slaughtered ox into the grave (Setiloane 68). Plants like acacia and mealies
were also sometimes strewn into the grave. The Bechuana, or Tswana people, are
strongly connected to the earth, and many have an expert knowledge of plants—
in particular, indigenous medicinal plants. Bosman writes of this in other sto-
ries such as “Veld Story,” discussed earlier, as well as “Funeral Earth,” as will be
seen later.
Plants and trees appear constantly in Bosman’s landscape. Despite this, the
Marico bushveld is also painted as being inhospitable, with extremes of weather
and dangerous wildlife. Even in the short time that Bosman lived in the area, he
acknowledged the power of the landscape, and this is illustrated in the following
“uncanny” description when again, alone, Piet feels frightened:
The Marico was an unhealthy place to be in, he reflected. The sun and the stones and the
thorn-trees. It was maddening. Nothing but thorn-trees and stones and the sun. It was a
good country to come to once in a while. But you hadn’t to stay long. And you must have
company. (85–86)
This harsh landscape is both alien and familiar to Piet and Hendrik. Yet, despite
the familiarity of the same “sun and stones and the thorn-trees” listed above, once
again Freud’s “uncanny,” or unheimlich, is apparent as being “something which is
secretly familiar [heimlich-heimisch], which has undergone repression and then re-
turned from it” (245). It is this very notion of the unheimlich that Bosman evokes
in “Brown Mamba” when Hendrik decides he might even try to talk to Piet about
the uncanny, “queer feeling” which he continues to experience.
This “queer feeling” is part of the mysterious quality of the veld which is, ac-
cording to Davis, a projection of the characters’ deepest anxieties and insecurities
when they find themselves alone in it, and what induces the uncanny fear “lies not
in the veld so much as in oneself ” (60). Not only does Hendrik experience the “un-
canny” whilst out in the veld, but the reader of “Brown Mamba” experiences the
“uncanny” in two ways whilst reading the story. Firstly, the final paragraphs of the
story make the reader wonder momentarily whether or not Hendrik is still alive.
Freud, once again, quoting Jentsch, writes as follows:
In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is
to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being
or an automaton, and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon
his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.
(227, emphasis mine)
16 | c ar ol leff
This “uncertainty” is evoked in the last paragraphs of “Brown Mamba” with the
use of several words that Bosman repeats, such as “funny,” “stranger still,” and
“queer.” Secondly, readers experience the “uncanny” themselves because the mere
thought of death is an unheimlich one, an uncanny thought. Freud hypothesizes
that “many people experience the feeling in the highest degree in relation to death
and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts” (241). This
feeling is certainly evidenced in Bosman’s story.
The final paragraphs of “Brown Mamba” make the reader wonder momentar-
ily whether or not Hendrik is still alive. Bosman ingeniously allows the reader to
witness Hendrik’s frightening experience of the snake attack as he dies. Yes, the
mamba does get the better of Hendrik.
“funeral earth”
“Funeral Earth” was published in 1950, in Vista, a magazine of the University

of the Witwatersrand. It has since been published in a collection by Craig MacK-
enzie, entitled Unto Dust and Other Stories. The action of “Funeral Earth” takes
place near Abjaterskop, where the Mtosas surrendered to the conquering Boers.
The story is related by Oom Schalk and begins as follows:
We had a difficult task, that time (Oom Schalk Lourens said), teaching Sijefu’s tribe of
Mtosas to become civilised. But they did not show any appreciation. Even after we had set
fire to their huts in a long row round the slopes of Abjaterskop, so that you could see the
smoke almost as far as Nietverdiend, the Mtosas remained just about as unenlightened as
ever. (108)
Bosman’s tongue-in-cheek style is delightful, and the irony of these opening lines
is loaded with clever political comment. Before the Anglo-Boer or South African
War, battles had raged for several decades between Africans and Boers, and the
struggle was over land. It is this agrarian war that is central to the “Funeral Earth”
story, a war which in the narrative illustrates the farcical nature of the unrest be-
tween the “skilful kaffir-fight[ing]” Boers (109) and the “ignorant” Mtosas (110).
However, as the story progresses and reaches its climax, it becomes evident that
Bosman views both the Boers and the Mtosas as people of the earth:
“I can smell a whole row of assegais with broad blades and short handles,” Fanie Louw said.
“The stabbing assegai has got more of a selon’s rose sort of smell about it than a throwing
spear. The selon’s rose that you come across in graveyards.” (108)
The “selon’s rose” is the oleander, mentioned earlier in “Veld Story.” Although
deadly, it is used even today as a decorative plant throughout South Africa.6 While
the sense of death is pervasive even early on in this story, Bosman lightens the tone
with his wry sense of humor when the impertinent Fanie Louw says “maybe we
should even go back to Pretoria to see if the Mtosas aren’t perhaps hiding in the
Volksraad […] passing laws and things. You know how cheeky a Mtosa is” (109).
He continues in this vein with a purposely misogynistic comment: “for that reason
we took our guns in our hands and stood waiting. Since it was women, we were
naturally prepared for the lowest form of treachery” (110). Here Bosman seems to
suggest that men should not trust women, an idea that today would not be met
with approval. The fact that it is women, and not men, who arrive carrying clay
pots of earth, is interesting; traditionally, women are connected to the earth and
symbolize fertility, beginnings, and growth. Further in the story, it is made clear
that nurturing the soil is important for growth and for the sowing of seed:
Ndambe gave another signal. A woman with a clay pot on her head rose up from the kneel-
ing column and advanced towards us. We saw then that what she had in the pot was black
earth. It was wet and almost like turf-soil. We couldn’t understand what they wanted to
bring us that for. As though we didn’t have enough of it, right there where we were stand-
ing, and sticking to our veldskoens, and all. And yet Ndambe acted as though that was the
most precious part of the peace offerings that his chief, Sijefu, had sent us. (110)
This “turf-soil” is not only fertile and good for the sowing of seed, but it is also
what connects men, what bonds them, both black and Boer. Despite this natural
bond between cultures, however, wars still continue and, eventually, Fanie Louw
is killed:
He did stop, and for ever, in a skirmish near a blockhouse. We buried him in the shade of
a thorn-tree. We got ready to fill in his grave, after which the commandant would say a
few words and we would bare our heads and sing a psalm. As you know, it was customary
at a funeral for each mourner to take up a handful of earth and fling it in the grave. (111)
Throwing earth into a grave is a burial custom employed by many different cul-
tures. The connection with the earth prevails, and the dead always return to the
soil. Furthermore, Bosman seems to be making a comment about a longing for the
South African earth, a longing common to many people to return to the natural
way of living in harmony with nature:
When Kommandant Joubert stooped down and picked up his handful of earth, a strange
thing happened. And I remembered that other war, against the Mtosas. And we knew—
although he would not say it—what was not that longing in the hearts of each of us. For
Kommandant Joubert did not straightway drop the soil into Fanie Louw’s grave. Instead,
he kneaded the damp ground between his fingers. It was as though he had forgotten that
it was funeral earth. He seemed to be thinking not of death, then, but of life. (111–12)
This is, as Rebecca Davis says in her dissertation, “a longing to stop the spilling of
blood on the soil and to re-commence the saving of seed in it; a desire to reclaim
the ground as a locus of life and growth rather than death and destruction” (93).
18 | c ar ol leff
This interpretation can be extended to include the idea of woman representing

fertility and peace as opposed to man representing blood and war.
“unto dust”
The idea of reclaiming the earth as a living landscape links with the story “Unto
Dust.” “Unto Dust” was first published in 1949, appearing at a time when South
Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan was introducing apartheid policies. In 1949,
the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act came into being, and, in 1950, the Group
Areas Act was introduced. It was thus a time in South African history when so-
called “separate development” between races was being named. “Unto Dust” be-
gins with a touch of pathos: “I have noticed that when a young man or woman
dies, people get the feeling that there is something beautiful and touching in the
event, and that it is different from the death of an old person” (49). Before the
narrative becomes too sentimental, the line is quickly followed in the second para-
graph with light humor: “But when you have grown old, nobody is very much
interested in the manner of your dying. Nobody except you yourself, that is” (49).
Oom Schalk narrates the story about the impossibility of telling the difference
between two men after they are dead. Hans Welman had been killed when the
Boer commando of which he was a part walked into an ambush. Later on, wit-
nesses saw a black man with a yellow dog stripping Hans’s body. This act provoked
Stoffel to shoot the black man and then flee. When the group of Boers returned to
the scene some months later, the yellow dog still slinked about the site, and they
were unable to correctly identify the two bodies.
Schalk recalls how, feverish with malaria, he saw the world as “a big burial
ground”:
Once, during the malaria season in the Eastern Transvaal, it seemed to me, when I was in
a high fever and like to die, that the whole world was a big burial-ground. I thought it was
the earth itself that was a grave-yard, and not just those little fenced-in bits of land dotted
with tombstones, in the shade of a Western Province oak tree or by the side of a Transvaal
koppie. This was a nightmare that worried me a great deal, and so I was very glad, when I
recovered from the fever, to think that we Boers had properly marked-out places on our
farms for white people to be laid to rest in, in a civilized Christian way, instead of having
to be buried just anyhow, along with a dead wild-cat, maybe, or a Bushman with a clay pot,
and things. (49–50)
Oom Schalk is not so much afraid of death per se, but rather of losing his identity
and of being regarded the same, perhaps, as a “Bushman.” When he is gone, he
wants to be remembered for who he was. Furthermore, the importance of histo-
ry and landscape are paramount, as we see when Stoffel Oosthuizen tells Oom
Schalk that he can go look at Hans Welman’s tombstone anytime: “The slab of
red sandstone is weathered by now, of course, seeing how long ago it all happened.
But the inscription is still legible. I was with Hans Welman on that morning when
he fell” (50). Thereafter, Stoffel relates historically what had happened. This has
bearing on what was mentioned earlier: the importance of death in history and the
grave becoming part of the landscape. In the few lines quoted above, it can be seen
that the inscription on the tombstone is what renders history visible and validates
the past. The tombstone itself, placed on the grave, is something tangible embed-
ded in the natural landscape. History, then, is rooted in the earth and remembered
by anyone reading the tombstone inscription.
This mixture of pathos and humor serves to highlight a very real issue. It is
only what remains, such as the bones, that gives the reader an idea of what has
been lost. While the bones are hard evidence that lives have been lost, it is not
obvious to whom the bones belonged:
[…] there was a heap of human bones, with here and there leather strips of blackened flesh.
But we could not tell which was the white man and which the kaffir. To make it still more
confusing, a lot of bones were missing altogether, having no doubt been dragged away by
wild animals into their lairs in the bush. Another thing was that Hans Welman and that
kaffir had been just about the same size. (51)
A party of men spent the whole afternoon sorting out the bones and putting what
they hoped belonged to Hans Welman in a coffin to be carted away and buried
in the cemetery on the Welman family farm: “Alive, you couldn’t go wrong in
distinguishing between a white man and a kaffir. Dead, you had great difficulty
telling them apart” (52). Despite highlighting cultural differences, Bosman’s story
illustrates that the Boer and the kaffir rest in the same soil, and their bones remain
impossible to differentiate.
a handful of earth
Four of Bosman’s short stories—“Veld Story,” “Brown Mamba,” “Funeral Earth,”

and “Unto Dust”—were referenced in order to investigate the significance of
death, burial, and mourning in Bosman’s oeuvre. Gravesites in these stories are
part of the landscape, making possible a sense of connectedness between people,
time, place, and cultures. Bosman’s narratives relating to gravesites highlight the
importance of history in the formation of identity, providing an insight into past
histories that continue to shape identity. Olive Schreiner, at the turn of the last
century, wrote in An English South African’s View of the Situation:
Bury us among the kopjes where we played when we were children, and let the iron stones
and red sand cover us. Is it strange that wherever we live we all want to go home to die; and
that the time comes when we know that dearer far to us than fame or success is one little
handful of our own red South African earth? (7)
20 | c ar ol leff
Something reminiscent of this idea was evident in Bosman’s “Funeral Earth” story.
Standing at the side of a grave, one might experience a strange feeling, similar to
being at home in the wilderness yet not always feeling completely comfortable
with it. “Reading” the landscape is akin to deciphering history, for the graves situ-
ated physically in the land tell a story themselves. While it is not possible to restore
what has been lost, it is still possible to remember.
Herman Charles Bosman, who was born in 1905, died on October 14, 1951,
and lies buried in Westpark Cemetery in a suburb in the outskirts of Johannes-
burg. A triangular headstone on his grave reads simply in Afrikaans and English:
Die Skrywer / The Writer
Herman Charles Bosman
b 5.2.1905 d 14.10.1951
The universe, like the author whose stories live on, has an “uncanny” sense of
humor, as Herman Charles Bosman died the year after his story “Funeral Earth”
was published.
south afric an english terms quoted or used
The source for definitions given below is Jean Branford (1980), listed in Works
Cited.
• assegai: spear, either short, for stabbing, as introduced by Shaka for the Zulu
armies, or long, for throwing, usually with an iron blade: used from earliest
times by Africans both in hunting and war.
• boer: An Afrikaner, a farmer, or a fighter on the Republican side in either of
the Anglo-Boer wars.
• donga: a usually dry, eroded watercourse running only in times of heavy rain.
• kaffir, kaffer: an abusive means of address (now actionable) or reference to a
black person.
• koppie: a hillock, flat topped or pointed, a common feature of the South
African veld.
• kopje: Dutch form of koppie.
• kweekgras: a name generally applied to any of several lawn or pasture grasses
referring to their habit of growth.
• mealies: maize, Indian corn.
• platteland: the country districts, rural areas.
• ribbok, rhebuck: either of two species of small South African antelope.
• riem: a thong of softened raw hide used for numerous purposes instead of
rope, tethering domestic animals, leading oxen, etc.
• veld: The South African countryside, landscape, etc.

• velskoen: any type of rough suede ankle-boot or shoe usu. with a light rubber
sole.
notes
1. The South African War (1899 and 1902), a conflict between Boer and Briton which included
black South Africans, was formerly known as the Anglo-Boer War.
2. Source: http://www/naturalhealthcourses.com/Reading?Room/lobelia.htm.
3. This now derogatory term was in Bosman’s time used to refer to black African peoples of
Southern Africa.
4. The German word, translated by the English “uncanny,” is unheimlich, literally “unhomely.”
5. The word “Bechuana” is old southern dialect for the “Tswana” people.
6. Urban legends abound in Johannesburg environs of people becoming violently ill at braais (bar-
becues) where twigs and branches from the oleander tree have been used on the fire prior to
cooking meat.
works cited
Note: For ease of reference, where Bosman’s stories have been published in one or more anthologies, the
first publication details are followed by an abbreviation of whichever collection they are cited from (MR—
Mafeking Road and Other Stories; OTS—Old Transvaal Stories; and UD—Unto Dust and Other Stories).
Bosman, Herman Charles. “Brown Mamba.” The South African Opinion 1.14 (May 1935): 8–9. Print.
MR.
———. “Brown Mamba.” Mafeking Road and Other Stories. Ed. Craig MacKenzie. Cape Town:
Human & Rousseau, 1998. 82–86. Print.
———. “Funeral Earth.” Vista 1950. 62–65. Print. UD
———. “Funeral Earth.” Unto Dust and Other Stories. Ed. Craig MacKenzie. Cape Town: Human &
Rousseau, 2002. 108–12. Print.
———. “Unto Dust.” Trek Feb. 1949. Print. UD
———. “Unto Dust.” Unto Dust and Other Stories. Ed. Craig MacKenzie. Cape Town: Human &
Rousseau, 2002. 49–52. Print.
———. “Veld Story.” Old Transvaal Stories. Ed. Craig MacKenzie. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau,
2000. 83–87. Print.
Branford, Jean. A Dictionary of South African English. Cape Town: Oxford UP, 1980. Print.
Davis, Rebecca. “Unstable Ironies: Narrative Instability in Herman Charles Bosman’s ‘Oom Schalk
Lourens’ Series.” Rhodes University, 2006. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works
of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. 243–58. Print.
———.“The Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
ed. James Strachey. Vol. 17 (1917–1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works. New York:
Norton, 1976. Print.
22 | c ar ol leff
Gray, Stephen, ed. Herman Charles Bosman. Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Print.
MacKenzie, Craig. Introduction. Old Transvaal Stories. Ed. Craig MacKenzie. Cape Town: Human
& Rousseau, 2000. 9–15. Print.
Melgar, María. “Mourning and Creativity.” On Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia.” Ed. Leticia Gloer
Fiorini, Thierry Bokanowski, and Sergio Lewkowicz. London: Karnac Books, 2009. Print.
Postel, Gitte. “The Unsettling Side of Death: Post-Colonial Irony in Bosman’s ‘Unto Dust.’” Safundi
9.2 (2008): 193–205. Print.
Rosenberg, Valerie. Sunflower to the Sun. Pretoria: Human & Rousseau, 1976. Print.
Schreiner, Olive. “1899.” South Africa: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. Ed. Isabel Balseiro and Tobias
Hecht. Berkeley, CA: Whereabouts Press, 2009. 142–81. Print.
———. An English South African’s View of the Situation. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1899.
Print.
Setiloane, Gabriel M. The Image of God among the Sotho-Tswana. Rotterdam: Balkema, 1976. Print.
chapter two
“Mouthed Graves Will

Give Thee Memory”
Burial Sites and Poetic Immortality
in Renaissance Verse
colin yeo
introduction
A person’s tomb or grave serves as a marker of the individual’s existence on earth.

To those still living, burial sites serve as material reminders of a deceased person’s
time among the living. Graves and tombs remain in the material world long after
an individual’s passing, and serve as testaments to an individual’s existence. Burial
sites also serve as ideal motifs for poets to reflect on the subject of death and the
transience of life. In eighteenth-century England, a group of poets became known
for their verses that were centered on the locale of burial sites.
The subject of these poets’ work meditated extensively on death and the tran-
sience of life set against backdrops of graves and tombs. As Edward Young writes
in Night Thoughts (1742–45),
How populous? How vital, is the Grave!
This is Creation’s melancholy Vault,
The Vale funeral, the sad Cypress gloom! (115–17)
Young’s attention to the image of the grave outlines the poet’s fascination with the
burial site. Functioning as emotional anchors, the imagery of burial sites offered
a means for these poets to explore emotions such as grief, sadness, and melan-
choly in their poetic verses. Elements such as the usage of burial imagery and a
strand of self-reflectivity were characteristics of the “Graveyard School.” As a con-
sequence, the unofficial moniker of “Graveyard Poets” became attached to these
24 | colin yeo
poets. Young’s Night Thoughts, Robert Blair’s The Grave (1743), and Thomas
Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard (1751) are some works authored by this un-
official “school” of poets. For the Graveyard Poets, individual subjectivity was of
the utmost importance, as they often communicated their meditations on the sub-
ject of death in an introspective, reflective manner. As Thomas Parnell reflects in
A Night Piece on Death (1721–22):
And think, as softly-sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,
“Time was, like thee they life possest,
And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.” (25–28)
The horrors of death and the realization of man’s mortality invoked poetic re-
sponses in the works of the Graveyard Poets, individualistic responses which rev-
eled in gloom and melancholy.
While the Graveyard Poets were known for their introspective meditations
on the subject of mortality, these conversations had been going on long before
their efforts. In his essay Three Notes on Graveyard Poetry, Robert Aubin proposes
that the work of poet James Wright, published in 1697, anticipates the Graveyard
School. In Wright’s verses, we can trace some identifiable characteristics of Grave-
yard verse: a first-person, contemplative, poetic voice, and a reference to the locale
of a burial site. Aubin’s citation of Wright’s verses as a precursor to the Graveyard
School brings into question the categorization of Graveyard Poetry as a uniquely
eighteenth-century poetic “movement” (103). Samantha Matthews proposes,
The poet’s grave was a consistently fascinating subject for poets themselves; it symbolises
creativity terminated, authors becoming anonymous, compositions decomposing; but also
creativity immortalized, authors being commemorated, compositions resurrected. (12)
This essay explores the persistence of burial imagery in a time period that precedes
the eighteenth century. My interest in this essay is with the early modern period:
examination of how the imagery of burial sites was utilized in lyrical poems writ-
ten in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Poets of the Renaissance
were fascinated by the subject of death; for example, there are at least fifty refer-
ences to death in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and thirteen references to burial sites in the
sequence. Prominent sonneteers of the Renaissance, such as William Shakespeare,
Sir Philip Sidney, and Michael Drayton, deployed images of burial sites in their
poems and embedded their verses with descriptions of “tomb-like” eyes, “mouthed
graves,” and “brass tombs,” among many others. References to graves and tombs
also abound in the writings of other poets who worked outside the sonnet-tradition
such as George Gascoigne, John Donne, and George Herbert. I begin this essay
with a reading of how burial imagery was utilized in lyrical verse: how the imagery
of graves and tombs provided poets of the Renaissance with a means of exploring
“ mouthed gr aves w i l l g i v e t h e e m e m o ry ” | 25
individual subjectivity. As final resting places of the living, graves in Renaissance

verse were often compared to beds, which serve as a marker of individualism.
Then I move into an analysis of how burial images were compared with a specific
metaphor—how graves and beds were associated with one another. Finally, I an-
alyze the symbolism of burial sites in relation to the notion of poetic immortality.
The classical poet Horace’s ideas of poetic immortality exerted a great influence
on poets of the Renaissance. These poets adopted the Horatian tradition, many of
them treating their verses as monuments that would outlast their deaths. The vivid
ways in which poets of the Renaissance deployed burial imagery in their works
suggest that, even before the efforts of the eighteenth-century Graveyard Poets,
burial imagery had already been utilized as a means of reflecting on the subject of
death in poetic form. The multifarious ways in which these poets embraced the
imagery of burial sites indicates an aspect of poetic thanatopsis (seeing or observ-
ing death).
b u r i a l s i t e s a n d t h e r e n a i s s a n c e i n d i v i d ua l
Clare Gittings writes that during the Renaissance, the prevalence of personalized
burial practices—the use of coffins and individual burial sites as opposed to mass
graves—is evidence for a shift in thinking about death in a period that was cen-
tered on the individual (102). This shift in social views regarding burial practices
echoes Jacob Burckhardt’s oft-contested proposition that the rise in individualistic
thought originated from the shift into the Renaissance from the late Middle Ages
(81). Burckhardt writes of the “ennobling” power of art and poetry that shaped
what he describes as the “worldliness” of the Renaissance individual, and it is no
surprise then that we are privy to an emphasis on individualism in the literature
of the early modern period, particularly in poetical contemplations of mortality
(304). In The Hour of Our Death, Philippe Aries writes that the “exaltation of the
individual” in the late Middle Ages would cause changes in the way individu-
als looked at the afterlife (606). I begin my discussion with a look at examples
from the poems of William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, and John Donne. In the
works of these three poets, the common thread of an assertive poetic voice emerg-
es, and it is this voice that affirms a sense of individual subjectivity when faced with
the grimness of death.
From “tombs of brass” in Sonnet 107 to graves in Sonnet 1, burial motifs
are used extensively throughout Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). In particular, the
following lines from Sonnet 81 assert the poet/speaker’s individual authority, pro-
viding an emphasis on the location of a grave-site:
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave, (6–7)
26 | colin yeo
The poet’s resignation as explicated in the phrase “must die” reveals his accep-
tance of death’s inevitability. Both the poet’s grave and the poet are depicted as
the smaller components of larger schemes: the world and the earth. By linking the
individual with the world and grave with earth, the speaker in this sonnet focuses
on the individual’s place in human society (Booth 276). This poet is actively aware
of being a part of society but stresses his individuality. The phrase “to all the world”
reinforces the importance of his individual identity in the public sphere. In my
reading, the poet’s tone used in the phrase “yield me” conveys a sense of individ-
ualistic authority—even upon his death, the earth must give way to him. This as-
sertion of self exemplifies Burckhardt’s notion of Renaissance individualism. Peter
Holbrook also addresses Shakespeare’s commitment to “self-realization”:
One reason why Romantics and moderns may have thought Shakespeare the paradigm
of the poet is that he anticipated their priorities, especially a profound (if often betrayed)
commitment to self-realization. (183)
Ralph Houlbrooke writes that Shakespeare’s commitment to self-realization pre-

cedes the priorities of Romantic poets, but this engagement with the self is evident
in not only the works of Shakespeare, but other Renaissance poets as well.
Late-Renaissance poet Robert Herrick’s engagements with the subject of
death in his verses are also focused on the individual. In the four lines of his short
poem “The Bed-Man, or Grave-Maker” from his collection Hesperides (1648),
Herrick gives voice to a contemplation of mortality:
Thou hast made many Houses for the Dead;
When my Lot calls me to be buried,
For Love or Pittie, prethee let there be
I’ th’ Church-yard, made, one Tenement for me. (1–4)
Here, Herrick’s speaker displays a concern for the earthly preservation of his dead
form in a grave. Addressing a tomb-maker, he stakes a claim to a choice spot in
a graveyard for himself after he dies. The poet’s repeated references to himself,
particularly in his use of a “be, me” rhyming pair, reflects his preoccupation with
the self. Commenting on Herrick’s funeral poems, Robert Deming observes that
they demonstrate an “insistence on the due and proper performance” of burial
rites (153). This demand is also evident in “The Bed Man.” In this poem, Her-
rick’s insistence on the reservation of his personal grave-spot reflects his focus on
the individual even at the point of one’s demise. These lines echo Shakespeare’s
approach in Sonnet 81. Rather than staking his claim to a specific burial space,
Shakespeare’s speaker proposes that all he needs is a common grave. In a tone
that indicates resignation, Herrick reflects on the finite nature of human life. Ac-
knowledging that death is inevitable, Herrick’s speaker looks past the phenomena
of death; dying is not his primary concern here.
Herrick’s insistence on having a specific space for his dead body symbolizes
changing attitudes towards burial practices in the sixteenth century. Individualis-
tic burial practices came into vogue during the Renaissance as the Middle Ages
wound to a close. The practice of burying an individual in a specific site as opposed
to a mass grave is a trend that persists to the present day. The importance that the
early moderns placed on the individual is reflected in changes towards the usage of
coffins in burial practice. In Requiem, Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane chart
the use of coffins in the burial of people from the upper classes, such as clergymen.
Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the use of coffins became more wide-
spread in Renaissance England. As Houlbrooke notes, the 1550s saw the growing
use of caskets across social classes; their use in burial practice became regarded as
an indispensable means of said practice. In addition to the increased use of cof-
fins in burial, the ornamentation of caskets also reflects the importance the early
moderns placed on commemorating the individual, even in death (339–40). This
is what we are privy to in Herrick’s poem: an individual’s assertion of his right to
occupy a particular space after death.
Minister-poet John Donne also exemplifies the Renaissance preoccupation
with the individual in thinking about death; the use of burial motifs in his poems
illustrates this. Donne’s poem “The Paradox” (1633), for instance, depicts the po-
et’s personal reflection on mortality as the poet regards his dead corpse as a tomb
in and of itself:
Once I loved and died; and am now become
Mine epitaph and tomb;
Here dead men speak their last, and so do I;
Love-slain, lo! Here I lie.
(“The Paradox” 17–20)
Like Herrick and Shakespeare, who stake claims to their personal burial sites,
Donne’s speaker adopts a similar approach in “The Paradox.” He repeatedly
refers to the poet/speaker’s persona in the singular: The words “I,” “am,” and
“mine” draw attention to Donne’s self-transformation. Ann Hurley suggests
that a consideration of Donne’s self-portrait alongside his work implies Donne’s
preoccupation with individual subjectivity (30). The poet’s fascination with the
subject of death translated into a literal attempt to “see death” by commissioning
a painting of himself that imagined his likeness in the burial garb of his own
funeral shroud.
For Donne, however, the dissolution of man’s corporeal body in a tomb is but
a transitory phase that precedes an afterlife in either Heaven or Hell. Donne’s
role as a minister reveals to us another important aspect in the early moderns’ at-
titude toward death—the role of religion (Tarlow 58). In the following lines from
The Anniversary (1633) depicting images of graves, Donne’s belief in a Christian
28 | colin yeo
afterlife is outlined. Here, Donne displays a distinctly religious stance toward con-
templation of the subject of death:
This or a love increasèd there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.
(“The Anniversary” 19–20)
As Robert Watson observes, Donne’s secular lyrics persistently and vividly fan-
tasize about returning from death or achieving perpetual life (158). The grave
here acts as a symbol of death, but it is a transitory site that is occupied by the
poet before his imagined “next step” into the afterlife. This next step involves the
departure of the poet’s immortal soul from his earthly body into Heaven, where
the poet expects an abundance of blessings. In these two poems, the image of
the grave provides a means for Donne to meditate on the theme of death, whilst
illuminating his Christian stance on the subject of the afterlife. The image of the
grave in this poem functions as a transitional marker rather than a token of abso-
lute annihilation of the poet’s physical body.
The placement of burial imagery in early modern poetic expression indicates
how poetry was used as a means of contemplating what it means to be mortal.
This tells us much about the early moderns’ religious thought as well as their as-
sertion of individual subjectivity. From these general examples of burial imagery
in Renaissance verse, I want to move on to the exploration of specific themes and
metaphors utilized by poets of the Renaissance. The following section addresses
the metaphor of a bed and its associations with the grave, and I conclude my anal-
ysis in this essay with a discussion of the relationship between burial sites and the
trope of poetic immortality.
“ to sleep , to die ”: beds as graves in renaissance verse
Classical Greek mythology explicitly draws a connection between sleep and death.
Hesiod, in Theogony (90), writes that Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) are
brothers. This relationship was explored by poets of the Renaissance. The likening
of the poet’s bed with the image of the grave was a motif drawn upon by Renaissance
poets in their usage of burial imagery in verse. In Sonnet 12 of Idea’s Mirror (1594),
Michael Drayton focuses on the positioning of the personified “body” in a grave.
My vices cured by virtues sprung from thee,
My hopes revived, which long in grave had lien (11–12)
Drayton does not refer specifically to the image of a bed here but draws attention
to the significance of how the “body” of his hopes is placed in its grave. Like people
lying down on their beds to rest, so do Drayton’s hopes lie down in their graves.
Drayton’s use of parallel form in enunciating the word “my” in these lines draws
attention to the poet’s preoccupation with individual subjectivity. His mentions of

death in these lines represent the perceived death and subsequent “revival” of his
emotions.
Similarly in John Donne’s “The Relic” (1633), a reference to the poet’s bed as
grave is used. Here, the poet envisions the disturbance of his grave.
When my grave is broke up again

Some second guest to entertain,
—For graves have learn’d that woman-head,
To be to more than one a bed—
(“The Relic” 1–4)
Donne compares his grave to the image of a bed. In this poem, the poet is buried
alongside his beloved. While he refers to the grave as his own, it is one that is
shared with another individual. Just as he and his beloved are united in the con-
summation of their marriage on their marriage bed, they are united once again
in death by sharing the space of the grave. Here, Donne draws an explicit line
between the iconography of a marriage bed and the image of a grave. He and his
beloved here are one even after death.
Like John Donne, George Gascoigne uses the “bed as grave” metaphor in his
poem “George Gascoigne’s Good Night” (1573). Here, Gascoigne draws a com-
parison between the intimate space of a person’s bed with the image of a grave:
And of my bed eche sundrye part in shaddowes doth resemble,

The sundry shapes of deth, whose dart shal make my flesh to treble.
My bed it selfe is like the grave, my sheetes the winding sheete
(“Gascoigne’s Good Night” 25–27)
Gascoigne likens the shadows cast by his bed to the imagined “shapes of death,”
meaning gravestones that populate a graveyard. Gascoigne’s first-person reflection
is centered on a familiar location–his own bed. The image of the bed offers Gas-
coigne the ability to reflect on the transience of mortal life, and the link between
the bed and the grave in their functions as “resting places” is made by the poet. The
notion of individual ownership is also stressed by Gascoigne in his repeated use of
the word “my” and the phrase “my bed.” By staking a claim to his personal burial
site, Gascoigne’s reflection is one that is focused on the individual.
Adopting a similar approach to Gascoigne, George Herbert, in his poem
“Mortification” (1633), compares sleep with death by equating the image of a bed
with a grave:
When boyes go first to bed,
They step into their voluntarie graves,
Sleep bindes them fast; onely their breath
Makes them not dead
(“Mortification” 7–10)
30 | colin yeo
Herbert’s grim lines liken the space of the bed to that of a “voluntary grave,” draw-
ing a direct comparison between the intimate space of an individual’s bed with
the iconography of a burial site. While Herbert’s poem is not written in the first
person, the poet’s approach is an intimate, sobering reflection on infant mortality
in the Renaissance. Herbert’s poem is an example of how poets used their verses
as a means of reflecting on the transience of their lives. The motif of bed as a grave
is also used in Herbert’s poem “Death” (1633), where the bed and the grave are
merged in an image of pillows made of dust:
Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half that we have
Unto an honest faithfull grave;
Making our pillows either down, or dust
(“Death” 21–24)
In this poem, Herbert associates a burial motif with the image of a bed by pairing
the words “down” and “dust.” By referencing both the material composition of a
pillow and the positioning of a human body in a grave, Herbert’s dual use of the
word “down” functions here as a double entendre that suggests a relationship be-
tween the bed and the grave. This burial motif reinforces the metaphor of sleep as
death that is shown by Herbert, and it is a means for the poet to explore notions of
mortality as it relates to the individualized space of a resting place.
perpetuating the poet : burial sites and poetic immortality
Poetic responses to the subject of death in the Renaissance involved engaging with
the idea of poetic immortalization. Inherited from the classical tradition, poetic
immortalization provided poets with a means of preserving themselves after their
death. These poets’ efforts at immortalizing themselves in verse reflect the empha-
sis they placed on individuality. Theodore Spencer observes,
The Elizabethans, in fact, seem to have dreaded nothing so much as the possibility that fu-
ture generations might not know they had lived. […] But the blankness of being forgotten
was of all thoughts the most tormenting. (135)
As poets of the Renaissance meditated on the subject of death in their verses, their
ideas of poetic immortalization were strongly informed by classical authors. Plato,
in Symposium, writes of how memory preserves the quality of identity:
Forgetting is the departure of knowledge, and recollection, by implanting a new impression in
the place of that which is lost, preserves it, and gives it a spurious appearance of uninterrupted
identity. It is in this way that everything mortal is preserved; […] This device, Socrates, enables
the mortal to partake of immortality, physically as well as in other ways. (89)
For Plato, being remembered preserves a person’s consciousness, allowing a person

to “partake of immortality.” Plato suggests that, by preserving one’s consciousness
through knowledge, one can be remembered by future generations. Immortality
proceeds from how a person is remembered after he/she is dead. Following after
Plato, Horace in his Odes prescribes poetry writing as an explicit means of over-
coming the phenomena of death. In Book 2 of his Odes, Horace writes of the aging
process. He describes the “rough skin” of age on his ankles as he inches closer to
death. However, he insists that he will be preserved by his verses and will not die.
In farthest Thrace my verses shall be known:
Gauls shall drink Horace as they do the Rhone
No dirges please. Mine being no real death,
Tears would be ugly, sighs a waste of breath.
(Odes 2, Poem 20, 19–22)
Horace imagines a set of reactions to his death: grief and sorrow. At the same time,
the poet proposes that because of his verses’ ability to confer prestige, he will be
not only remembered, but will also literally be consumed by others after he is dead.
In Book 3 of the Odes, poetry, the poet suggests, is a means by which death can be
overcome. He writes:
I shall not wholly die: some part of me
Will cheat the goddess of death, for while the High Priest
And Vestal climb our Capitol in a hush,
My reputation shall keep green and growing
(Odes 3, Poem 30, 6–9)
Horace writes of himself as a person who “pioneered Greek rhythms,” and he

ends the poem with a request to garland his forehead with a symbol of victory—a
laurel wreath. Placed at the end of Book 3 of the Odes, the last line of this poem
signifies the poet’s victory in the face of death. While acknowledging his mortality,
the poet ultimately exhorts the immortalizing qualities of his verse as a way for
him to preserve his consciousness as well as bring him posthumous fame. Horace’s
interest is in both the preservation of the self as well as the perpetuation of poetic
fame through the spread of his work.
It is specifically in the work of Horace that we can trace the equation of a buri-
al motif with the trope of longevity; in Book 3 of the Odes, Horace compares the
act of writing poetry to the construction of architectural marvels that will persist
even after his death. Here, Horace likens his verses to the pyramids, architectural
symbols of longevity:
More durable than bronze, higher than Pharaoh’s
Pyramids is the monument I have made,
A shape that angry wind or hungry rain
32 | colin yeo
Cannot demolish, nor the innumerable

Ranks of the years that march in centuries.
(Odes 3, Poem 30, 1–5)
However, the pyramids were structures that were used by the ancient Egyptians
to contain the dead. Pyramids thus symbolize both death and longevity. The
influence of Horace can be traced in Robert Herrick’s poem “His Poetry His
Pillar” (1648), where the poet’s verses are described as having the fortitude of the
pyramids:
How many lye forgot
In Vaults beneath?
And piece-meale rot
Without a fame in death?
Behold this living stone,
I reare for me,
Ne’r to be thrown
Downe, envious Time by thee.
Pillars let some set up,
(If so they please)
Here is my hope,
And my Pyramides.
(“His Poetry His Pillar” 13–24)
Herrick’s comparison of his poem’s power to the longevity of the pyramids echoes
the approach taken by Horace in the Odes (Regenos 280). This poem is replete
with references to architecture; the poet begins by comparing the subject of death
with the burial of the dead in “vaults beneath.” This description reveals the poet’s
emphasis on being remembered. It is not enough to be buried in a vault; for Her-
rick, being buried in a vault, away from the public eye, causes a person to be for-
gotten. Being forgotten is, to the poet, a gruesome experience, likened to rotting
“piece-meal.” Here, the poet’s verse serves to counteract the process of being for-
gotten. Juxtaposed against the image of rotting corpses, his poem serves as a source
of life—a “living stone” that will defy the advances of time and death. Making use
of architectural motifs, the “living stone” of Herrick’s poetic pillar represents his
efforts to preserve his memory after his demise. The structural form of this poem
also acts as a visual representation of his fascination with architectural motifs. The
longest line in this poem comprises six words (line 9). The brevity of each phrase
renders a typographical shape to the poem—a shape that resembles a pillar. This
pattern reinforces notions of poetic immortalization in this poem; the verses not
only reference the motif of a pillar, they quite literally have the visual resemblance
of a pillar.
Like Herrick, who compares the form of his verses to that of pillars, Samuel
Daniel uses metaphors of arks, trophies, and monuments that serve as testaments
to his verse’s power to prevent death. For the early moderns, “monument” was an-
other meaning for “tomb” or “sepulcher,” and in Sonnet 34 of his sonnet-sequence
Delia (1592), the poet’s verses are depicted as monuments:
Heere see the giftes that God and nature lent thee;
Heere read thy selfe, and what I suffred for thee,
This may remaine thy lasting monument,
Which happily posteritie may cherish:
These collours with thy fading are not spent;
These may remaine, when thou and I shall perish.
If they remaine, then thou shalt liue thereby;
They will remaine, and so thou canst not dye. (7–14)
The poet’s use of parallel form in this sonnet emphasizes his claim to poetic im-
mortalization. Lines 7 and 8 both begin and end with the words “here” and “thee.”
The repetition of these words lends a sense of immediacy that draws his subject’s
attention to the content of his verse. The subsequent line begins with the word
“this,” once again focusing the reader’s attention on his poem’s lines. The power of
poetic immortalization, for Daniel, confers immortality onto his subject. Daniel
makes it very clear that the poem’s immortalizing structure of a “lasting” monu-
ment belongs to his subject and his subject alone. After referring to his poem as a
monument, Daniel places an emphasis on the perceived immortal qualities of his
verse. In these seven lines alone, the poet uses the word “remain” four times. Three
of these four references are placed within the last three lines of the poem. The
repetition of “remain” also draws attention to the speaker’s contemplative rhetor-
ical voice. Here, he begins by laying out his sense of uncertainty towards his own
verse’s power, demonstrated by the phrases “may remain” and “if they remain.” The
final line, however, is a statement of certainty that suggests an assertion of poetic
authority. Like a carefully constructed rhetorical argument, Daniel affirms in the
last line of this verse that the monument of his verse will serve to stave off death.
In the Sonnets, Shakespeare, like Daniel, uses the metaphor of a monument
to symbolize the preserving power of his verse. For Shakespeare, his verses are the
equivalent of monuments that are erected to conquer death:
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. (9–14)
The poet places emphasis on these lines by implementing extraordinary longevity

in his verses. The material dimension of his verse is described as persisting to have
an audience in the form of future generations. Shakespeare’s most ambitious claim
34 | colin yeo
in this sonnet is that the immortalizing qualities of his verse will persist even after
“breathers of this world” have died. The phrase “still shall live” indicates a response
to the subject of death. This is an assertion of vitality that is juxtaposed against
death’s power. The poet’s perception of his verse’s longevity echoes the compari-
son Daniel makes between his verses and “arks.” Like Daniel’s “arks,” Shakespeare
exhorts his verses as having the power to remain even after an apocalyptic event—
the death of humanity.
Once again, in Sonnet 107, Shakespeare compares his verses to monuments.
In this sonnet, the act of authoring verse is a direct response to the actions of a
personified Death:
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent. (10–14)
These lines are a response to the poet’s contemplation of mortality. Shakespeare’s

“poor rhyme” is a means for the poet to defy Death by perpetuating the poet’s con-
sciousness. As a “monument,” Shakespeare’s verses are likened to a material object
that is durable enough to outlast the reigns of tyrants and even “tombs of brass.” The
poet draws attention to the inevitable effects of time. Time brings an end to the reign
of tyrants and wrecks the strongest tombs. Against the wrecking force of time and
the unstoppable advance of Death, Shakespeare’s poetic “monument” serves as a last-
ing, immortalizing emblem. Like in Sonnet 81, the poet also juxtaposes a reference
to the subject of death with an assertion that he will live in spite of Death’s advances.
The speaker here exhibits full knowledge of Death’s power but proclaims his verse
as an active space of resistance against Death. This assertiveness is cloaked behind
an apparent display of humility by the poet’s denigration of his own verse as “poor
rhymes.” The sonnet’s turn in lines 13 and 14 reveals the poet’s confidence in the
staying power of his poem—it conveys immortality to both the poet and his subject.
In Sonnets 81 and 107, Shakespeare uses the motif of a monument to symbol-
ize the invulnerable nature of his verses. These verses draw comparisons between
the enduring qualities of poetry with the longevity of monuments. However, the
poet takes an even more ambitious approach in Sonnet 55. The poet’s response to
the subject of death is a proclamation that his verses have the ability to outlast the
materiality that is represented by monuments:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry […] (1–6)
This poem takes a different track from the poet’s other efforts at poetic immortal-
ization. In this poem, a monument symbolizes the vulnerability of material struc-
tures. Here, Shakespeare glorifies his verses as transcending the tangibility of the
material world. Monuments and statues are objects that can be destroyed. Time, the
poet emphasizes, will either destroy or defile all forms of architectural constructs.
Through the “monuments” of his verses, in Sonnets 81 and 107, Shakespeare de-
scribes the power of his verses to confer life in the face of death. Sonnet 55 extends
the ambitious track taken by the poet. Here, the poet suggests that the crowning
achievement of poetic immortality is to outlive and outlast the material world.
In Sonnet 44 of Michael Drayton’s Idea (1605), the poet draws on the power
of verse to liberate the “better part” of his body from dissolution, symbolized by
the object of the grave:
And though in youth my youth untimely perish,
To keep thee from oblivion and the grave
Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish,
When I entombed, my better part shall save
And though this earthly body fade and die,
My name shall mount upon eternity. (9–14)
These lines begin with a contemplation of mortality that is rooted in an acknowl-

edgement of the physical body’s fragility. Here, Drayton ponders the passing of
his youth as well as the dissolution of his physical, “earthly” body. Drayton de-
scribes the grave and the entombing of his physical self as markers of his death.
The grave in these lines is a symbol of death, but it is one that can be overcome
through his “rhymes.” Drayton’s approach begins with a dramatic, almost arrogant
exclamation, where he states that his verses have the ability to stave off even death.
Drayton’s lines reflect a passive acceptance of mortality—he acknowledges that
the process of death is inevitable by recognizing that he is possessed of an “earthly
body” that must ultimately succumb to death. Despite having this idea in mind,
the poem’s final lines resound with a proclamation that his rhymes contain his
“better part” and that his name will persist to “eternity.”
During the Renaissance, poets often proclaimed their verses as having the
capability to outlive the material world. The material world, for them, was repre-
sented by the images of burial sites. John Donne’s exploration of burial imagery
and the act of writing verses engages the preservation of the individual through
verse, though in his comparison of verse with the materiality of burial sites, he
treats their material dimension as a mark of their longevity. “The Canonization”
(1633) compares the materiality of hymns with burial motifs:
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love (33–36)
36 | colin yeo
Donne does not go so far as to claim that his verses will live forever, but he does say
that they possess the enduring qualities of a “half-acre tomb” and a “well-wrought”
urn. The phrase “well-wrought” places an emphasis on an object that is distin-
guished from the norm by virtue of its quality. In his words, his verses will prove to
be as lasting as the best urns. Donne’s approach is also markedly different from the
poets surveyed so far. Drayton, Daniel, and Shakespeare refer to either the poet
himself or the poet’s subject in the singular, depicting the preservative qualities of
verse as having an effect on the individual. Donne’s emphasis, while still exhorting
the effects of his verses on his subject, is more inclusive. He constantly refers to the
effects of his verse’s power in the plural form, such as “us” in “The Canonization”
and “we” in A Valediction: Of the Book. While drawing attention to the power of
his verses to imbibe an element of longevity, this power, for Donne, is meant to be
shared with another individual.
co n c lu s i o n
Lyrical form was used by poets of the Renaissance as a means of contemplating the
subject of death. As I have shown in this essay, the images of tombs, graves, and
burial monuments provided these poets with a dynamic form of poetic currency
through which they could meditate on issues of mortality. Burial sites represented
a space to which an individual could stake a claim; this allowed poets to engage
in introspective meditations. Another space upon which poets built associations
was the site of the poet’s bed. As a form of poetic thanatopsis, beds were often
compared to graves. The influence of classical sources left a lasting impact on early
modern poets, and, as a means of perpetuating the self beyond the reaches of death,
burial sites were regarded as loci for poets to explore ideas of poetic immortality.
The integration of burial motifs in lyrical verse and the utilization of these
motifs as a means of poetic thanatopsis are tropes that are not exclusive to the
Graveyard School, but can be traced throughout literary history. In the wake of
the Graveyard School, representations of death in English poetry became over-
shadowed by the popularity of Gothic novels published in the eighteenth century.
Contemplative verses would subsequently come into vogue in England with the
publishing of Charlotte Turner’s Elegiac Sonnets in 1784. Her collection spurred
an interest in poetic form, particularly that of the sonnet. Smith would influence
authors such as William Wordsworth and Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe. Indeed,
as we move chronologically forward from the efforts of the eighteenth-century
Graveyard School and Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets into the nineteenth century, the rise
in popularity of Gothic literature precipitated the authorship of Gothic verse, a
genre that embraced the imagery of burial sites. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Alastor”
(1816), Emily Brontë’s “The Night of Storms Has Passed” (1837) and John Keats’s
“The Fall of Hyperion” (1856–57) are some examples of nineteenth-century verses

that utilize the imagery of burial sites.
The passage of time may alter the ways in which poets contemplate the sub-
ject of death in poetry, but burial sites have always been regarded as powerful
iconographical sites that provide man with the meaning of mortality. As Shake-
speare exclaims in his concluding couplet to Sonnet 18,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee (13–14)
From Horace to Shakespeare to the Romantics, contemporary 21st-century read-

ers continue to peruse these poets’ verses even though the writers have been dead
for centuries. To a certain extent, these poets’ treatment of poetry as a means of
achieving immortalization can be considered to be a successful endeavor. These
poems have, so far, resisted the ravages of time and are a testament to the way peo-
ple of former ages and time periods lived and experienced life. If there is one thing
that can be taken away from their efforts, it is this: for man, death is universally
acknowledged as an inescapable phenomenon, but the power of creativity allows
an individual to circumvent death’s inexorability.
works cited
Aries, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. London: Penguin, 1981. Print.
Aubin, Robert A. “Three Notes on Graveyard Poetry.” Studies in Philology 32.1 (1935): 103–09.
JSTOR. Web. 16 Apr 2013 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172264>
Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. Stephen Booth. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977. Print.
Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Phaidon Press, 1951. Print.
Donne, John. The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. Ed. Theodore Redpath. London: Methuen, 1956.
Print.
Drayton, Michael. The Works of Michael Drayton, Volume 1 and 2. Ed. William J. Hebel. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1932. Print.
Gascoigne, George. The Poesies. Ed. John W. Cunliffe. London: Cambridge UP, 1907. Print.
Gilchrist, Roberta and Barney Sloane. Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain. London:
Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2005. Print.
Gittings, Claire. Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England. London: Croom Helm,
1984. Print.
Herbert, George. The Complete English Poems. Ed. John Tobin. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Print.
Herrick, Robert. The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick Vol II. Ed. George Saintsbury. London: G. Bell
& Sons, 1912. Print.
Hesiod. Theogony: Works and Days. Ed. Apostolos A. Athanassakis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
2004. Print.
Horace. The Odes of Horace. Trans. James Michie. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964. Print.
Houlbrooke, Ralph. Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480–1750. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998. Print.
38 | colin yeo
Hurley, Ann Hollinshead. John Donne’s Poetry and Early Modern Visual Culture. Cranbury, NJ: Rose-
mont Publishing & Printing Corp, 2005. Print.
Matthews, Samantha. Poetical Remains: Poets Graves, Bodies and Books in the Nineteenth Century.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
Parnell, Thomas. “A Night Piece on Death.” Poems by Thomas Parnell. Ed. Lennox Robinson. Dublin:
The Cuala Press, 1927. 25. Print.
Plato. The Symposium. Trans. Walter Hamilton. London: Penguin, 1951. Print.
Regenos, Graydon W. “The Influence of Horace on Robert Herrick.” Philological Quarterly 26 (1947):
268. ProQuest. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones. London: Thomson Learn-
ing, 1997. Print.
Spencer, Theodore. Death and Elizabethan Tragedy. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1936. Print.
Tarlow, Sarah. Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2011. Print.
Watson, Robert N. The Rest Is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the English Renaissance. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1994. Print.
Young, Edward. Night Thoughts. Ed. Stephen Conford. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 38. Print.
chapter three
Christian and Muslim

Concepts of Death and the
Afterlife in Postmodern
Agnostic Poetry
marwan a . nader and myrna a . nader
In this diachronic study of Elizabeth Bishop’s agnostic poetry, we argue that the
subject of death takes on epistemological and ontological concerns deeply rooted
in Judeo-Christian and Muslim ideologies. In her work, we identify three fun-
damental approaches to the phenomenon of death: dialectics, exegesis, and tax-
onomy. We define dialectics as the creation of symbols to express the opposing
states of being and non-being and exegesis as explicating the literal and deeper
meaning of this primitive and eschatological language. In addition, taxonomy de-
scribes an innate human desire to classify and order the world, and this arises from
a deep sense of anxiety about death and the afterlife. This essay partly rests upon
the premise that “demand for organization is a need common to art and science
[…] ‘taxonomy, which is ordering par excellence, has eminent aesthetic value’”
(Simpson, qtd. in Levi-Strauss 13).
In confronting the subject of death, Bishop’s poetry—and here we are thinking
primarily of “Crusoe in England,” “The Man-Moth,” and “A Miracle for Break-
fast”—reveals a peculiar hybrid of religious dogma and agnosticism. She does not
reject out of hand propositions that maintain belief in a higher being, but insists
upon a methodical evaluation of the evidence based on the principle that the at-
tainment of knowledge must be preceded by doubt about the existence of a deity.
Bishop’s poetry demonstrates the taxonomies, perhaps obsessions, of human en-
deavor to create order out of the chaos of death and the afterlife. What fascinates
her is how death becomes the focus of existence; when faced with the prospect of
absolute annihilation, humans seek the promise of immortality, allocating—and
40 | mar wan a . nader and myrna a . nader
verbalizing—signs which suggest that the lifeless and inert body can be reanimat-
ed and resurrected. This human propensity to symbolize the act of dying equates
to the ritualizing of death, which, it has been claimed, characterizes primitive and
traditional societies (Eliade 14).
We recognize in Bishop’s poetry the overriding emotion of death anxiety—
also known as thanatophobia—which induces a feeling of apprehension, when
the sense of “nothingness,” of ceasing to be, becomes overwhelming. We compare
this with death hysteria, which induces a feeling of panic in an individual and can
further manifest itself in collective lamentation, wailing or even self-flagellation
(Kaufmann 44–45; Kierkegaard 38. See also Baumann; Kuberski; Slote; Walter).2
The agnostic poet betrays no such hysteria, demonstrating a deeply ingrained re-
silience. Bishop remains profoundly anxious, but she flees from the emotions of
collective despair and anguish and replaces the dramatic with “silent” death in her
work (Ariès, “La mort inverse” 169–95; Ariès, Western Attitudes 89).
c r o s s - c u lt u r a l pa r a d i g m s o f d e at h
Universal fears and anxieties about death—questions of mortality and the invo-
cation of an omnipotent being as its natural corollary (Ariès, L’Homme devant la
mort 99–111; Tenenti)—traverse both temporal and cultural boundaries ( Jones
40). One is reminded of French historian Ariès’ classic description of Western
attitudes toward death, which appear almost static over time: “The same words
are passed on from age to age, unchanged, like a proverb” (Ariès, L’Homme devant
la mort 6). On the subject of cultural homogeneity, it has also been commented:
“Every word that one utters bears within it the traces of the unconscious, both the
West’s and our ‘own,’ both linguistic and psychical” (Kuberski 253). There is cer-
tainly truth in this general statement, but Bishop’s poetry demonstrates more than
this; it reveals a synthesis of philosophical traditions of both Western and Eastern
origin. The subjects of mortality and the afterlife are evidence of the chains of
literary transmission; we may recognize in her work the influences of medieval
Arab allegory, thirteenth-century Christian eschatology, and seventeenth-century
Jansenist theology. The story of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān—a philosophical enquiry into
the nature of death—by the twelfth-century Andalusian Arab philosopher Ibn
Tufayl forms the first schema of Bishop’s “Crusoe in England,” a poem about
island solitude and the symbolism of rebirth. In “The Man-Moth,” moreover, she
reconfigures the medieval concept of man’s descent into the earth and ascent into
heaven, a journey typically found in the tenth-century Kitāb al-Mirāj (“Book of
the Ascension”) and Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Finally, in “A Miracle for Break-
fast,” Bishop presents the mystical powers of the afterlife. This poem’s formal
strategies concede the absence of a transcendental being. The French philosopher
christian and muslim concepts of d e at h a n d t h e a f t e r li f e | 41
Blaise Pascal’s Pensées forms the matrix of Bishop’s ideas on the Dieu caché, or hid-
den God, and the miracle of the Resurrection, which points to His existence as a
probable but not certain fact.
d i a l e c t i c s a n d e x e g e s i s o f d e at h
The dialectics of death—the use of symbols to express the transition from the
state of being to non-being—exists in both Islamic and Christian cultures. Nev-
ertheless, the creation of religious emblems occasioned by human need to grasp
the meaning of mortality has its origins in the rituals and dramas of archaic and
ancient societies (Eliade 17). The dialectics of death was accompanied by wide-
spread belief that encrypted language—the verbalization of emblems—was itself
sacred, as it had been entrusted by a divine power to those who could articulate the
profound mystery of death and resurrection to the rest of humanity. These were
the exegetes—the savants, visionaries, or prophets—to whom God had gifted the
ability to explicate this language (Piñero-Sáenz; Shiokawa 154; Schmitt). They
had the mental capacity to decipher the meanings of signs, while the less perspi-
cacious among them could not see beyond mere outward appearance. The ability
to encrypt or veil meaning has always been judged an admirable human trait. The
tenth-century Arab philosopher Fārābı- observed that Plato and Aristotle wrote in
an organized and informed style but enigmatically employed techniques that only
few could understand (Fārābı- 84).
What characterized the work of the ancients also came to characterize Arab
writing on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, who, according to Islamic tra-
dition, traveled to Jerusalem on the steed Burāq and then ascended to heaven.
During his terrestrial and celestial journey, the Prophet was exposed to the āyāt,
the signs of God’s power, which were subsequently written down in the Qur’ān
or commented on by the exegetes (ahl al-tafsı-r) in their hadith (Colby 16; Hawi
42–43). Was the Prophet’s ascension (al-Mirāj) in spirit or in body, part of a dream
sequence or actuality? (Colby 117; al-Tabari 16) The language of signs, therefore,
has been understood as a kind of veil (hijab); in other words, the asrār, the secrets,
are the strategies of the mutakallim, the dialectician. In Arabic, the hijab, or mu-
hajab, meaning “to be veiled” (Ibn Tufayl 155–57; al-Qushayrı- 39), designates the
headscarf worn by Muslim women as a sign of modesty, and in recent times this
item of clothing has proven to be very controversial. However, in broader theo-
logical terms, the hijab also signifies the division between outward appearance and
hidden spiritual meaning. In Ibn Tufayl’s mystical story Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a feral
child brought up on a deserted Indian island by a gazelle cuts into the corpse of
this animal after its death to uncover the mysteries of its nature. Each organ is
described as being like a hijab, which, Hayy reasons, must conceal the source of life
(Ibn Tufayl 33). That elusive “thing” he searches for, the unfathomable essence, is
the anima, or soul, which had given life to the gazelle (Ibn Tufayl 39).
The need for companionship makes Hayy determined to restore to life the
gazelle, his surrogate mother, and, through methods of enquiry (manhaj), he learns
that the state of living presupposes the existence of a soul (rūh) (Ibn Tufayl 32).
These special skills of anatomical investigation he must master gradually, through
close observation of things present (maujūdāt), in order to grasp the biological and
spiritual significance of the animal’s death. Hayy’s enquiries into the paradoxical
unity of life and death, which are equivalent to tafsīr, or exegesis, result in an in-
creased understanding of his own predicament. However, it is crucial that we set
Ibn Tufayl’s story against the Islamic belief that the first death was preceded by
language, which was handed down by God. He taught man by the pen (Sūra 96:
4–5) and spoke Arabic to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. In
this fundamental claim to antecedence, Arabic is the sacred language of Islam, and
Allāh is generally understood as the God invoked by Muslims.
The idea that through Arabic the voice of God can be heard has intrigued
European minds since the Middle Ages. In a thirteenth-century Latin translation
of Mohammad’s al-Mirāj (“ascension”), the Liber Scale Machometi (“The Book of
Muhammad’s Ladder”), God instructs a giant pen to write down with the lightest
and gentlest of words (ualde leuis atque suauis) all that He has created from the
beginning of the world to the end (Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 156, 158; cf.
al-Qushayrī). Interestingly, in the Liber Scale Machometi, the Arabic words spoken
by God to the Prophet Muhammad are retained in transliteration. The register is
most peculiar, but, for a medieval audience, they must have been fascinated by the
sound of this unfamiliar language.3
f r o m b i r t h t o d e at h a n d v i c e v e r s a :
ibn tufayl ’ s hayy ibn yaqzān and “ crusoe in england ”
The prototype for Bishop’s “Crusoe in England” was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe (1719), a story which may, in turn, have been influenced by Hayy ibn
Yaqzān. Whether a direct link between Defoe’s novel and Ibn Tufayl’s story can
be established does not concern us here, except to say that the idea of solitary hu-
man existence on a deserted island had been popularized in Europe by the early
eighteenth century (Hawi 28). In this period, Western Orientalists were typically
ambivalent toward Islam; they were repulsed by what they claimed to be East-
ern blasphemy but equally drawn to the traditions or knowledge—the scientia—
of Islamic esotericism.4 Simon Ockley, the eighteenth-century translator of Ibn
Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzān, defined scientia as the “improvement of human reason”
and the “methods” by which this is attained. He was suspicious, nevertheless, of
a philosophical work in which knowledge may be attained without “instruction,”

merely through “observation.” If this were the case, humans could be led into be-
lieving “[t]hat God has given such a Power or Faculty to Man, whereby he may,
without any external Means, attain to the Knowledge of all things necessary to
Salvation, and even to the Beatifick Vision it Self, whilst in this State” (Ockley
168). Rather, it is “the external Means,” in the form of prophets (God working
through them), which are fundamental to Christian doctrine. Therefore, the no-
tion of a self that is capable, through responsibility for its own beginning and end,
to arrive at truth without an external power—as represented by His prophets—
was rejected. All mankind was born of the first “Parents” (Ockley 169).
In Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzān, a feral child is the sole human inhabitant of
a mythical Indian island. Hayy’s birth is surrounded by mystery; he is seemingly
formed ex nihilo, having no mother or father. However, Ibn Tufayl then provides
an alternative beginning to Hayy’s story; he has parents living on a neighboring
island, and his mother, fearing that her son would be harmed by the king—her
brother, who objected to her marriage to Yaqzān—placed the child in a tābout, a
coffin, and set him adrift, surrendering him to God. She proclaimed that He had
created the child within the dark (zulmāt) recesses (ahshā) of her body (Ibn Tufayl
20). Hayy’s birth, therefore, cannot be attributed to a biological conception, but
rather divine intervention; God had placed the fetus in the dark and mysterious
womb and given it life in the same way that the coffin encased Hayy, whose name
means “alive” in Arabic. The significance of both the coffin and womb may be
more clearly understood if we consider the homology that equates life with death.
This opposing binary classification characterizes the liminal, which, in primitive
societies, informs the rituals of interment (Turner 99). The body is buried in the
“womb of the Universal Mother” (Eliade 16), only to be brought back to life be-
yond the grave. This analogy of resuscitation or resurrection (qyāma) is found in
two distinct traditions of Islam, both of which affirm the inscrutable power of God
to create and recreate life. According to the first, man shall survive his physical
demise and be raised from the dust of his remains (Sūra 23:12–16), while in the
second, a kind of death is experienced whenever we sleep, and resurrection when-
ever we awaken (Sūra 39:42. See also Smith 153).
Thus, the symbolic states of the human body are hayāt (life), mawt (death),
and qyāma (resurrection), essentially three aspects of the same nature. Taken to-
gether, Hayy ibn Yaqzān, Defoe’s story of island solitude, and Bishop’s “Crusoe
in England” form an eschatological palimpsest, underscoring the idea that death
is a liminal stage marking the transition of the body from organic matter to an
alternative form of existence actuated by human desire to resurrect the deceased
through the emblematizing of interment. Hayy and Crusoe exhibit a crucial facet
of the human condition, namely the inclination to adopt methods of enquiry into
the most abstruse dimensions of nature. Significantly, unlike the feral child of
Hayy ibn Yaqzān, “Crusoe in England” is about a civilized European who becomes
increasingly frustrated at the oppressive monotony of the island, and the growing
sense of lassitude. Whether he is marooned or back home in England, the island
remains analogous to Crusoe’s state of mind:
A new volcano has erupted,

the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s still
Un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
(Bishop, The Complete Poems 162)
This is Crusoe’s island—first seen, inhabited, and named by him. Like Adam,
he is encountering the world anew, a sentient being; he is rediscovering, relearn-
ing about nature, enumerating obsessively, and measuring everything that he sees:
fifty-two volcanoes, half a dozen waterspouts, and one kind of berry (“The island
had one kind of everything”). Left to his own devices, Crusoe carefully surveys the
island’s topography. Sitting on the edge of the highest volcano, he imagines that
he is the size of a giant in an inverted world where he can confront and control
nature, relegating any anxieties about death to the margins of his consciousness. In
the most self-critical assessment of his obsessions and “little industries,” solitude,
he concludes, is of his own making. This is possibly a “brain bred” island, but, as
neurotic tendencies increase, it is only a matter of time before thoughts of death
reestablish themselves. He comes to the ultimate realization that, however much
humans are involved in the quotidian, they cannot completely distract themselves
from mortal thoughts. Death is the telos of life, the core of existence ( Jung, “The
Soul and Death”; Marcuse).
In order to lessen the anxieties of mortality, Crusoe places his faith in a higher
being, finding reaffirmation of his religious beliefs in the most symbolic of his
island possessions—the knife:
[…]
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
[…]
On his island, a vulnerable Crusoe could regard the knife in awe and “implore
it” not to break. Such faithfulness in the “living soul” of an inanimate companion
amounts to a far greater spiritual—indeed Christian—sustaining experience than
any other of his island industries. As Jung stated: “since the symbol derives as much
from the conscious as the unconscious, it is able to unite them both, reconciling
their conceptual polarity through its form, and their emotional polarity through its
numinosity” ( Jung, Aion 180). The crucifix embodies both the conscious and un-
conscious, in other words, the pragmatic value of the knife and its emotional res-
onance that resides in the mind and associates the object with religious meaning.
However, back in England, the knife loses its luster for Crusoe; a spiritual symbol
is reduced to a mere object. Perplexed that the local museum would wish to exhibit
his knife, he proclaims irreverently: “My eyes rest on it and pass on.” The potency
of symbolism is relative, in the same way that Jung explained, Christian symbols
in an increasingly scientific age “are miles away from a modern man’s conscious
understanding” ( Jung, Aion 177).
the “ man - moth ,” al - mirāj , and dante ’ s divine comedy
In the dialectics of death, Christ is the embodiment of ascension and immortality,

a metaphysical reasoning that places him at the apex of a universal order while, at
the same time, diminishing humanity to a lower plane of existence. This division
of the earthly and celestial becomes the leitmotif of Bishop’s “The Man-Moth,”
a poem in which the modern city, with its subways and skyscrapers, suggests that
humans continue to give concrete form to individual concepts of man, nature, and
God. Below the ground in this city lives the Man-Moth, a sublunary chimera who,
sensing the light of the moon falling on his hands, scales the buildings, therefore
reducing the whole city to an object of philosophical reflection. The language of
the “The Man-Moth” is enigmatic; in the words of J. J. Mayoux, “une langue de
lapsus, tres exactement, c’est à dire de glissements” (219). It lapses and glides into
philosophical reflection, while the element of escape into the phenomenal beyond
is offered by the moon. The poem lends itself to analysis of the traditional role of
the visionary archetype who, according to both Muslim and Christian eschatolog-
ical works (for example, the Kitab al-Mirāj and Dante’s The Divine Comedy), can
sense the divine and even travel to the otherworld in either mind or body.
This archetype was identified by Mircea Eliade with the shaman of archaic
society who mediates between the living and the dead, experiencing “ecstatic,”
and momentary, separation of the soul from the body, enabling him to cross over
into the afterlife (Eliade 17). Jewish and Christian visionaries of the first centuries
were also said to possess pneuma or divine spirit (Piñero-Sáenz), while the resi-
due of pneumatic fervor can be found in the embellishments of Islamic tradition,
which holds that the rusul, the messenger of God, is invested with the ability to
see and hear the divine (alssamī albasīr; Sūra 17:1). Muhammad, accompanied by
Gabriel, takes a journey (sabīl or rihlat) from Mecca to Jerusalem and then ascends
to heaven by degrees (darajāt) toward an ultimate revelation (al-Qushayrī 7; Le
livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 11, 29). Hundreds of thousands of angels appear to
him as he passes through the heavenly spheres, whose walls and gateways are so
immense that, according to a tenth-century source, it would take a knight on a
fast horse years to traverse them (al-Qushayrī 45, 51–52). The wonders (‘ajāyib)
of this celestial realm—the marble floors, the saffron grasses, the air that smells
of musk—make it seem as if the earthly has been transposed, its form altered and
embellished sensually (al-Qushayrī 52). A further embodiment of the familiar and
fantastical is Burāq, the Prophet’s steed, who possesses both equine features and a
human face; smaller than a mule but magnificent in appearance, his tail is made of
silver and his hair of pearls (al-Qushayrī 44; Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 100).
The prophet is able to capture in vivid terms this wondrous world.
Of course, not all visionaries are believed; the principles and traditions of a
given religion are intended to distinguish between those who are endowed with
the divine gift of prophetic knowledge and the morally reprehensible who seek
to deceive. For instance, Western classifications of Islam range from medieval
characterization of a deformed, monstrous, and idolatrous religion to more recent
postcolonial subordination of the Orient to “the culture and indeed the very idea
of white Christian Europe” (Daniel; Le Roman de Mahomet de Alexandre du Pont
14; Petruccioli; Said 72; Sénac 75). Europe may have been drawn to the phan-
tasmagoria of the Orient (Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 37), but the alter was
morally corrupt. In the twelfth century, Walter of Compiègne’s Otia de Machomete
(“The Poem of Muhammad”) described the Prophet as Machomes devotus (Le
Roman de Mahomet de Alexandre du Pont 102), meaning a devout but equally self-
sacrificing man, who was destined to be judged by God. The ill-fated Muhammad
was consigned to the lowest reaches of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy (XXVIII,
22–36), while in the seventeenth century, Pascal offered a similar denunciation of
the Prophet, proclaiming his holy book to be full of “obscure” signs (dialectics)
and not the divine “mystery,” and revelation of true Christian prophecy (exegesis)
(IX, 121–22).
We view Bishop’s Man-Moth as the archetype of the fallen prophet. This
chimera appears at night:
He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.
Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him,
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
The “vast properties” of the universe and the immense dimensions of nature are
reducible to a mere concrete detail—“The whole shadow of Man is only as big
as his hat.” From below ground, the Man-Moth can only sense the “queer light”
of the moon falling on his hands—its temperature “impossible to record in ther-
mometers”—but he thinks it is “a small hole at the top of the sky,” an image that
recalls Bosch’s The Ascent into Empyrean (Falk 18–19). Bosch used the Empyrean,
the visible light or heaven at the end of a tunnel, as a sign of hope for the beyond.
The shadow of man and that of the Man-Moth, which drags behind him “like a
photographer’s cloth,” bears testimony to an all-pervasive light.
As the Man-Moth scales the buildings, he begins to doubt that he possesses
the divine powers of ascension. The “Man, standing below him, [who] has no
such illusions,” looks upon him not as a visionary but, in the words of the prophet
Jeremiah, a purveyor of hollow dreams—somniantes mendacium (‘false dreams’)5
(23:32; Shiokawa 154). Certain diachronic observations can, therefore, be made
about the archetype of the prophet. For those who believe in his powers of div-
ination, he is able to see vividly the world beyond the grave, while for others he
is cursed, an imposter no more endowed with the divine spirit than any man or
woman. The Man-Moth vainly attempts to traverse the Empyrean but grows anx-
ious as he nears the moon. In the poem’s fifth stanza, he returns below ground:
[…]
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.
Each night he must

be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to.
(Bishop, The Complete Poems 14–15)
Carried each night through artificial tunnels, the Man-Moth must dream of re-
lentless search, his body subject to incurable disease. Bishop’s description of the
subway as a shadowy and cavernous abode calls to mind the biblical image of the
valley of the damned. This literary artifice, the vivid depiction of man’s descent
into the earthly shadows—the motif of damnation from the Old Testament to the
literature of the modern age—has its points of resemblance in “the moral architec-
ture” (Asin 15) of the Divine Comedy. In Dante’s vision of Christian eschatology,
the most reviled sinners are condemned to the lowest levels of the Inferno, and the
penitents, those who seek divine truth, or knowledge, are rewarded with eternal
rest in Paradise (Auerbach 76, 94; Bauman 221). It is also possible to draw parallels
between the world that the Man-Moth inhabits and the Mīrāj; again, according
to tradition, sinners are subjected to eternal torment, and the contrite aspire to the
highest point of heaven, where God is revealed as the supreme knowledge, the cre-
ator of all humankind (al-Qushayrī 39). In Islamic cosmogony, generally, heavenly
repose is the polar opposite of the realm of Fire (Sūra 18:107, 23:17, 89:23; Smith
and Haddad 86–87). Arguably, therefore, the structure of “The Man-Moth”—the
moon, earthly city, and subways—corresponds in certain respects to traditional
Christian and Muslim concepts of divine reward and damnation. However, the
pains that the Man-Moth suffers are not inflicted by a higher being. Whereas
Dante presented “man as we know him in his living historical reality,” “reborn in
his manifest unity of body and spirit,” and his destiny determined within a uni-
versal order (Auerbach 81, 175, 178), the Man-Moth stands alone, a tragic figure
who, unable to glimpse the afterlife, must face the agonies of an endless search.
pa s c a l ’ s p e n s é e s a n d t h e m e a n i n g o f s i g n s i n
“a m i r a c l e f o r b r e a k fa s t ”
If the inability of the Man-Moth to ascend to heaven leads him to question the
promise of eternal life, in Bishop’s “A Miracle for Breakfast,” the cynics cast doubt
on the ability of the prophet to perform miracles—to prove, as he claims, that
the empirical laws of nature can be overturned, and that death therefore can be
reversed. An interest in the meaning of signs within the field of epistemology and
religious practice led Bishop to the work of Pascal, whose aphoristic utterances on
God, miracles, and le néant (‘nothingness’) served as an ideological framework for
her poetry. Pascal’s defense of Christianity had been first published posthumously
in 1670 in their note form as the Pensées.
The draft of “A Miracle for Breakfast” included a quotation from Pascal, the
epigram that later appeared with the poem in the 1972 reprint of North & South—
“Les miracles discernent la doctrine, et la doctrine discerne les miracles” (“Miracles
differentiate between doctrine and doctrine differentiates between miracles”)
(Pascal XIII, 162; MacMahon 143). Pascal affirms and disputes various theologi-
cal propositions, rationalizing the complexity of Christian doctrine, by placing at
the heart of his philosophy the death and Resurrection of Christ. He denounced
all other religions: the āyāt of the Qur’ān were obscurities, and Muhammad per-
formed no miracles (IX, 123), while the “carnal Jews” did not believe in the hum-
ble figure of Christ and, instead, awaited the “grand prince temporal” (VII, 123).
For Pascal, Christianity is the one true religion; divinely ordained and based on the
ancient laws of the Scriptures, its prophecies conceal the mystery of Resurrection
(VIII, 118, 137).
Nevertheless, how can the miracle of resurrection be distinguished from, say,
the archaic symbol of the Mother Earth? Pascal defines a miracle as “un effet qui
excède la force naturelle des moyens qu’on y emploie,” an effect that exceeds the
natural force of the means employed (XIII, 162). The signum, or sign, of a miracle
denotes the transformation of an object—water into wine—or the transmutation
of the human body—a dead man is brought back to life. These signs encapsulate
both physical change and the invisible force of a higher being. Hence, a distinction
can be made between the implicit function of symbols—wine signifying the blood
of Christ—and the spectacle of miracle, the revivification of Lazarus, for example,
as proof of resurrection.
In “A Miracle for Breakfast,” people gather at dawn to witness a miracle take
place:
At six o’clock we were waiting for coffee,

waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony,
—like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.
[…]
He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle
[…]
Who exactly is the man who stands on the balcony in close proximity to heaven?6
He will hand out “the charitable crumb” to feed his hungry followers, but he must
perform a miracle, in the same way that people demanded of Christ: “What do
you have to make us believe you rather than the rest? What signs can you give us?”
(Pascal 97).
“A Miracle for Breakfast” was written as a sestina, a form which compels the
poet to experiment with language and to demonstrate how the unusual combina-
tion and repetition of words maintain a rhythm that accentuates, indeed mimics,
the incongruity—whether in art or life generally—between the physical forms of

natural objects and the invisible concepts of spirituality. However, it is the sesti-
na’s incongruous combination of words (for example, “coffee” and “crumb”) which
signals most effectively how language may be interpreted within a schema of un-
derstanding; the concrete description remains powerfully suggestive of Christian
miracles simply because the content, though seemingly prosaic, corresponds to
religious signs deeply ingrained in the reader’s imagination.
In “A Miracle for Breakfast,” Bishop will resort to metaphor where it is
needed: the man’s head, “so to speak, is in the clouds”—he is not supernatural
and suffers, perhaps, from conceit, a very human fault. Bishop’s language reaf-
firms how our attention does not simply rest on the verbal surface but moves
beyond the literal meaning of such words as coffee and crumb, in the same way
that we look to interrogate signs or symbols within religious contexts. The scene
of a messianic-type figure standing on a balcony attended by acolytes and appor-
tioning food is endowed with so much iconic status that the context invariably
suggests the correspondence of the equivocal objects—coffee and crumb—to
the act of transubstantiation at the heart of the Christian Eucharist, the miracle
of the loaves and fishes, or the water turned to wine at Cana, even though this
was not Bishop’s “conscious” intention (Bishop, One Art 477). From such a read-
ing, we arrive at a further deduction; the dark substance of the coffee and the
scarcely palatable crumb must, therefore, be emblematic of spiritual opacity. The
combining of sacred and non-sacred phenomena is common practice in modern
poetry (Altieri 615).
“A Miracle for Breakfast” appears to dispute the existence of the miraculous
and denies the central male figure his position of power. The truly miraculous be-
comes part of the natural. What the speaker says next is pertinent:
I can tell what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
—I saw it with one eye close to the crumb—
and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
my mansion, made for me by a miracle […]
(Bishop, The Complete Poems 18–19)
The aspirant’s desire for oneness with the physical world is presented as one of
absolute fulfillment: “my crumb,” “my mansion,” “my balcony,” and “my feet.”
There is a sense of complete ownership that contrasts with the people awaiting the
“charitable” and meager offerings of the man on the balcony. (As anticipation of a
miracle diminishes, the promised loaf becomes a crumb, and the cup of coffee no
more than a drop.)
The speaker turns to the Darwinian miracle that evolves “through ages by
insects, birds, and the river/Working the stone.” This mansion is created and made
possible through the graceful and rhythmic motion of the natural world: “A win-
dow across the river caught the sun/as if the miracle were working, on the wrong
balcony” (Bishop, The Complete Poems 19). The word “miracle,” with its connota-
tions of the subversion of the real, signals the poet’s interest in the ambiguities of
appearances. The rays of the sun are “caught” by the window glass, but this play
of light, which may otherwise be interpreted as a heavenly vision, can easily be
explained by the laws of science without the need to invoke religion. Thus, the
concept of the miraculous is redefined as being a natural phenomenon or effect.
In this case, the glass case is not transformed but reflects the sun’s rays, which can
be seen by those across the river. The changes taking place are perceptual, and the
miracle that is “working” is not channeled through the supernatural powers of an
individual. As is so often the case in Bishop’s poetry, there is belief in the actual
and rejection of illusion.
co n c lu s i o n
Bishop’s poetry enquires into the nature of the visible and invisible world, not least
the ways in which miracles manifest the ineffable. The miraculous is of central im-
portance, a spectacle of divine intervention at the heart of the Christian religion,
and the death and Resurrection of Christ as emblematic of eternal life. Indeed, as
has been shown, the separation of the body from the soul is, generally speaking,
the most archaic of human emblems of rebirth. Hayy, on discovering the dead
body of his surrogate mother, comes to the conclusion that whatever reanimates
her lifeless body is that indefinable “thing,” otherwise known as the soul.
For over two thousand years, Christian texts have configured the death of
Christ and the Resurrection, while in Islam, the mystery of creation has given
rise to the most potent emblems of faith, suggesting that death precedes life and
that a supreme being has the power to create and recreate ad infinitum (Smith and
Haddad 31). It is the consideration of these cross-cultural paradigms that makes
discussion of Bishop’s poetry relevant to an understanding of how, in the modern
era, agnostic enquiry into the nature of death, God, and the afterlife must invari-
ably proceed from within the complex ideologies and traditions of Christian and
Muslim religions.
notes
1. “Crusoe in England” and “The Man-Moth” are included in Bishop’s North and South (1946) and
“A Miracle for Breakfast” in Geography III (1976).
2. We are thinking here of collective lamentation—for example, the self-flagellation of Shia matam,
or the orchestrated public hysteria in North Korea following the death of Kim Jong-Il.
3. God addresses Muhammad in the following way: “ecce quamdam uocem dicentem michi: ‘Hac-
rop kodem, ya habibi, ya Muhagmet,’ quod interpretatur: appropinqua te michi amice Machomete”
(“Behold, a voice says to me: ‘Hacrop kodem, ya habibi, ya Muhagmet,’ which means: draw near
my friend Muhammad”). God also creates the tools of knowledge: “Nam simul cum cathedra
creauit Deus tabulam quamdam ad scribendum, que tantum grossa erat quantum posset homo
ire in mille annis […] Creauit namque Deus cum predicta tabula pennam quamdam claritas ad
scribendum” (“God created a chair and a table for writing, which was as broad as the distance
a man can travel in a thousand years. […] Besides this table, He also created a pen to write
lucidly”); Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 154.
4. The author of the Liber Scale Machometi stated that the intention of his work was to bring greater
awareness of Muhammad’s life and scientia, which, when compared with the divinely ordained
tenets of the Christian religion, was tantamount to lies and ridicule: “ut Machometi non minus
abusiua quam derisoria contra Christum temere attemptata notescant, et ipsius Christi fidei
ueritas comparata mendaciis plus delectet […]” (“Muhammad’s audacious abuse and derision of
Christ having become known, the true Christian faith, compared with these lies, is all the more
satisfying”); Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet 78. See also 37–38.
5. Jeremiah 23:32: “ecce ego ad prophetas somniantes mendacium ait Dominus qui narraverunt ea
et seduxerunt populum meum in mendacio suo et in miraculis suis cum ego non misissem eos
nec mandassem eis qui nihil profuerunt populo huic dicit Dominus.” (“Behold, I am against
prophets of false dreams, says the Lord. They seduce my people with their lies and miracles; I
sent them not, nor commanded them who do not profit this people”).
6. Interestingly, in this regard, Bishop’s quasi-religious figure in “A Miracle for Breakfast” may have
alluded to the curious Koreshan Unity sect (which was based in Estero, Florida, in the 1930s).
The body of their leader, Cyrus R. Teed, who had convinced his followers of his immortality, was
laid on the banks of the Estero River in anticipation of his resurrection; Bishop, One Art 55.
works cited
Altieri, Charles. “From Symbolist Thought to Immanence: The Ground of Postmodern American
Poetics.” Boundary 2.1 (1972): 605–37. Print.
Ariès, Philippe. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present. Trans. Patricia M.
Ranum. London: Marion Boyars, 1976. Print.
———. “La mort inverse.” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 8 (1967): 169–95. Print.
———. L’Homme devant la mort. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1977. Print.
Auerbach, Erich. Dante: Poet of the Secular World. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Chicago: U of Chicago P,
1961. Print.
Baumann Zygmunt. “Postmodern Adventures of Life and Death.” Modernity, Medicine, and Health:
Medical Sociology Towards 2000. Ed. Graham Scambler and Paul Higgs. London: Routledge,
1998. 216–31. Print.
Binski, Paul. Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation. London: British Museum Press, 2001. Print.
Bishop, Elizabeth. One Art: Letters. Ed. Robert Giroux. New York: Farrar, 1994. Print.
———. The Complete Poems: 1927–1979. New York: Farrar, 1983. Print.
Colby, Frederick Stephen. Narrating Muḥammad’s Night Journey. Albany: State U of New York P,
2008. Print.
Daniel, Norman. Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh: University Press, 1962. Print.
Eliade, Mircea. “Mythologies of Death: An Introduction.” Religious Encounters with Death. Ed. Frank
E. Reynolds and Earle H. Waugh. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1977. 13–23. Print.
Falk, Kurt. The Unknown Hieronymus Bosch. Berkley: North Atlantic, 2008. Print.
Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad. Kitāb al-jam‘ bayna ra’yay al-ḥākīmayn. Beirut: al-
Mạtba‘ah al-Kāthūlīkīyah, 1960. Print.
Francastel, Pierre. Peinture et société: naissance et destruction d’un espace plastique, De la Renaissance au
cubisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1965. Print.
Guenancia, Pierre. Du vide à Dieu: essai sur la physique de Pascal. Paris: F. Maspero, 1976. Print.
Hawi, Sami. Islamic Naturalism and Mysticism: A Philosophic Study of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy bin Yaqṣān.
Leiden: Brill, 1974. Print.
Heath, Peter. Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ). Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992.
Print.
Hoffman, Frederick J. The Mortal No: Death and the Modern Imagination. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1964. Print.
Ibn Tufayl. Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān f ī asrār al-ḥikmah al-mashriqīyah. Algiers: Imprimerie Orientale,
P. Fontana et co., 1900. Print.
Jones, S. The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and the Present. London: Rout-
ledge, 1997. Print.
Jung, C. G. “The Soul and Death.” The Meaning of Death. Ed. Herman Feifel. New York: Blakiston
Division, McGraw-Hill, 1959. 3–15. Print.
———. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1981. Print.
Kaufmann, Walter. “Existentialism and Death.” The Meaning of Death. Ed. Herman Feifel. New York:
Blakiston Division, McGraw-Hill, 1959. 39–63. Print.
Kuberski, P. “The Metaphysics of Postmodern Death: Mailer’s Ancient Evenings and Merrill’s The
Changing Light at Sandover.” English Literary History 56.1 (1989): 229–54. Print.
Levi-Strauss, C. The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966. Print.
Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet/Liber scale Machometi. Eds. Gisèle Besson, Michèle Brossard-Dandré,
and Roger Arnaldez. Paris: Librairie Générale Française: Le Livre de Poche, 1991. Print.
Le Roman de Mahomet de Alexandre du Pont. Ed. Yvan G. Lepage. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1977.
Print.
MacMahon, Candace W., ed. Elizabeth Bishop: A Bibliography, 1927–1979. Charlottesville: UP of
Virginia, 1980. Print.
Marcuse, Herbert. “The Ideology of Death.” The Meaning of Death. Ed. Herman Feifel. New York:
Blakiston Division, McGraw-Hill, 1959. 64–76. Print.
Mayoux, J. J. “L’hérésie de James Joyce.” English Miscellany 2 (1951): 199–225. Print.
Merrin, Jeredith. An Enabling Humility: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and the Uses of Tradition.
New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990. Print.
Ockley, Simon. The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai ebn Yokdhan. London:
Edm. Powell, and J. Morphew, 1708. Print.
Pascal, Blaise, Pensées. Paris: Librairie Bloud, 1907. Print.
Paxton, Frederick. Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. Print.
Petruccioli, A. Dar al-Islam: architecture du territoire dans les pays islamiques. Brussels: Architecture et
Recherches, 1990. Print.
Piñero-Sáenz, ‘Les conceptions de l’inspiration dans l’apocalyptique Juive et Chrétienne.’ Apocalypses
et Voyages dans l’au-delà. Ed. Claude Kappler et al. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1987. Print.
Price, H. H. “Survival and the Idea of ‘Another World.’” Language, Metaphysics and Death. Ed. John
Donnelly. New York: Fordham UP, 1978. 176–95. Print.
al-Qushayrī, Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin. Kitāb al-Mirāj. Cario: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥādīthah, 1964.
Print.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Print.
Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “Les morts qui parlent: voix et visions au XIIIe siècle.” La linguistique fan-
tastique. Ed. S. Auroux. Paris: Joseph Clims: Denoël, 1985. Print.
Sénac, Philippe. L’image de l’autre: l’Occident médiéval face à l’Islam. Paris: Flammarion, 1983. Print.
Shiokawa, Tetsuya. Pascal et les miracles. Paris: A.-G. Nizet, 1977. Print.
Slote, Michael A. “Existentialism and the Fear of Dying.” Language, Metaphysics and Death. Ed. John
Donnelly. New York: Fordham UP, 1978. Print.
Smith, Jane I. “The Understanding of Nafs and Rūh in Contemporary Muslim Considerations of the
Nature of Sleep and Death.” The Muslim World 69.3 (1979): 151–62. Print.
———, and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Albany:
State U of New York P, 1981. Print.
al-Tabari, Muhammad ibn Jarir. Jāmī al-bayān f ī tafsīr al-Qurān, Vol. 8. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiya,
1999. Print.
Tenenti, A. Il senso della morte e l’amore della vita nel Rinascimento. Torino: G. Einaudi, 1957. Print.
Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1967. Print.
Wahl, C. W. “The Fear of Death.” The Meaning of Death. Ed. Herman Feifel. New York: Blakiston
Division, McGraw-Hill, 1959. 16–29. Print.
Walter, Tony. The Revival of Death. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Weill, Isabelle. Introduction. Le Livre de l’échelle de Mahomet/Liber scale Machometi. Ed. Gisèle Besson,
Michèle Brossard-Dandré, and Roger Arnaldez. Paris: Librairie Générale Française: Le Livre
de Poche, 1991. Print.
part t wo
Death as a Literary Device

chapter four
The End of Language?

Representations and Effects of
Death and Dying in the Fiction of
Julia Kristeva and Susan Sontag
heather h . yeung
It is by means of images and sounds, not words that have to be translated by the imagina-
tion, that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the
death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself.
—S ontag , A gainst I nterpretation , 210
In the tiring spectacle we present throughout the day, throughout our lives, sleep is the
experience most favourable to the beauty of the face. The eyes, flowering from the head,
as through from the deep wells of dreams, and the relaxed features of the dead, who can
finally ignore guilt, render the myth of resurrection almost plausible. Death is undoubtedly
unrepresentable.
—K risteva , S evered H ead , 122
Susan Sontag’s novelistic career began with the publication of The Benefactor
(1963). This was followed by three additional novels, of which Death Kit (1967),
the tale of one man’s existential quest towards death, is the second. Aspects of
Sontag’s novels are in some way concerned with the personal, psychological, and
cultural effects of death, the dead, and the dying. The Benefactor is the story of the
deeds and misdeeds in life and in dream of an aging man modeled on the leg-
end of Phaedrus and Hippolytus, and The Volcano Lover (1992) tells the story of
Nelson’s affair with Emma Hamilton and concludes with an operatic medley
of voices speaking from beyond the grave. However, it is in Death Kit that we
58 | heather h . yeung
encounter the fullest exploration of moving toward death in Sontag’s fictional

prose. The mystery of the protagonist’s suicide and dreamed murders gives
Sontag space to investigate through the medium of literature the manner in which
near-death experiences alter relationships with language and blur the boundaries
between reality and hallucination, life and death.
Julia Kristeva’s decision to write novels—a decision that came relatively late
in her career as a writer, philosopher, and psychoanalyst—was one born out of
death and an act of mourning. Written broadly within the genre of the detective
novel, her last three novels are woven with the fabric of death. The Old Man and
the Wolves (1991) is a critique of culture and ideologies that centers around the
death of the old man of the title, a figure who is at once a (fictional) professor and
(in reality) a literary writing of Kristeva’s dead father, catalyzed simultaneously
by her father’s death and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her fourth novel, Murder in
Byzantium (2004), underwent a turning point in its composition due to the death
of Kristeva’s mother and the events of 9/11.1 Possessions (1996) bridges these two
novels and is also concerned with or born out of ideas of death and dying. The
novel begins with a beheading, and subsequently investigates representations of
death in art and the relationship of death and trauma to life, vision, and language.
This essay explores representations of death and dying in Death Kit and Possessions,
elucidating some of the ways these writers address death as that which ultimately
lies beyond the limits of the senses, of language, and, indeed, all other expression.
In an essay for the Observer on the occasion of his mother’s death, David Rieff
points out out how Susan Sontag’s morbid obsession with death, her cancer, and
her own eventual demise was a more essential phenomenon than any theoretical
accession to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of dying:
My mother’s refusal to accept death was not one “stage” in the process of leading first to
acceptance and then […] to extinction itself. It was at the core of her consciousness. She
was determined to live because she simply could not imagine giving in, as she put it to me
once, long before her final cancer, to the imperative of dying (Rieff n.p.).
As readers of Sontag’s work, we can see her fiction and her non-fiction full of a
concern with death and the idea of dying long before her final illness. Sontag’s
second novel, Death Kit (written before the author would admit that “death has
finally become real” [Diaries 375]) may be read as an early investigation into the
nature of the imperative of dying.
Concerned with the idea of death from its title page, Death Kit is a tale of
Dalton “Diddy” Harmon’s movement toward death in both the “real” world and also
a world constructed in a post-attempted suicide, pre-mortem, and hallucination. It
is in the protagonist’s name that we find the central question of the novel’s quest.
The opening of the novel plays on the semantic breakdown of “Diddy” (which, as
a diminutive of Dalton, is already a breakdown in itself ): “Diddy the Good […]
t h e e n d o f l a n g uag e ? | 59
Good Diddy, Goody Did, and Done-Done” (1). Larry McCaffrey extends this in his
analysis of the novel not only to include the question “did he?” (directed in this case
toward the double murder of a man named Incardona, which forms the backbone of
the hallucination plot), but also “dead he” (even when, at the end of the novel, Diddy
has acquiesced to the idea of his own death, we are not sure that he is, in fact, dead;
nor are we sure if there is actually a man named Incardona, and if there is, if he is
actually killed) (McCaffrey 489). Sontag’s own reminiscence of the genesis of the
novel also revolves around this diminutive name, its resonance with the possibility of
death, and the resonance of death itself in all her work:
[‘Diddy’ is] the source of the meditation on death I’ve carried in my heart all my life […]
Did-he? Did he die? The theme of false death, la mort évoque, la résurrection inattendue
in all my work. […] The two deaths in my life.
1938: Daddy: far away, unassimilable.
1969: Susan: same name as me, ma sosie, also unassimilable (Diaries 336)
Death Kit can thus also be read as a work of mourning: mourning for literal deaths
of those known to Sontag, mourning for the inability to assimilate these deaths,
and mourning for her own imminent death.
Death is an inevitability. It is both the lack and the excess of life. It is also
frequently used as a metaphor for a life less lived. Even before the suicide attempt
that propels the body of the novel into the parallel times of the real world and an
hallucinated dream-world, Diddy is described as not really a part of life:
Diddy, not really alive, had a life. Hardly the same. Some people are their lives. Others, like
Diddy, merely inhabit their lives. Like insecure tenants, never knowing exactly the extent
of their property or when the lease will expire. Like unskilled cartographers, drawing and
redrawing erroneous maps of an exotic continent. (2)
Sontag extends these metaphors of habitation and topography throughout the

novel by stating that if life is an acknowledgement of death, it is also a fitness for
one’s habitat. Between a life lived and a death acknowledged, Diddy is demonstra-
bly unfit for his habitat, and this unfitness shows itself in the novel in the attention
paid to excess, waste, and malfunctioning systems.
Diddy’s death in life, his mere inhabitation of a life in an “unusable, unin-
habitable” (3) world, is what leads to his suicide attempt. This death in life is also
linked to a strange failure of vision, as if the uninhabitable nature of Diddy’s exis-
tence has rendered his faculties unusable:
This deliquescent running-down of everything becomes co-existent with Diddy’s entire
span of consciousness, undermines his most minimal acts. Getting out of bed is an agony
unpromising as the struggles of a fish caught up on the beach, trying to extract life from the
meaningless air. Persons who merely have-a-life customarily move in a dense fluid. That’s
how they’re able to conduct their lives at all. Their living depends on not seeing. But when
this fluid evaporates, an uncensored, fetid, appalling underlife is disclosed. Lost continents
are brought to view, bearing the ruins of doomed cities, the sparsely fleshed skeletons of
ancient creatures immobilised in their death throes, a landscape of unparalleled savagery.
One can redeem skeletons and abandoned cities as human. But not a lost, dehumanized
nature. (3)
Here, the ideas of vision and wasted topographies combine, and it is only at the
end of the novel that Diddy is eventually able to compile and order the dying land-
scape of his existence. Even at the beginning of the novel, Sontag’s use of highly
metaphorical language conspires against Diddy, pushing him from his death in life
toward death proper—death as the proper erasure even of a “lost, dehumanized
nature” (3).
Where the life of those who do not inhabit their lives is marked by a strange
failure of vision, death itself is marked by a radical lack of vision. In his life with
his blind fiancée, Hester (a part of the hallucinatory constructions of the novel),
Diddy is brought to meditate on the nature and purpose of vision in a way that
his previous life as a microscope technology salesman (a part of the “real life” con-
structions of the novel) never brought him:
For Diddy to feel liberated, disburdened, Hester needn’t insult or snub his objects. And
didn’t. She simply had to turn on them the innocent neutrality of her sightless appraisal.
It’s for Diddy, then, to scour his all-too-retentive vision […]
The eye as window;
The eye as lamp;
The eye as jewel.
But what is more discriminating and peremptory than the white hymen of the
eyeball? (234)
Vision looks out upon and reacts to the world. It is illuminating, thus linked to the
life of the mind; it is precious. It is also discriminatory. Faced with the multiple
aspects of vision and the lack of vision, language fails to capture in a single phrase
the effects and ramifications of life in the visual world.
Moving further away from life in his relationship with Hester, Diddy fi-
nally rejects the visual world. His rejection of sight in his life with Hester only
brings him closer to death, since he “resumes, in this even more dangerously
condensed and concentrated arena of his new life with Hester, the old habits
of not being fully present. Not being in his life” (268). In his relationship with
Hester, Diddy is brought more and more to reject vision, symbolically and lit-
erally turning away from one of life’s main construction-endowing senses. His
symbolic blindness compounds Hester’s existence as a “black sun” (223), or site
of continued melancholy, and leads to a failure of interpersonal interaction with
Hester and the degeneration of their relationship, which has heretofore been
Diddy’s lifeline.
Initially, this rejection of vision marks Diddy’s liberation from the waste-
object-filled landscapes which have previously been oppressive to him and leads
to a rejection of life, but, eventually, Sontag extends the metaphor of Diddy’s own
strange failure of vision even to his life with Hester. It is in coping with, rather
than rejecting, the waste-filled world that life may be endured. At times, Death
Kit’s meditations on Diddy’s quest for death take on fabulous dimensions in which
Diddy exists but which resists rational understanding:
It’s only that he [Diddy] doesn’t understand. Not really. A hopeless, bumbling tourist in
the somber labyrinth of his own consciousness. The punitive labyrinth. The initiatory lab-
yrinth. The architectonic labyrinth. The girl with the oval sunglasses, sure-footed in the
dark, will lead him out. (223)
Hester’s blindness, figured here with Ariadne-like appropriateness in the context

of Diddy’s hallucinatory quest, is neither helpful nor appropriate in the context of
the parallel narrative of his literal fight for life. With the sunglasses obscuring most
of her face, Hester exemplifies the face/body split that Sontag investigates further
in Illness as Metaphor—what she sees as central to Western conceptions of the per-
son and what, when the face is in some way adulterated from a norm, will denote
illness and unfitness for life and provoke reactions of horror and rejection. Func-
tioning sight and a functioning head are analogous and equally linked to a proper
adaptation for life and acceptance of death (we will later see the dehumanizing
effect of the head/body divide further investigated in the work of Julia Kristeva).
The metaphorical landscapes of excess, the proper functioning of the senses,
and linearly conceived temporality both reject and are rejected by Diddy. The nar-
rative and stylistic progressions within Death Kit are guided by a dream-logic in
which we can observe echoes of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment:
In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and
extraordinary semblence of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting
and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly,
but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev
even, could never have invented them in a waking state (Dostoevsky 49).
The unreal reality of Diddy’s hallucinated world becomes more “real” than his at-
tempted suicide and drug overdose; the content of the novel is thus both real and
beyond reality—it is surreal.
The reality of Diddy’s progress towards death in his suicide attempt is thus
put aside, and the detailed and extended hallucinations of the very short peri-
od between his discovered suicide and his hospitalization take up the majority
of the novel. A “youngish trim looking Negro in white jacket and pants” (6),
or a “trim, youngish Negro wearing white jacket and pants” (312) approaches
Diddy’s bed wheeling a stomach pump in a single event that is depicted hundreds
of pages apart (we will see a similar concertinaing of novel time in the face of death
in Kristeva’s Possessions). The action of Death Kit takes place outside any sort of
clock time (real or novelistic—throughout the novel, “now” is only ever written in
parentheses; there are no exceptions to this idiosyncrasy). Neither Diddy nor the
narrative strands of Death Kit exist in any given temporality. The time represented
by “(now)” is akin to a dreamed or liminal state. By embracing liminality, Sontag
reaches out to the possibility of resembling death’s embrace.
The invention of Diddy’s dream world in Death Kit becomes the way in which
the protagonist copes not only with the mess of life, but also with the imminence
and mess of actual death. In the novel, death itself becomes a spectral presence
alongside the central (hallucinated) quest, but the material of reality and the hallu-
cination eventually combine, and it is the hallucination that guides Diddy toward
death itself. Up until that point, Diddy exists simultaneously within the quest
and the death narratives, although the rich tissue of the quest narrative is often
interrupted by reactions to or observations about his dying. Finally, in what we can
assume is the moment of death (in the final pages of the novel), Diddy’s death kit
seems complete. In embracing the hallucinatory reality of this realized metaphor,
Diddy’s inner and outer worlds are in alignment. Tellingly, this alignment occurs
first through language and finally through vision itself.
Walking through a surreal realm of the dead, Diddy moves from a display of
objects rejected by the world (the excesses of the world which have previously dis-
gusted him), to a gallery of texts “all relating loosely to the theme of death” (295)—
“a vision of death as a museum of quotations” (Diaries 511). Finally, he reaches a
room of corpses, of all ages and from all periods in history. Faced with this morbid
display, Diddy, for the first time, is inquisitive: “Diddy is reconnoitring the future.
Diddy is exploring his death. Cautiously, thoughtfully, diligently. He wills to know,
he will know all the rooms in this place; even if it’s the house of death” (303).
Through the reality-distancing act of world-creation by hallucination, Diddy is
finally able to acknowledge death’s imminence: “Diddy walks on, looking for his
death. Diddy has made his final chart; drawn up his last map. Diddy has perceived
the inventory of the world” (312). Of course, this inventory itself is a catalogue
of deaths made in a dreamed mausoleum/museum which is a product of Diddy’s
hallucination. “Death,” the novel reads, “= an encyclopaedia of life” (310). “Death,”
Susan Sontag’s diary reads, two years before the publication of Death Kit, “= being
completely inside one’s own head. Life = the world” (Diaries 45). Through the final
visual-cartographical act of mapping multiple conceptual possibilities of death, the
two strands of Death Kit’s narratives align. Diddy retreats from the “real” world
into his hallucination. In the final moments before death, vision returns to Diddy:
it is “as though [he] were living at last in his eyes, only in his eyes. The outward eye
that names and itemizes, the inward eye that throbs with thought” (311). Finally,
Diddy is able to realize the fact of death by staring it in the face.
Julia Kristeva’s third novel, Possessions, bears a prefatory quotation from

Dostoevsky’s novel Demons. Stravrogin speaks to Tikhon thus:
And, you know, lowering your eyes is totally unbecoming to you: unnatural, ridiculous,
and affected, and to give satisfaction for my rudeness I will tell you seriously and brazenly:
I believe in the demon, believe canonically in a personal demon, not an allegory, and I
have no need to elicit anything from anyone, there you have it. You must be terribly glad.
(Demons 687; Possessions n.p.)
Stavrogin’s speech illuminates one of the novel’s central concerns: the communi-
cation and failure of communication between ideologies and belief-systems. Eye
contact underlies the majority of effective interpersonal interaction, both literally
and symbolically. We have already seen in Sontag’s Death Kit a concern with repre-
sentation in terms of the visual and non-visual in her novelistic investigations into
the death drive, and we will return to the interaction of representation, vision, and
death later with regard to Possessions. What does this quotation have to do with the
other primary concerns of this essay—with language and death? As with Dosto-
evsky’s other works, dialogue forms a major part of the novel’s structure; much of the
plot, too, revolves around the writing of a suicide note. A further central concern of
Demons is death itself: the novel’s plot is driven by Stavrogin’s murder plot, which
plays on the suicidal nature of Kirillov, and results in the murder of Shatov and,
finally, the suicide of Stavrogin himself. The warring ideologies in Demons are ac-
companied at all times by some manifestation of the death drive; the conversations
and actions of the characters are driven by a concern with death, whereby they either
embrace it through suicide or murder, or avoid it through life.
Possessions takes its title from Constance Garnett’s first English translation
and early French translations of Dostoevsky’s novel, as well as Albert Camus’s
1959 theatrical adaptation of the same name. Kristeva’s novel moves on natu-
rally from Dostoevsky’s conspiracy-theory murder-plot narrative of warring and
possessive ideologies, updating and adapting these elements into an unquestion-
ably late twentieth-century investigation into the possessions that human beings
affectively accrue and the crimes of passion they commit as a result. Possessions
is what Kristeva calls one of her psychological, or metaphysical, detective novels
(Interviews 270). The chosen quotation from Demons is perhaps more intimately
connected with both Kristeva’s work and the themes of this essay than it would
initially seem. In the context of the greater whole of Demons, this excerpt sees
Stavrogin mock the bishop, Tikhan, for a lack of personal ideological belief, force
of will, or possession. Tikhan’s eyes here are described as “gentle, as if somewhat
timid.” He is, in fact, myopic, but the lowering of his eyes in this instance indicates
his unwillingness to accede to Stavrogin’s absolutist manner of belief and his terror
plot; a passive rather than active contradiction of Stravrogin’s assertions. In the
context of Dostoevsky’s questioning of political ideologies, Tikhan’s lowering of
his eyes and refusal to engage fully with Stavrogin’s emplotments, and Stavrogin’s
refusal to accept Tikhan’s ecclesiastical guidance, are all parts of Stavrogin’s march
toward death.
Equally telling is the fact that the section of Demons from which Kristeva’s
prefatory quotation is taken exists in manuscript copies of Dostoevsky’s novel
but was not accepted by censors and so was taken out of the novel before its
publication. It is, however, often appended to versions of the work, and was trans-
lated and published separately (as Stavrogin’s Confession) by Virginia Woolf and
Koteliansky in 1922, edited and including an essay on Dostoevsky, literature, and
parricide by Sigmund Freud.2 Thus, Kristeva’s choice of quotation lies outside the
totality of the generally accepted version of Dostoevsky’s novel; outside the limits
of the visible in the standard text of Demons, it lies in a marginal relationship with
the novel proper. Writing in this way after a marginal starting point, Kristeva’s
novel is doubly marginalized and removed from any one totalizing force. Sitting
both inside and outside canonical perspectives that are nevertheless rich with
literary and theoretical reverberations (perhaps more so than Dostoevsky’s novel
proper!), Possessions’ preface situates its reader in a highly politicized inside-
outside space—perhaps the only space from whence the investigation into the
limits of the visual, life, death, and the possibilities of novelistic articulation
which follows can take place.
Possessions itself reverses aspects of Demons’ plot, but preserves the bewildering
complexity of character and form that Freud sees as characteristic of Dostoevsky
through the multiple possibilities opened up by Kristeva’s use of the “hybrid genre”
(Deleuze 217) of the detective novel. Taking on this form, Possessions begins, rather
than ends, as do Demons and Death Kit, with death—more precisely, the murder
(drugging, strangling, stabbing, and decapitation) of a translator, Gloria Harrison.
Gloria is a linguist, and her murder thus provides an immediate visual metaphor
for the death of language, furthered by the fact that at the scene of the crime, the
corpse is discovered staged in her own study and without its head. In the world of
the novel, it is up to Kristeva’s journalist alter ego, Stephanie Delacour, to discover
the impetus behind and the cultural contexts for the murder, while also aiding (as
well as hindering) the detective inspector, Norbert Rilsky, in his search for the
perpetrator. The death-quest of this novel is not a journey away from life toward
death, but rather a journey of and for life, process, and discovery. It is less a quest
than a question, and the myriad possibilities of thought and form that the novel
plays with and between only generate further questions; the trajectory of the novel
is an affective one.
In Death Kit, we have seen a struggle for sight as analogous to a struggle with
the world, interpersonal understanding, and, ultimately, as a sign of death. Death
is irremediably linked to loss of vision, which, in life, provides us with access to
a world of text-based language and aesthetic symbols. The opening of Possessions
engages directly with these concerns in an account of the scene of the crime given
by Stephanie Delacour, which ranges from a meticulous description of the dead,
through meditations on the fact of death, and artistic depictions of deaths (in
particular of decapitations). Death defies direct characterization, generating exis-
tential thought and symbolic rather than literal meditations. “Nothing is heavier
than a dead body,” read the first pages of the novel:
And it weighs even more when the head’s missing. A face—whether peaceful, purple, or
distorted by death—gives meaning to a corpse and so makes it lighter. Eyes, even if they’re
dull, starting, or protruding; lips, even if they’re twisted, bloodstained, or swollen; hair, even
if it’s torn out, plastered down, or dishevelled—all necessarily convey what we suppose to
be the expression of death. But without eyes or mouth, head or hair, a corpse is no more
than a hunk of butcher’s meat […] Deprived of a death mask’s baleful exuberance, the dead
are dead twice over. (Possessions 3–4)
The decapitation paradoxically emphasizes both the inhuman nature of the object
of death and the excessively violent nature of the act of murder thus committed:
Gloria’s butchered body, headless, is without the redeeming human feature of the
head; the strangling, stabbing, and decapitation demonstrate the impassioned na-
ture of the act; the staging of the body proves the strange aestheticizing nature of
the murderous impulse.
The nature of the detective story’s trajectory (we are not yet privy to any in-
formation regarding the killer apart from the murder itself ) emphasizes this nature
further—at this point it is “a deed all the more human because it was anonymous
and therefore universal” (4). Detectives Rilsky and Popov shelter from the excess
of this death through a prosaic attitude, a resolve to “get back to the facts” (88) in
the “gnomic present” (153) of the investigation, and solve the crime of the person
rather than the crime of humanity that the murder of Gloria brings forth. Steph-
anie, on the other hand, seeks shelter in representation and aesthetics, the art of
decapitation, using art in order to “shelter […] from the horror before my eyes” (8)
and also to “help look death in the face” (9).
Throughout the first section of Possessions, the narration of the detective in-
vestigation is accompanied by meditative interludes on various artworks that de-
pict decapitations. It is a human impulse to create art from the most horrific of
circumstances, as Kristeva cites ancient Greek statues of Dione, Aphrodite, the
Winged Victory of Samothrace, Byzantine ikons, as well as works by Tiepolo,
Caravaggio, Da Vinci, Raphael, Rodin, Degas, and Picasso as proof of this point.
Art is as fascinated with death by decapitation as life is. These artistic representa-
tions of decapitation and death create direct resonance with Kristeva’s non-fiction
Louvre exhibition and a book, Visions Capitales (The Severed Head). When taken
alongside the opening section of Possessions, The Severed Head provides a theoret-
ical counterpoint to the affective investigations of the crimes against humanity
represented through the decapitation investigated in Possessions. In the preface to

this study, Kristeva explicitly links her decollated and decollating subject matter
with the urge for and terror of death, the identification with death, and its artistic
representations:
The image may be our only remaining line to the sacred: to the terror that death and sac-
rifice provoke, to the serenity that follows from the fact of identification between sacrificed
and sacrificing, and to the joy of representation indissociable from sacrifice […] a humanity
possessed by the urge for death and terrorized by murder acknowledges that it has, in fact
arrived at a fragile and overwhelming discovery: the only resurrection possible may be […]
representation. (The Severed Head vii)
Death thus staged becomes a spectacle, and, since ancient times, the viscerally
visual nature of the spectacle creates the catharsis needed by humanity through
linking life and death in staged representation. “All vision,” writes Kristeva, pun-
ning on the top-heavy, legal, linguistic nature of the word capital, “is nothing other
than capital transubstantiation” (The Severed Head vii). In other words, our head,
our organ of vision, is transformed by the very nature of vision. We are nothing
without a head, and yet, on its own, a head can signify nothing but death—it is
another fleshy excess of a body deprived of life. Thus, we return to the importance
of the eyes, of vision, to our understanding of the human condition, and to the
representation of life itself.
Yet, man is not valued by vision alone. In Death Kit, Diddy’s hallucinated
lover, Hester, is congenitally blind and yet, within the realms of the hallucination,
more suited to continued existence than Diddy. Hester exists in a realm of touch
and sound where distance and proximity are created by touch and hearing rather
than by eye contact. For Kristeva (this time in the voice of Stephanie Delacour),
hearing, too, informs the interaction of the visible with the invisible, inviolate na-
ture of death and terror:
But a decapitation is meant to be heard, not seen! All painting ought to be heard. […] A
decapitation marks the limit of the visible. The show is over, ladies and gentlemen, move
along please! There’s nothing to see! Open your ears instead, if they’re not too sensitive.
The deepest depths of horror can’t be seen, though perhaps they may be heard. Put away
the palettes? Hear, hear! (Possessions 8)
This rejection of vision does not move us any further away from the obsession of
the text with the lost head; after all, both vision and hearing reside in our capital
instrument (touch being the only sense not reliant on the head). However, it does
move the spectacle of Gloria’s death away from the realm of sight, by which, up
to this point, it has been framed. Death defies both vision and sound, and in this
instance Kristeva may well have written that all sound is nothing other than capital
transubstantiation.
The insistence of this passage on the sound of decapitation (less the sound
of knife, axe, or guillotine against neck, and more the noiseless sound of decap-
itation’s horror) returns us to the inarticulable nature of a living encounter with
death, horrifically displayed. Representations of death aid categorization or sci-
entization in much the same manner as a post-mortem investigation, but their
representative, perhaps didactic, almost textual nature, cannot prepare us when we
find ourselves face to face with death itself. The lack of head prevents adequate
mourning—the decapitated body provides a site where it is impossible to effect
the ritual interpersonal communication necessary for such a process to take place.
Vision is less drawn to the body than the head, and the lack of head implies a lack
of even a previous life of the mind for the deceased.3
The insistence on sound draws our attention, too, to the nature of Stephanie’s
monologue here; short clauses, puns, and exclamatory points demonstrate a spiral-
ling of language into the absurdity frequently associated with hysteria. In the face
of a faceless death, language cannot provide an initial salve to the horror, and “[no]
explanation could lessen the irreparable loss of death” (Possessions 96). Neither, in
the end, can the context of art, as Stephanie states “such cultural digressions solved
strictly nothing” (10). The blurring of contexts is not only a part of the novel, but
also extends over Kristeva’s oeuvre as a whole; thus, a part of Stephanie’s medi-
tations on decapitation are used to great effect by Kristeva in The Severed Head,
and attitudes toward death in the novel (and, indeed, in its related non-fictional
counterpart) range from the prosaic, the scientific, to the hysterical, the mournful,
the indifferent, and the meditative.
Such cultural digressions, in spite of their ultimate inability to solve the
problem of death’s inhuman qualities, do serve to raise Possessions above the “way
some detective story writers rub your nose in horror […] in a form of literature
often regarded as mindless and stupid” (Possessions 11). The latter phrase returns
us to the ways in which decapitation manifests itself as spectacle, and also its
“mindless” nature (because the body is without a head): is the detective novel,
then, ultimately a decapitated form of fiction, for all its adherence to certain
linear aspects of plot formation? In an attempt to wrest the form away from this
truncated critical view, Stephanie’s digressions on a theme of death in art make
the time of the novel concertina: six pages of the novel pass within the space of
breath it takes the detective Norbet Rilsky to exclaim “And of course nobody’s
seen the head!” (4, 9). This sort of temporal slippage happens repeatedly in the
body of Kristeva’s novel, and, indeed, the official detective investigation only
takes up two-thirds of the novel; the overall detection in Possessions is more of
a psychological detection than a literal one. The murder plot to be investigated
is not a simple matter of scene of crime, body, witnesses, evidence, and solution
(a perpetrator), but reaches all strata of society and thought and is both abstract
and literal.
Death Kit tells the story, such as it is, of the progression of the consciousness
of Diddy Harmon from his hallucinated life toward his own death, and Posses-
sions, too, is concerned with the idea of death in life as an affectively different
means of being-toward-death. Three-quarters of the way through the novel, the
murder plot concludes neatly with the arrest and confession of Gloria’s murderer
(but not of her beheader) and the return of Stephanie Delacour to Paris. Just as a
decapitation marks the limit of the visible (or visual), it also provides the site of a
double death in its separation of face and body: “deprived of a death mask’s baleful
exuberance, the dead are dead twice over” (4). Gloria’s death in life began with a
withdrawal from the world of language due to the birth of her deaf son, Gerry,
who defies the social contract of language and life. To interact with Gerry, Gloria
effects an Orphic crossing of “the threshold of the human condition […] that sa-
cred frontier” (54) to recuperate Gerry for life according to “the words and rules of
others” (55). This original quasi-death is capitulated by first her murder and then
her decapitation. Stephanie Delacour questions this morbid trajectory of Gloria’s
life: “you can only die twice – or three times, I forget which” (158), emphasizing, in
her forgetting, death’s ultimate existence outside of the linguistic realm.
In the final section of Possessions, a second death-in-life is explored through a
sub-plot of the detective story: the killer has been identified and captured, but the
decapitator (symbolic perpetrator of Gloria’s second murder) has not. This inves-
tigation revolves around the figure, spectral in the first part of the novel, of Pauline
Gadeau, who was a friend of Gloria, Gerry’s speech therapist, and eventually the
decapitator of Gloria’s corpse and disposer of her head. Pauline’s depicted death-
in-life is more extreme than Gloria’s, and is born from death rather than life—
first, the death of her brother, and secondly, her mourning for this loss through a
rejection of society and a suicide attempt. Unlike Gloria, who revels in her forays
into the linguistic realm from her Orphic encounters with her son, sexualizing
language, calling her head her “sexual organ” (5), Pauline—zombie-like—retreats
from the affective realm altogether. A spectator on Pauline’s life quips, “Whose
type can she be, poor thing, after a couple of years in a mental hospital and all
those antidepressants, electroshock treatments, and the rest. It’s a wonder she’s
still alive” (176).
Language is eventually something of a revivifying force for Pauline: “she took
up Santavarvaran and speech therapy: that was her way of being reborn” (176)—
and yet, primary existence in a foreign language can make of a human being noth-
ing more than a specter. Language outside the mother tongue can never be fully
embodied. Stephanie questions, “was Pauline a sleepwalker too, or had she man-
aged to be born again?” (177). Pauline’s gift in her rebirth into Santavarvaran is a
peculiarly disfigured one emphasized by the almost-pun on her name: Gadeau =
not quite cadeau, the French for “gift,” bearing a passing aural resemblance to
gadoue (slush, soil), and through cadeau, we can also tentatively reach for cadavre.
The resonances of Pauline’s name make up a psychoanalytic speech therapy ses-

sion in themselves. Pauline, sleepwalking through life, is, like Diddy Harmon,
an excess or aberration of an ecosystem and not quite all there: the language that
Pauline is reborn into is not the glorious, embodied language represented by
Gloria in life: “she’s been dead for twenty years. A synthetic image lives in her
stead, in another language, another country” (195).
Pauline’s final capitulation to life is, unlike Diddy’s, not her own; she does not
die, but, mocking death, removes from Gloria her head. In narrating this capital
act, there is a fusion between decapitator and decapitated effected in Kristeva’s
prose by a blurring of pronouns and levels of diction (between indifference and
hatred, abstraction or anonymity [the universal], and the personal):
The scalpel opens the flesh, the vertebrae are parted by its precision, the bones give way.
I make the incision, I cut myself off from her, sever myself […] detach myself from the
corpse I was but am no longer. […] Are you really yourself when you haven’t got a head? A
headless body has nothing, it has no self anymore so it can’t own anything, it knows neither
mine nor thine. […] The mindless energy of the speech therapist handling the corpse has
just rid us of death, of her death. (Possessions 202–3)
Perhaps the ultimate death on a symbolic level, decapitation serves a grotesque-

ly cathartic purpose. Not all there, Pauline also forces Gloria also to be not all
there—decapitated, outside language, time, and possible humanizing representa-
tion. Death, that “unconscious murderer, the serial killer who’ll get us all in the
end” (204), is outside language, as Stephanie Delacour reiterates in the novel, and
contained in the unspeakable moment of the event.4
notes
1. See Kristeva, Hatred and Forgiveness (Trans. Jeanine Herman; New York: Columbia UP),
pp. 286, 291.
2. See Dostoevsky, Stavrogin’s Confession and The Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner (Trans. Virginia
Woolf and Samuel Koteliansky; London: Hogarth, 1922). Published again in 1947 by Lear
Editions (New York) with an essay by Sigmund Freud. Freud’s work on death and dream nar-
ratives, of which his analyses of Dostoevsky form a part, has also had a profound effect on the
construction of Sontag’s Death Kit (see Sontag, Diaries 387).
3. In The Severed Head, Kristeva writes, “I can’t take my eyes off that severed head. Much as I want to.
[…] Decapitation, which might be the preliminary condition for the representation of what allows
us to stand up to the void that is none other than the ability to represent the life of the mind” (4–5).
4. In turn, death as an event is related to the mass media, to the image, and to articulation or lan-
guage: “‘Events means death nowadays’ Professor Zorin maintained. […] [S]ince death alone
counts as an event these days—the professor was right—one might as well—setting his sub-
tleties aside—plaster death across the front page or the screen. […] Events means death. […]
Enough said!” (Possessions 181–83).
works cited
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. “1874: Three Novellas.” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia II. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Trans. Constance Garnett. London: Wordsworth Edi-
tions, 2000. Print.
———. Demons: A Novel in Three Parts. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volovkhovsky. London:
Vintage, 2006. Print.
———. Stavrogin’s Confession and The Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner. Trans. Virginia Woolf and
Samuel Koteliansky. London: Hogarth, 1922. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. Interviews. Ed. Ross M. Guberman. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. Print.
———. Possessions. Trans. Barbara Bray. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Print.
———. The Severed Head: Capital Visions. Trans. Jody Gladding. New York: Columbia UP, 2012.
Print.
Rieff, David. “Why I Had to Lie to My Dying Mother.” The Guardian 18 May 2008. Web. 15 Oct.
2012.
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. Print.
———. As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964–1980. New York: Farrar, 2012. Print.
———. Death Kit. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. Print.
———. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: FSG, 1989. Print.
McCaffery, Larry. “Death Kit: Susan Sontag’s Dream Narrative.” Contemporary Literature 20.4 (1979):
484–99. Print.
chapter five
Death as an Instrument for

Social Criticism in Young
Italian Literature
daniela chana
introduction
In the late 1990s, something new and disturbing appeared on Italy’s literary scene.
Young authors published exceptional debut novels written in an experimental style
and coarse language dealing with issues such as deviant sexual behavior, crime,
drugs, madness, and death. Publishers and critics dubbed these writers Giovani
Cannibali (“Young Cannibals”), sometimes referred to as Italian Pulp (Lucamente
15–16; Turchetta 11–12).
In this paper, I do not aim to point out reasons why readers should feel shocked
by their books; on the contrary, I seek to examine death as an instrument for social
criticism in the work of selected authors of this movement. This essay is based on
the assumption that drastic images of death can be used for a moral purpose. Up to
now, most of the novels and short stories discussed in this paper have not received
the publicity they deserve and have rarely or never been subjects of academic work.
Only a few of them, like Simona Vinci’s books, have been translated into English
and other languages. With this essay, I also hope to increase the popularity of these
young authors.
teenage murderers
Simona Vinci’s debut novel, Dei bambini non si sa niente (1997, also published in
English under the title What We Don’t Know about Children), tells the story of four
72 | daniela chana
children aged ten to fourteen who discover their blooming sexuality and start to
spend their free afternoons imitating what they see in pornographic magazines.
Far away from their parents’ vigilance, they try to find answers to their questions
about sexuality and do not dare to ask the grownups. When the leader of the
group insists on turning to more violent pornography, the others are unable to
say “no” (118–19). Here Vinci masterly shows the working mechanisms of group
dynamics, which eventually lead to one girl’s death during the imitation of a sado-
masochistic image (143–45).
The author provides her readers with a plot in which the murderers are known
but are almost impossible to point out as guilty. She stresses the responsibility
of the parents, who are absent most of the time and have not been able to give
their children sexual education. In the few scenes in which the parents appear,
they are presented as overtaxed, indifferent, and constantly tired. At dinner, they
prefer watching TV over talking to their children (27–28). Since they often lack
stable relationships themselves, they seem to care more about their own problems
than about the activities, feelings, and thoughts of their children (72). Throughout
the novel, grownups are always presented as distant people who command and
sometimes punish but never show any interest in their children’s lives. One of the
mothers does not even ask her ten-year-old son what he is up to when he asks
her if he can go out after dinner (157). The same can be said about the teachers
at school who, in the children’s minds, are only associated with preaching morals
and prohibitions (52). Since the children lack any trustworthy and understanding
adults to turn to, they are left alone with their questions and insecurities. When
they are playing in the courtyard, no grownup is there to keep an eye on them; only
now and then, someone complains about the noise (13).
Vinci uses a drastic image of a dead teenager accidently killed by her friends to
point out the dangerous consequences of abandoned children and rotten families.
In her review of the novel in the magazine L’Indice in 1997, the psychoanalyst
Simona Argentieri stresses that the author shows a world that suffers from the
complete absence of adults insofar as even the parents behave like teenagers and
are incapable of taking on their roles as legal guardians. Considering this per-
spective, it seems absurd that some critics—for instance, Franz Haas in the Swiss
newspaper NZZ on 15 November 1997—condemned the book for its violent
scenes and the portrayal of underage sexuality, calling it immoral. In an interview
with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on 24 April 1998, Vinci called
Dei bambini non si sa niente a book with a moral purpose in which she had written
about the problems that most concerned her.
In her novel, Vinci not only points out the complex question of guilt, but also
society’s ambivalent attitude toward death. In an open letter cited by Alfio Squi-
llaci in his online review, the author stated that she wanted to show the double
standards of a society that is obsessed with macabre aesthetics in movies and the
death as an instrume n t f o r s o c i a l c r i t i ci s m | 73
arts while at the same time fearing death in reality (Squillaci n.p.). When looking
at a dead friend, one of the children reflects on how she had seen so many corpses
on TV but had never been shown a dead body in reality, since children are not
even allowed to look at their dead grandparents (Vinci 148). As a result, children
get used to the view of corpses without adequate feelings. As the girl in the book
remarks, the images of dead people on TV are not really scary, since the audience
has no emotions for these strangers (148).
As is shown in Vinci’s novel, society’s ways to deal with sexuality are equally
schizophrenic. The author clearly agrees with Stephanie zu Guttenberg, who in
her book on child abuse, Schaut nicht weg! (2010; the German title means “Don’t
look away!”), explained how the omnipresence of pornography in today’s society
combined with prudence can have a negative impact on children (131–32). Of-
ten lacking any sexual education, children are not capable of understanding the
pornographic images that are easily accessible via the Internet and may believe
sadistic behavior to be the “norm” (140). Unable to differentiate realistic portrayals
of sexuality and human bodies from unrealistic ones, they are left insecure and
self-conscious about their outward appearance if they have no adult to turn to with
their questions (143). This is exactly the situation portrayed by Vinci in her novel.
Her portrayal of group dynamics, underage sexuality, and the death of a child tries
to point out double standards and problems in today’s society.
d e a d ly m o r a l s
In her collection of short stories, In tutti i sensi come l’amore (1999, published in
English under the title In Every Sense Like Love), Vinci explores the issue of dan-
gerous morals by discussing different types of deviant sexual behavior that very
often lead to self-destruction or crime. Unable to find a compromise between their
perverted desires and the morality of their surroundings, her protagonists face no
other possibility than violence or death. Vinci’s intention here is not to punish the
individuals for their behavior but, on the contrary, to show the negative and some-
times deadly consequences of restrictive moral concepts. Thus, death functions as
a symbol for the downside of imprisoning morals.
Among the most unforgettable stories of this compilation is “Notturno” (the
title refers to the nightly atmosphere that is maintained throughout the text),
which tells the story of a young nymphomaniac who feels guilty for her own de-
sires and thus decides to sew up her vagina with a needle and thread (146). She
clearly would not consider this bloody errand “necessary” if not for the sake of the
moral convictions by which she is surrounded. When the first-person narrator lit-
erally admits, “Vorrei che il mio corpo si chiudesse” (“I want my body to close up”;
145), she expresses the need to suppress her desires which make her feel inferior,
74 | daniela chana
ashamed, and an outcast of society. The extreme measure of self-destruction seems

perfectly adequate to her.
In “Notturno,” as in other short stories and novels, Vinci seems to agree with
the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who in his book
Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886, “Beyond Good and Evil”), pointed out the ar-
tificiality of morality and the need to regard it in its historical and social context
(30). While more traditional thinkers like Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–
1803) believed moral behavior to be natural and equal to everyone (Herder 747),
Nietzsche claimed the contrary. He further developed his thoughts in his book
Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887, “On the Genealogy of Morality”), revealing terms
like “Good” and “Evil” to be instruments of power (37–40). Thus, morality is
regarded as a product of civilization and opposed to nature.
Many of Vinci’s books deal with this clash between body and mind, or—to put
it more precisely—the incompatibility of desires (representing nature) and morals
(representing civilization). Her novel Strada provinciale tre (2007, the title is the
name of an Italian country road), for instance, tells the story of a young woman
fleeing from civilization and trying to lead a nomadic life without possessions in
order to be free from society’s expectations and judgments. Feeling ashamed when
she is caught eating voraciously at a buffet in the middle of a street festival, she
realizes that the needs of the body have to be hidden in order not to scare people
away (52). She reflects on how being on a diet and suppressing the feeling of hun-
ger is considered “normal” behavior in today’s society where everything needs to be
controlled, while eating is associated with an animal state (49–51). Even the most
harmless needs of the body, such as hunger, can conflict with the standards of soci-
ety when expressed in a certain way. The dangerous self-hatred of the first-person
narrator in “Notturno” is a logical consequence of civilization trying to suppress
nature. Again, Vinci uses a very strong and disturbing image—the self-destruction
of an individual—as an instrument for social criticism.
voye u r i s m
Unlike Vinci, not every representative of the Cannibali manages to enrich their
macabre plots with social criticism. Isabella Santacroce (born in 1970), for in-
stance, seems to encourage a voyeuristic perspective on crime and death. Only
flirting with mad and self-destructing characters, she refuses to dive deeper into
the matter. While Vinci explores the origins of deviant or criminal behavior, San-
tacroce only strings together a number of grotesque scenes that make the readers
shake their heads rather than understand. By giving a few examples of Santacroce’s
work, this chapter aims to point out the difference between a philosophic ap-
proach, like Vinci’s, and pure voyeurism.
Santacroce’s novel Destroy (1996) leads the readers into a noisy realm of drug
addiction, loud music, unsatisfying sexual encounters, and glorified violence. The
protagonist, Misty, is a young Italian girl who immigrated to London to lead an
independent and rather lonely life, paying her rent with prostitution. Since the first-
person narrator spends the majority of her time partying and consuming drugs and
alcohol, her thoughts are in disorder and cannot be followed easily. Lacking a coher-
ent plot, the book only consists of a confusing mixture of song lyrics, letters, dialogues,
and fantasies. As a result, the readers are not provided with any explanations for the
protagonist’s uncommon behavior. We learn nothing about Misty’s past in Italy, the
motives for her immigration to London or why she started working as a prostitute
in the first place. From her vulgar vocabulary throughout the book, we gather that
she is an exhibitionist (23) and pathologically obsessed with sexuality, but we never
get a hint about the reasoning behind this. The novel contains no reflections or deep
thoughts about the questions raised; there is only a series of disturbing images.
This sort of voyeuristic approach is also evident when dealing with violence
and death. Recurring images of murder or domestic violence are not contextualized
within the plot, but stand alone, as if aiming at making the readers laugh. Right at
the beginning of the novel, Misty coincidently happens to read a newspaper article
on a serial killer who shaves the private parts of women after he murdered them (9).
The methods of the murderer are mentioned, although they are of no importance
as Misty’s story further develops. Therefore, the only reason for their occurrence
seems to be some sort of macabre flirt with this image of cruelty. After having read
the article, Misty states that she adores killers who faint at the sight of blood (9).
Only a few pages later, we find Misty talking to a stranger who tells her that his fa-
ther raped his girlfriend (17). In the next scene, Misty listens to a man threatening
his wife with violence (18–19). Throughout the book, images of violence and death
are dropped several times without meaning. In one scene, Misty is posting stickers
with her phone number all over tube stations to receive calls from strangers (22).
Some nights later, she honestly seems to enjoy listening to the violent fantasies of
a strange man who calls her in the morning hours (54). These examples show that
Santacroce’s presentation of violence and death differs significantly from Vinci’s
philosophic and empathic approach. The lack of insights into the protagonist’s past
and feelings makes it hard for readers to understand the macabre behavior or her
fascination with violence, and so it is impossible to draw any conclusion from it.
fear of commitment and the serial killer
The novels of Rossana Campo (born in 1963) usually deal with women who dread
nothing more than a conventional and “boring” everyday life. Her female protag-
onists are flamboyant characters who have generally experienced a great number
76 | daniela chana
of strokes of fate, such as traumatic relationships, divorce, mental diseases, drug

or alcohol addiction, painful detoxification, unemployment, and so on. Neverthe-
less, the voices of her first-person narrators always manage to be smart, fun, and
adorable. Due to their bad experiences with men in the past, e.g., the broken mar-
riage in Più forte di me (2007, the Italian title means “Stronger than Me”) or the
obsessive and delusional teenage love in Lezioni di arabo (2010, “Arabic Lessons”),
Campo’s protagonists have become careful in regard to relationships and are afraid
of commitment. This fear expresses itself in various ways, like finding philosophi-
cal arguments against love, as in Lezioni di arabo (86–89), or continuously suspect-
ing the potential new boyfriend of being the famous serial killer whom the whole
city is in search of, as in Duro come l’amore (2005, “Hard like Love”).
The latter novel’s protagonist, a married woman who starts an affair with a
stranger she met in a supermarket, is torn between her desire and the fear of its
fulfillment. Her pessimism, and perhaps her moral qualms, are symbolized by her
dark suspicions that function as an excuse for not opening up to the new man.
Blaming the lack of love in her childhood for her problematic relationships (84,
89), she constantly makes an effort to keep her new lover at a distance. Since,
unlike some of her friends, the possibility of lesbian love does not work for her
(132), she finds herself stuck with men, although she does not put any trust in
the traditional image of relationships (190). The idea that her new acquaintance
could be the serial killer whom the newspapers are writing about (146–47) almost
seems to provide her with a sort of relief because it hinders her from falling in love.
At the last meeting with her lover, the argument escalates when he complains of
feeling like her “vibratore umano” (“human vibrator,” 201). Scared that he might
kill her in his anger, she flees in panic and puts an end to the affair (204–07). Later,
she learns that her suspicions had been wrong, since the real serial killer had been
arrested and confessed his deeds (208).
The function of the serial killer in this novel is highly ironic. Since he never
appears on the scene, the readers learn about him only through the newspaper arti-
cles that are discussed by the protagonists. The fear of the killer serves as an excuse
for avoiding commitment and putting an end to an affair that does not really feel
right to the woman. By showing this exaggeration, Campo parodies the fear. Due
to the bad experiences in her childhood, the protagonist obviously lost her trust in
relationships and finds it more likely that she will meet a serial killer than a good
man. In her paranoia, everything seems right to fuel her suspicions; her uneasiness
regarding conventional lifestyles, including a fixed job and happy family, expresses
itself in her conviction that it was always people like those who lead secret lives as
serial killers (43). In fact, she feels drawn to those with alternative lifestyles, such
as transvestites, homosexuals, addicts, or mentally ill people (91–92). Her suspi-
cions therefore become a weapon she uses for aiming at conformists—and for not
becoming one of them.
Like in most of her novels, Campo gives voice to an alternative point of view
from a woman who feels intimidated by images of successful women who seem
to manage everything without problems: career, family, marriage, and good looks.
This is explicitly evident when her protagonist complains about having the im-
pression that there must be a manual with all the rules for life that she just did not
receive (128). Her disappointment and supposed inadequacy show how overtaxing
the demands on women—though not only women—can be nowadays. Campo
makes fun of this uneasiness by exaggerating it to the extreme, letting it culminate
in the specter of a serial killer.
the banality of a double suicide
The 1996 short story collection Gioventù cannibale (“Cannibal Youth”), edited
by Daniele Brolli, assembles works of different young Italian authors in which
the socially critical function of death is often evident. In Aldo Nove’s short story
“Il mondo dell’amore” (“The World of Love”), for example, we get a tragicomic
insight into the lives of two rather simple-minded men who complain about ho-
mosexuals and proudly emphasize their own “normality” (54) just before passing
away during a grotesque attempt to castrate themselves. The double standards and
self-righteousness of the two men are also evident when they grumble about peo-
ple who buy products only to collect points hoping to win something. Just a few
lines later, the first-person narrator admits to being a gambler himself and once
even winning something (55). It is obvious that their moral standards are just ran-
dom, and only aim at fueling or rationalizing their hatred for other people. They
could take on any ideology that gives them an excuse for their contempt.
From the beginning, it is easy to see how bored and frustrated these two men
are. Obviously never having received any higher education and never having de-
veloped any interests, they are decadently wasting their time at the supermarket,
watching other people and making disparaging remarks about them (53–56). By
repeating some lines over and over again throughout the text, Nove very com-
prehensibly portrays the monotony of their lives. These clearly unintelligent in-
dividuals surely lead unhappy lives, lacking any productive activities along with
love and tolerance for other people. They are indifferent in everything they do;
for example, just out of boredom, they enter a shop and rummage through the
videotapes. Without any enthusiasm, they decide to buy a pornographic video that
is offered at a low price (56). When the film ends up being a documentary record
of sex-changing surgery, they are rather pleased about the macabre entertainment
(59). Like any sensation seekers, they appreciate everything that is extreme and
disturbing because it fills their inner emptiness. After having watched a certain
castration scene several times, they spontaneously reach for the kitchen knife and
78 | daniela chana
repeat what they had just seen on the screen. They bleed to death on the living
room floor.
The two men are tragic characters who evoke the ideas of the Jewish philoso-
pher Hannah Arendt (1906–75). According to her, criminal or so-called “evil” be-
havior was never caused by bad intentions but by mere thoughtlessness (Arendt, Böse
77). In the subtitle of her book on the trial of the German Nazi Adolf Eichmann,
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963, the German and the English title are identical here),
she called this the Banality of Evil. She stressed the fragility of moral convictions by
giving the example of Adolf Hitler, who had established a new moral order in which
the killing of certain groups of humans was considered a good deed (Arendt, Böse
17). As a result, citizens like Adolf Eichmann were capable of killing without suf-
fering from bad conscience, proud to have done their duty (Arendt, Eichmann 120).
In his short story, Aldo Nove clearly agrees with Arendt’s ideas. The suicidal
actions of his protagonists are not caused by strong ideological convictions but
rather by a lack of reflection, and—as can be seen from their harsh judgments of
other people—the morals of these two men are random and self-righteous and
could be altered easily. “Il mondo dell’amore” can therefore be called a story about
the banality of a double suicide. In addition to this, Nove also supports Nietzsche’s
postulate about morality being used as an instrument of power (see above), insofar
as his protagonists use it in order to feel superior to others.
Like Simona Vinci, Nove raises the question of the involvement of society.
After having read the short story, the readers might ask: How can it be that these
two men have never been provided with anything better to do? Why are they so
frustrated and bitter? Why have they never received a proper education? Why has
no one ever taught them love and tolerance for other people? Were they aban-
doned as children? Do they belong to a group of people within their society who
never got a chance in life? Even if the readers are not Italians themselves, they
might think: Which are the groups of people within our country or our society
who do not get any chances to lead a happy life and whose productive energy goes
completely to waste? Nove does not answer these questions, but he makes the
readers think about them. While Vinci clearly stresses the responsibility of par-
ents and teachers, Nove refuses to give any explanations. In spite of this, his work
differs significantly from Santacroce’s voyeuristic approach insofar as he enables
the readers to empathize with his protagonists. Their thoughts and feelings are
communicated and not drowned out by background noise as in Santacroce’s book,
and the deeds of the two men do not completely lack any logic.
m u r d e r i n p u b l i c s pa c e
Another interesting short story in Gioventù cannibale is Alda Teodorani’s “E Roma

piange” (“And Rome Is Crying”) in which the first-person narrator is a homeless
man who gets paid by a rich old racist to kill foreigners. At their first, coincidental
meeting at the Rome Central Station, the old man explains that he wants to get
rid of blacks and gypsies because, to him, they are all thieves (47). He represents
the type of rich, conservative racist who does not hesitate to pay a high sum for an
unscrupulous enterprise and therefore takes advantage of the neediness of a poor
man. Like any racist, he is not interested in social debates, and does not even try
to understand the reasons why the situation for foreigners is so bad that they are
forced into criminality. Instead, he explains that he simply does not want to see
those people sleeping on the sidewalk anymore (48), so the perfect solution to him
seems to have them all killed. Being in need of money, the homeless man agrees
to do the “job.”
Interestingly, all the murders are committed in public areas. Within ten eve-
nings’ time, the first-person narrator cuts the throats of thirty people in the rail-
way station without any of the passersby even turning their heads, as he proudly
remarks (51). The newspapers, too, are completely indifferent about the murders,
and no one seems to notice as he rapes gypsy girls and transvestites at public toi-
lets (51). The rich racist experienced the same when he spontaneously raped and
killed a gypsy who had stolen his wallet and no one even looked as he dragged the
girl through the railway station (47). The first-person narrator gradually develops
a certain joy for his “occupation,” as well as a feeling of power, which is especially
evident when he says how proud he is to be the one to make Rome cry (52). When
he kills a transvestite while penetrating him, he is obviously not doing it for the
money but for his own perverted “pleasure” (51). He enjoys feeling strong and
superior, just like the rich racist who dares to decide who has a right to live and
who does not.
Again, like in Aldo Nove’s text, the brutal images manage to make the read-
ers think about serious social questions. The indifference of the passersby and
the newspapers concerning the murders of blacks and gypsies may indicate a
certain institutional racism within society. In addition to this, the character of
the rich racist shows that it is not always just the poor, deprived classes who
confront immigrants with greed and hatred, but also the elites who do not want
to share their privileges. The story also plays with the common assumption of
rich people that money can buy everything, and if you do not wish to look at
homeless gypsies sleeping on the sidewalk, you just need to pay enough to have
them “removed.” Another sad observation is communicated by the first-person
narrator when he admits that being a killer earned him much more money than
ever before in his life (48). So, the author also points at social differences, insofar
as the willingness to kill someone for money is only thinkable in a society where
even working people do not earn enough to make a living and/or many people
are without an occupation.
In his preface to Gioventù cannibale, the editor Daniele Brolli emphasized the
importance of looking closely at crime to be able to understand its motives and the
80 | daniela chana
complex ways in which society is involved in it (VIII). According to him, criminal

and deviant behavior is capable of revealing unconventional truths about the so-
ciety in which they occur (VIII). Therefore, the short stories in the volume aim at
disquieting the readers and making them reflect (IX).
k i l l i n g i n wa r
Franco Bernini’s short story “Guerre di confine” (“Border Wars”), published in the
compilation Anticorpi (1997, “Antibodies”), edited by Mauro Bersani and Ernesto
Franco, tells the story of a soldier who gets the chance to save his life by putting
on the clothes of one of his dead enemies on the battlefield and pretending to
belong to the other side. Throughout the text, a great number of reflections about
killing in war and the loss of human dignity can be found. For instance, there are
some hints at the senselessness of all the cruelty—as in the first sentence, when
the narrator talks about the bones of the dead buried in the soil and then stresses
that these men have died in “battaglie dimenticate” (“forgotten battles”) (3). This
is a striking contrast; all that remains of the war are the buried bones symbolizing
the pain of the soldiers and their families, while the battles are forgotten after a
short time. By revealing this imbalance, the author seems to point out how the
end does not justify the means. There is no honorable death, no heroism, and no
martyrdom, since the war is caused by reasons which are of no importance. The
killing, therefore, is presented as senseless.
Bernini also points at the changes within those who survive. Their vocabulary
becomes coarse and imperious, as is shown in one of the first scenes of the story
when the soldier Aduc talks in a rough way to some comrades and the narrator
remarks that the war deformed his language (4). Later there is a scene in which
some comrades complain about the bad maps and obviously enjoy the use of rude
words, making fun of how the man who drew the map would not even be able to
find his own penis, the vagina of his wife, and so on (13).
The absurdity of the war is especially manifested when Aduc remembers
the years of his childhood when he had many friends among those who are now
declared “enemies” (6). He went to school and played with them, had learned
their language (6), and even his girlfriend was one of them (7). However, since
the terms “friend” and “enemy” are interchangeable, he is now forced to fight his
former classmates. When Aduc puts on the clothes of the “enemy” and joins the
other side (10), this interchangeability is evident once more. Bernini shows here
how artificial the motives that cause a war are and how they are only important
to politicians, not the common citizens. Soldiers like Aduc are therefore affected
by something they do not understand; their lives are threatened for reasons that
remain abstract to them.
Even killing can be abstract. Instead of wearing a gun, Aduc has to place
mines in the battlefields (4). As a result, he never faces the consequences of his
deeds. In one of the last scenes, he accidently watches as a group of men is killed by
an exploding mine (18). Shocked by what he sees, he starts to realize how wrong
he had been, always telling himself that placing mines on a field was not really
killing (18). Now it dawns on him that he is a murderer, too. With the invention
of mines, modern technology has made it possible to kill while remaining unaware
of the identities of the victims. Thus, the person who is killed is never regarded
as a human being. The young soldiers are only representatives of their nation and
not seen as individuals. Therefore, their human dignity can be denied more easily,
and they can be moved like chess pieces. This is evident when the narrator remarks
that Aduc had not been a soldier until the war began (7). War, therefore, can be
interpreted as a demarcation line; before its outbreak, Aduc was a human being,
while afterwards he is only a soldier—something artificial that can be killed and
forced to kill as well as moved and removed by foreign forces.
This same thought is expressed by Federico Fubini (born in 1966) in his short
story “La rottura delle dighe d’Olanda” (“The Breakdown of Holland’s Seawalls”),
published in the same compilation. Fubini provides us with an insight into the
feelings of a young soldier who, looking at two dead bodies on the soil, suddenly
realizes that he and his comrades all look completely the same in their uniforms so
that their identity is denied (99). They are like a large number of twins, and, when
they are walking as a group, they resemble the big body of a beast (99). Killing in
war is faceless, and, since the individuality of the victims—as well as of the mur-
derers—is deleted, there is no place for empathy.
s o m e t h i n g wo r t h dyi n g f o r
A highly ironic, witty, and philosophical approach to the artificial border be-
tween life and death is provided by Milena Fiotti (born in 1969) in her short sto-
ry “La correzione” (“The Correction”), which also makes up part of the Anticorpi
anthology. Its protagonist is a young teacher, Milena, who takes her first job at
an all-girls’ school with a rather strict and conservative reputation (68). She gets
to know one of her colleagues, Signorina Zazzi, an old woman who behaves in a
very strange way. Obviously paranoid, Zazzi believes that the floor of the school
is swaying (71), and, instead of correcting the papers of her students, she draws
funny pictures on them (75–76). When Milena and the old woman meet, Zazzi
talks without a pause, totally ignoring the presence of her interlocutor. After a
while, Milena realizes that Zazzi does not stop talking even after she says good-
bye (72). As a result, Milena, too, picks up the habit of continuing her dialogues
when she is alone; subsequently, at her meetings with Zazzi, they just go on with
82 | daniela chana
their respective monologues (73). She understands that conversations are inde-
pendent beings that do not necessarily need someone listening to them or even
talking with them (73). According to Zazzi, in the future people will only meet
to quickly infect others with their conversations that are then led by each person
on their own (73–74).
Thus, dialogues are completely independent of human beings and have lives
of their own. This leads to the conclusion that the death of a person does not end
their discussions, thoughts, observations, and gathered knowledge. Words are pre-
sented as superior to human beings, as is explicitly evident when Signorina Zazzi
remarks that the head of department is nothing more than a carnation of words
with suffixes such as “-itá” or “-ezza” (81), which in English, for instance, would
be “-ism.” The mad, old teacher herself represents a way of thinking in which
human beings are just tools, temporarily used by thoughts, ideas, and dialogues in
the same way a body is used by a virus to reproduce. Since the idea will survive the
death of the person, the individual can be regarded as less important. One of the
consequences of such thinking would be that it is honorable to die for an ideology.
The author very cleverly manages to parody the views of the conservative Signori-
na Zazzi whose lack of sympathy for other people is also evident at the end of the
story, when Zazzi tries to rape one of her students (78–79).
The interpretation of Fiotti’s short story as a parody of conservative think-
ing is also supported by the work’s very first scene, in which the old prefect of
the school leads the new teachers through the building and explains how it is the
pride of the institution to always have taught young girls how to become perfect
wives of successful men (68). With horror, the prefect remembers the day when
she discovered a graffito on the wall saying “Io sono mia” (“I belong to myself ”)
(69). Thus, Fiotti makes fun of the old teacher’s views right from the beginning
and culminates his criticism with the mad Signorina Zazzi, who completely
lacks any respect for human beings. A severe teacher like Zazzi does not value
the personality or the life of any of her pupils; on the contrary, she regards a
young person as a tabula rasa (blank slate) on which to inscribe thoughts and
opinions. As indicated in the abuse scene at the end, she does not hesitate to use
the young people for her own purposes. Therefore, she resembles a dictator who
uses the citizens under his power like marionettes that serve to spread a certain
ideology and, if necessary, fight and die for it. Zazzi can thus be seen as an alle-
gory for unscrupulousness. Fiotti’s short story seems to correspond to the stories
of Bernini and Fubini as discussed above. They all deal in a critical way with the
question of whether an ideology should be valued more than the life of a human
being, as is the case in a war or in the mind of a severe teacher like Zazzi. The
young authors very clearly answer this question in the negative; Bernini and
Fubini by stressing the sad situation of the soldiers; Fiotti by making fun of this
way of thinking.
d e at h a m o n g pa r t y p e o p l e
In his short story “Treccine bionde” (“Blonde pigtails”), Matteo Curtoni describes
a highly awkward situation that makes readers reflect on moral values within a
decadent society. The protagonist is a young man dancing in a vibrating crowd
at a nightclub. Since the club is full of people, everyone is dancing very close to
each other and being touched, pushed, and clasped all the time. The young man is
happy to find himself dancing next to a beautiful woman who almost leans on him
(97). When he tries to talk to her but gets no response, he assumes that she might
be high on drugs or may be with a jealous boyfriend (97). Holding her as her feet
repeatedly slip, he compares her to a broken doll and is torn between attraction
and repulsion (98). All of a sudden, he realizes that the young woman is dead (98).
He weeps as he dances with her, holding her corpse close to his body. It turns out
that the murderer is dancing right next to him, and, with a smile on his face, the
strange guy whispers in his ear that the most beautiful thing about the girl’s death
was the fact that she was still moving to the rhythm (100). When the murderer
disappears within the crowd to kill another girl, the protagonist only nods with his
head and promises to keep an eye on the corpse (101). Unable to protest or ring
alarm, he just keeps on dancing with the dead body in his arms (102).
The author presents a group of party people consisting of strangers celebrat-
ing together without showing real interest in each other. They dance in a crowd
just to be among people, but they care so little about the others that they do not
even realize that one of them is dead. They pretend to be social by entering a room
full of people, while they are in fact indifferent and self-centered. The statement
of the murderer is highly interesting because it shows an extreme sort of egoism;
it does not matter if someone has to die for his pleasure. He wants to have fun,
and this is more important than the life of a stranger. Thus, the author portrays
a society that does not care about the consequences of its deeds or the costs of its
fun. The young people in the nightclub are only interested in what is happening
in the present and refuse to look to the future. They represent a society that does
not hesitate to exploit the goods of nature or sacrifice a life to have a fun night of
partying. Curtoni very impressively criticizes the decadent attitude of some people
his age by describing the shocking image of dancing with a beautiful young wom-
an who is actually dead.
co n c lu s i o n
As can be seen from the numerous examples provided in this paper, images of
death can be used for a moral purpose. Vinci’s novel Dei bambini non si sa niente,
for instance, shows the last consequence to which certain tendencies in society can
84 | daniela chana
lead, while her short stories point out the danger of suppressive morality. Her por-
trayal of cruel scenes differs significantly from pure voyeuristic approaches like in
Sanatacroce’s Destroy, where the appearence of serial killers and domestic violence
only seems to serve as a decoration. In many of the works discussed, references to
progressive moral philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche or Hannah Arendt could
be found, like in Nove’s short story “Il mondo dell’amore” which deals with the
spontaneous and rather banal act of a double suicide. Other texts contain reflec-
tions about society’s indifference towards the murder of outcasts, as is shown in
Teodorani’s short story “E Roma piange” where nobody seems to care about the
homeless foreigners who are killed in public space. A recurring question among
the young authors seems to be whether or not ideologies or thoughts are more
important than the individual and thus worth dying for. Bernini, Fubini, and
Fiotti clearly answer this in the negative. Finally, the bizarre situation described
in Curtoni’s “Treccine bionde” succeeds in portraying an indifferent and self-
centered party society.
works cited
Arendt, Hannah. Über das Böse, Eine Vorlesung zu Fragen der Ethik. München and Zürich: Piper,
2009. Print.
———. Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Print.
Argentieri, Simona. Review of Dei bambini non si sa niente, by Simona Vinci. L’Indice 11. IBS, 1997:
n.p. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.
Bernini, Franco. “Guerre di confine.” Anticorpi. Ed. Mauro Bersani and Ernesto Franco. Torino:
Einaudi, 1997. 3–21. Print.
Brolli, Daniele. “Le favole cambiano.” Gioventù cannibale. Ed. Daniele Brolli. Torino: Einaudi, 1996.
V–X. Print.
Campo, Rossana. Duro come l’amore. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2005. Print.
———. Lezioni di arabo. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2010. Print.
———. Più forte di me. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2009. Print.
Curtoni, Matteo. “Treccine bionde.” Gioventù cannibale. Ed. Daniele Brolli. Torino: Einaudi, 1996.
95–102. Print.
“Das grausame Spiel der Kindheit.” Süddeutsche Zeitung 24 April 1998. Print. (IZA)
Fiotti, Milena. “La correzione.” Anticorpi. Eds. Mauro Bersani and Ernesto Franco. Torino: Einaudi,
1997. 67–83. Print.
Fubini, Federico. “La rottura delle dighe d’Olanda.” Anticorpi. Ed. Mauro Bersani and Ernesto
Franco. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. 97–100. Print.
Guttenberg, Stephanie zu and Ustorf, Anne-Ev. Schaut nicht weg! Was wir gegen sexuellen Missbrauch
tun müssen. Freiburg im Breisgau: Kreuz Verlag, 2010. Print.
Haas, Franz. “Lesermissbrauch und Kinderschändung, Viel Lärm um einen Erstlingsroman in
Italien.” NZZ 15–16 Nov. 1997. Print. (IZA)
Herder, Johann Gottfried von. Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1991. Print.
Lucamante, Stefania, ed. Italian Pulp Fiction: The New Narrative of the Giovani Cannibali Writers.
Cranbury: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp, 2001. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Köln: Anaconda, 2006. Print.
———. Zur Genealogie der Moral, Eine Streitschrift. Köln: Anaconda, 2010. Print.
Nove, Aldo. “Il mondo dell’amore.” Gioventù cannibale. Ed. Daniele Brolli. Torino: Einaudi, 1996.
53–62. Print.
Santacroce, Isabella. Destroy. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2009. Print.
Squillaci, Alfio. Rev. of Dei bambini non si sa niente, by Simona Vinci. La Frusta. La Frusta, 2001. Web.
17 Jan. 2012. <http://lafrusta.homestead.com/rec_vinci.html>.
Teodorani, Alda. “E Roma piange.” Gioventù cannibale. Ed. Daniele Brolli. Torino: Einaudi, 1996.
45–52. Print.
Turchetta, Gianni. “I cannibali non mordono più.” Tirature 05. Fondazione Mondadori, 2005. Web. 8
Dec. 2011. <http://www.fondazionemondadori.it/qb/download.php?attachment_id=637>.
Vinci, Simona. Dei bambini non si sa niente. Torino: Einaudi, 2009. Print.
———. In tutti i sensi come l’amore. Torino: Einaudi, 1999. Print.
———. Strada provinciale tre. Torino: Einaudi, 2007. Print.
chapter six
The Secret Garden at the

Back of the North Wind
The Life and Death Journey in
Frances Hodgson Burnett and
George MacDonald
john pennington
The wind was rising again, and getting very loud, and full of rushes and whistles. He was
sure someone was talking—and very near him too it was. But he was not frightened, for he
had not yet learned how to be; so he sat up and hearkened. At last the voice, which, though
quite gentle, sounded a little angry, appeared to come from the back of the bed. He crept
nearer to it, and laid his ear against the wall. Then he heard nothing but the wind, which
sounded very loud indeed. However, the moment that he moved his head from the wall,
he heard the voice again, close to his ear. He felt about with his hand, and came upon the
piece of paper his mother had pasted over the hole. Against this he laid his ear, and then
he heard the voice quite distinctly. There was, in fact, a little corner of the paper loose, and
through that, as from a mouth in the wall, the voice came.
“What do you mean, little boy—closing up my window?”
—G eorge M ac D onald , A t the B ack of the N orth W ind (1871)
One of the nice gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a stronger one than the
rest … Mary had stepped close to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside
some loose ivy trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in her
hand. This she did because she had seen something under it—a round knob which had
been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the knob of the door.
—F rances H odgson B urnet t , T he S ecret G arden (1911)
Diamond finds solace at the back of the north wind, and Mary, with Dickon and
Colin, find renewal in her secret garden. In both cases, the wind intervenes physi-
cally to provide the means for these characters to enter their magical spaces and un-
dertake their adventures of discovering the novels’ master-plot—the cycle of life and
88 | john pennington
death. The back of north wind and the secret garden, those literary spaces found in
George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and Frances Hodgson’s
Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911), are now central to the canon of the so-called
“Golden Age” of children’s literature. In Artful Dodgers Marah Gubar writes,
There is something odd about the way scholars treat the Golden Age of children’s lit-
erature. On the one hand, the unprecedented explosion of children’s literature that took
place from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century has been accorded immense
respect, as the ‘Golden Age’ moniker indicates. […] Yet the same authors who have been
given the most credit for making the Golden Age golden have simultaneously been cen-
sured for producing escapist literature that failed to engage with the complexities of con-
temporary life and promoted a static, highly idealized picture of childhood as a time of
primitive simplicity. (vii)
MacDonald scholar Stephen Prickett writes, “At the Back of the North Wind has
always been the most roundly abused of all George MacDonald’s major children’s
books,” primarily because of “deep sentimentality” that “places it in the tradition of
‘the-saintly-child-who dies young’ stories …” (9). Burnett scholar Anne Lundin
reports that, while Burnett’s The Secret Garden received positive early praise, it
eventually “fell into a long period of not only neglect but derision as critics re-eval-
uated which children’s books would become classics and which deserved oblivion”
(xxv). After all, MacDonald, at the end of his novel, has to remind his readers
that Diamond is not one of those “priggish little monsters” (296) often found in
didactic stories about children. Burnett follows suit; early in chapter 1, the narrator
labels Mary “as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived” (3).
But the prig and the pig have survived. “In my readings of individual texts by
Golden Age authors,” Gubar writes,
I have tried to demonstrate that rather than producing an escapist literature that idealized
the child as a wholly natural being, children’s writers from this era frequently represented
young people as complex, highly socialized individuals who (like adults) had to struggle
with thorny issues of pressing contemporary relevance, including gender trouble, class divi-
sion, ambivalence about imperial expansion, and the question of how much agency one can
have as an acculturated subject. (181)
Diamond and Mary are two such complex characters who reflect the scholarly re-
spect critics are now bestowing on MacDonald and Burnett. The Secret Garden has
recently celebrated its centennial, which has given rise to a critical reassessment
and re-appreciations most recently seen in the Children’s Literature Association’s
and Scarecrow Press’s 2011 volume, The Secret Garden: A Children’s Classic at 100,
which was preceded by Norton’s 2006 critical edition of the novel and the 2007
The Annotated Secret Garden, both edited by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, who
also penned a 2004 biography of Burnett. The editors of the Scarecrow volume—
Jackie C. Horne and Joe Sutliff Sanders—end their introduction with a challenge:
the secre t garden at the b ac k o f t h e n o r t h w i n d | 89
“We offer this volume in the hopes that future critics may, like the authors who
follow, take up not their trowels but their pens and explore the lush, vibrant ‘bit
of earth’ that is The Secret Garden” (xxxiii). Literary trowels, so to speak, have been
recently tilled on MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, which has received
similar scholarly treatment. Broadview Press’s 2011 release of a critical edition
of MacDonald’s fantasy and a collection of critical essays on the book Behind the
Back of the North Wind: Critical Essays of George MacDonald’s Classic Children’s Book
(2011)—both edited by Roderick McGillis and John Pennington—has injected
new life into an old classic.
One fruitful line of inquiry of The Secret Garden over the years has been to
examine the intertexts that influenced the novel. Such intertextual references con-
nect the novel to the larger literary tradition and weigh the text with a kind of
gravitas that cements it as a literary classic. Gerzina, for example, examines Bur-
nett’s debt to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and, to a lesser but still profound degree,
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Burnett employs a gothic mansion, a mysteri-
ous child’s cry, a windy moor:
But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else. She did not
know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself. It
was a curious sound—it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes
the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure this
sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside. She turned
round and looked at Martha.
“Do you hear any one crying?” she said.
Martha suddenly looked confused.
“No,” she answered. “It’s th’ wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if some one was lost on
th’ moor an’ wailin’. It’s got all sorts o’ sounds.”
“But listen,” said Mary. “It’s in the house—down one of those long corridors.”
And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere downstairs; for a
great rushing draft blew along the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown
open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the
crying sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than
ever.
“There!” said Mary. “I told you so! It is some one crying—and it isn’t a grown-up
person.”
Martha ran and shut the door and turned the key, but before she did it they both heard
the sound of a door in some far passage shutting with a bang, and then everything was
quiet, for even the wind ceased “wutherin’” for a few moments. (31)
Burnett is certainly in Brontë country in The Secret Garden.

Other critics find additional literary connections. Michael Patrick Hearn pos-
its that the novel “is almost character for character an English imitation of Heidi”
(qtd. in Gerzina, The Annotated Secret Garden xxx), while Jackie Wullschläger
points to Burnett’s indebtedness to Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, where “the tale of
two ill children and their recovery depends on an enchanted garden which recalls
the one in Wonderland.” She suggests that the garden motif becomes central to
the development of children’s literature:
The garden full of children, its resonance of the Eden of the soul, the enchanted place
of the poetic imagination: Frances Hodgson Burnett distilled in the image of the secret
garden a dream which haunted the second generation of children’s fantasy writers, Barrie,
Grahame and Milne, and, in the Neverland of Peter Pan, the river-bank of Arcadia of The
Wind in the Willows and Winnie-the Pooh’s cosy Hundred Acre Wood, inspired alternative
realities as heady and intoxicating as Wonderland. (106)
Ulf Boëthius writes, “Burnett often borrowed from other authors; an obvious ex-
ample is her rewriting of a tale from Frances Browne’s Granny’s Wonderful Chair
(1865) for St. Nicholas Magazine … In the case of The Secret Garden, we already
know that the novel is full of hidden intertexts” (188). Boëthius’s “hidden inter-
texts” also include a variety of fairy tales “from ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’
to ‘Riquet a la Houppe’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’” (188). To those intertexts
Boëthius adds Victorian sex-education manuals and Emile Zola’s La Faute de
l’abbé Mouret (1875), a novel about sexuality and animal instincts. Those are
certainly “hidden intertexts” that might shunt the novel out of the nursery and
into the adult bedroom.
What exactly, though, are those themes that may have haunted those other
writers? What “hidden intertexts” haunt The Secret Garden? Juliet Dusinberre, in
Alice to the Lighthouse, argues that Burnett, in The Secret Garden, moved away from
the “prolonged meditation of the dead child” depicted in the novel In the Closed
Room (1904) to a new outlook: “The lugubrious Victorian death story has been
transformed into a child’s celebration of living.” This transformation, Dusinberre
contends, was influenced by Burnett’s reading of two central texts: Gaskell’s North
and South (1885) and Molesworth’s An Enchanted Garden (1892). Jen Cadwallader,
however, challenges Dusinberre’s contention by suggesting that “by the time
Burnett wrote The Secret Garden […] she had clearly revised her stance: death be-
came not just a subject appropriate to children’s literature, but necessary to it” (120).
Does The Secret Garden, then, celebrate death? Life? Both? A key to some answers
may reside in another key intertext that has been overlooked, one that may be
even more influential than the ones previously mentioned, that may have convinced
Burnett that death is another form of living worth celebrating. That text is, as this
opening has suggested, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind.1
MacDonald met Burnett in 1872 while MacDonald was in America on a
highly successful lecture and reading tour; he also met Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Whittier, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark
Twain. In Secret Gardens, Humphrey Carpenter writes that “George MacDonald’s
influence seems to be present too” in Burnett’s Secret Garden, with Misselthwaite
Manor echoing the gothic chambers in The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and the
secret key to the garden reflecting the lock and key instrumental in “The Gold-
en Key” (1867). In fact, Carpenter claims that “there is every likelihood that she
knew his books” (189). There is also convincing evidence in The Secret Garden that
Burnett is modifying At the Back of the North Wind, the use of the wind being just
one evidentiary example.
Death fuses the two novels, yet they are, to a degree, converse texts: North
Wind explores the life-death journey of MacDonald’s child hero, Diamond, while
The Secret Garden depicts the death-life journey of Colin as Mary and Dickon help
him heal (with the secret garden being a vehicle for that transformation). In her
1925 autobiographical work, In the Garden, Burnett writes: “As long as one has a
garden one has a future; and as long as one has a future one is alive” (209). As many
critics have pointed out over the years, much of Burnett’s fiction finds her working
through the loss of her son, Lionel, trying to view his death as a form of continued
life symbolized by the garden. Jen Cadwallader argues that Burnett’s embracing
of Spiritualism, “whose chief concern was in unraveling the mysteries of the ‘next
world’” (120), was to challenge “traditional ideas about death, mourning, and the
afterlife” (133), ultimately leading to Burnett’s final acceptance of death as some-
thing positive to be embraced. Near the end of the novel, Colin, who accepts his
early death as a given early in the narrative, begins to heal as he recognizes that
death gives meaning to life. He triumphantly exclaims, “I shall live forever and
ever and ever! […] I shall find out thousands and thousands of things. I shall find
out about people and creatures and everything that grows. […] I shall never stop
making Magic!” (158).
The intertext that may be most significant to Burnett is MacDonald’s.
Diamond, a precursor to Colin, dies; yet he lives as he travels to the back of the
north wind (the realm of death) and returns to mundane London, bringing his
new secret knowledge, separating him from others, who dub him “God’s baby.”
Brian McHale states that the “intertextual space” is one that “promotes a new vi-
sion of meaning, and thus of authorship and reading” (6). Graham Allen suggests
that intertextuality reflects Bakhtin’s notion of double-voiced discourse (28), such
discourse bringing narrative complexity to a text. The primary text (in our case
The Secret Garden) resonates with the secondary intertext (At the Back of the North
Wind). Perry Nodelman reminds us that intertextuality is central to children’s lit-
erature, since writers can make a “simple text [imply] an unspoken and much more
complex repertoire that amounts to a second, hidden text […] ‘a shadow text’” (8).
As hidden, shadow text, At the Back of the North Wind influences The Secret Garden
by demonstrating that Magic may be found in the realm at the back of the north
wind, a place that is everlasting—it is the land of death that magically offers more
life. Diamond’s journey in North Wind is a spiritual one, and provides Burnett with
a narrative space to embrace, somewhat paradoxically, death as life. The key to The
Secret Garden’s shadow text is that North Wind, by combining the fantasy realm
with the realistic impulse, provides Burnett with a liminal space whereby she can
explore death in the confines of a realistic novel; in North Wind, fantasy provides
that liminal space whereby death can be exposed and explored. MacDonald’s fan-
tasy novel flaunts its two-worldness (the realm of London and the realm at the
back of the north wind) in a hybrid fairy tale fantasy and realistic novel. The Secret
Garden, while ostensibly realistic, benefits from the fantastic impulse—the magic
that becomes the secret garden—to propel its narrative toward death, while the
realistic impulse backs away from death to lead to healing and renewal.
The key to North Wind—and by extension The Secret Garden—is the impor-
tance of the liminal space to portray death that is not threatening to the reader,
particularly a child reader, who is targeted in these cross-texts that are written
to appeal to both child and adult. “Liminal worlds are indeterminate ontological
landscapes […] located in between alternate worlds” (68), writes Mihai Spariosu.
To Spariosu, the indeterminate world reflects an “incommensurate” space—that
is, spaces that ontologically cannot exist at the same time: life-death, for example.
Victor Turner contends that the liminal space presents a “pure potentiality when
everything […] trembles in the balance” and where characters are caught in a space
that is “momentarily negated, suspended, or abrogated, and the future has not yet
begun” (44). That liminal space, we might argue, reflects the thought experiment
of Schrödinger’s Cat that posited that an entity could be simultaneously alive and
dead as it remains in a superposition (according to quantum mechanics). Con-
sequently, in such a superposition or liminal space, life and death are not binary
opposites but ranges on a continuum. The fantasy-realistic tension set up early in
North Wind is diffused in the novel, as Diamond’s otherworldly adventures with
North Wind become as natural as his daily encounters with the London passen-
gers he serves as a cabman. Burnett’s novel, ostensibly a realistic narrative, searches
for an acceptable liminal space, which she finds in the garden—a place where life
and death, reflected in the organic cycle of the seasons, allow the characters and
the readers to accept death as a form of more life, the dominant message sent by
At the Back of the North Wind.
It is a challenge for writers to find a narrative space in literature, particularly
in nineteenth-century fiction. As Garrett Stewart argues in Death Sentences, “As
everyone allows, characters die more often, more slowly in the Victorian age than
ever before or since” (8). Stewart’s claim hints at a gentle wink, for Victorian novels
are often critiqued—even ridiculed—for their melodramatic and sensational death
scenes, particularly when describing the death of the young. One must think of
Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41), Dombey and Son (1846–48),
and Bleak House (1851–53), to mention only three. Charlotte Brontë manipulates
the reader with Helen Burn’s demise in Jane Eyre (1847), as does Harriet Beecher
Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). George Eliot seems to rely on death as a deus
ex machina (god from the machine) in The Mill on the Floss (1860). These may be
some of the most famous examples, but there are many other works that show a
similar struggle in depicting death. Stewart posits that death in literature engages
“three vast and familiar facts of life and art: death, content, form. Only by their
particular triangulation in the genre of prose fiction do they mark out the hypoth-
esis … that death in fiction is the fullest instance of form indexing content” (3).
To Stewart, novels that grapple with death must create a “specialized rhetoric of
figural and grammatical devices to approximate the evacuation of its very subject,
devices that can be sorted out if not strictly codified; and second, that writers learn
from each other’s verbal experimentations in this vein—that there is, in short, a
literary legacy of the death scene not oblivious to but in some ways independent of
historical drifts of faith or social ritual” (8). As we shall see, Burnett learned from
MacDonald. At the Back of the North Wind—the shadow text—provides The Secret
Garden with a form, a structure for death, as Stewart suggests: “To write of death is
for the novelist to speak of something that cannot talk back, that must be worded
from without, from this side of its arrival” (55). The fantasy strain in MacDonald’s
text provides that form for Burnett’s text, though The Secret Garden will sublimate
that fantasy element into a more conventional realist narrative of survival.
At the Back of the North Wind may have given Burnett a template for how to
explore death in a narrative. The Secret Garden attempts to create a liminal space
in the garden that is akin to the back of the north wind, a space where death (the
memory of Colin’s mother killed by a fallen branch in that very garden) and life
can coexist in a magical garden. We can see Burnett trying to more fully imitate
the fantasy-realistic structure of MacDonald’s North Wind in an unpublished story,
“A Far, Fair Country.” As biographers tell us, Burnett was devastated by the death
of her son, Lionel (who died of consumption in 1890), and she, at times, used her
fiction as an outlet for her grief. The story begins abruptly in the room of the dead
child, who remains alive, the bedroom transformed into that liminal space, where
the dead child Boy exclaims: “‘They think I died. […] They think so—and it is
all over—and I have awakened here.’” The mother responds: “‘You are so still my
sweet. […] You are sleeping so quietly. You are not ill now, my dear.—You are not
afraid of Death.—You are afraid of nothing. It is all over. How can I cry for you,
darling—when it is all over? Oh! Thank God—thank God.’” The story ends with
the mother going from room to room in the house, and she was “not sobbing any
longer, nor with tears, but not knowing with any earthly sense that was upheld by
the bright strength of the young spirit she so loved and mourned” (Gerzina, The
Secret Garden 220). Compare this to the end of North Wind, where the narrator of
the story describes: “I walked up the winding stair, and entered his room. A lovely
figure, as white and almost as clear as alabaster, was lying on the bed. I saw at once
how it was. They thought he was dead. I knew that he had gone to the back of the
north wind” (298).
Burnett flirts with the fantastic in “A Far, Fair Country” but struggles in the
narrative to make a convincing space for death; she is primarily a realistic writer
and uses fantasy or fairy tales more as motifs than as primary structures for her
work. Burnett wrote in a letter that she had abandoned “A Far, Fair Country”
because she could not find an adequate narrative structure that could convinc-
ingly portray death (Gerzina, The Secret Garden 219). In The White People (1917),
Burnett opts for a popular Victorian genre story—the ghost story—that provides
a narrative structure to deal with the otherworldly, including death. The ghost
story also mirrors her interest in the occult and Spiritualism, similar interests as
Henry James, who published The Turn of the Screw in 1898. In The White People,
the spectral presence of ghosts affirms that, after death, a kind of life still lingers
in a liminal or spectral place. The young girl narrator, Ysobel, listens to Mrs. and
Mr. MacNarin and their son as they discuss “The Fear [… which] meant that
mysterious horror most people feel at the thought of passing out of the world they
know into the one they don’t know at all” (chapter 6). Burnett provides a detailed
discussion of The Fear:
“If one has seen or heard one little thing, if one’s mortal being could catch one glimpse of
light in the dark,” Mrs. MacNairn’s low voice said out of the shadow near me, “The Fear
would be gone forever.”
“Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this,” said her son’s voice “as simple as this:
that as there are tones of music too fine to be registered by the human ear, so there may be
vibrations of light not to be seen by the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as ourselves, as formed as ourselves, only existing
in that other dimension.” (Chapter 6)
At the end of the novel, the narrator walks down to the moor to see the MacNai-
rins’ son, Hector. She says, “Then I stood quite still and looked long—for some
reason not startled, not anguished, not even feeling that he had gone. He was more
beautiful than any human creature I had ever seen before. But it had happened as
they said it would. He had not ceased—but something else had. Something had
ceased.” The novel ends with Ysobel telling the reader: “I have seen him many
times since. I shall see him many times again. And when I see him he always
stands—and smiles” (chapter 10). The ghost story, of course, provides a narrative
liminal space, for ghosts haunt the narrative real world. Fantasy, too, provides an
identical liminal space, as it is not dependent on the real—the realistic—to order
its narrative world.
It is tempting to claim that Burnett takes MacDonald’s land at the back
of the north wind and centers it in The Secret Garden, where the garden imag-
ery connects to the transformation of Mary into a good, noble young girl and
Colin from a spoiled sickly prig into a strong, confident boy. Burnett wants to
remind us that this secret garden is a magical place. Chapter 23, in fact, is called
“Magic.” In that same chapter, Colin’s confidence has grown to the point that
while he exclaims that “magic is in me! Magic is making me well! I am going to
be as strong as Dickon, as strong as Dickon,” he tends to reject magic for a more
rational explanation: “Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things
out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and
birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us …
I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in
myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong” (139). To start his
scientific experiment, Colin does muscle exercises and tells everyone that he will
be an athlete. Once Colin begins to feel stronger, he realizes that he will not die
as a young boy—as he has been told since he can remember—and is confident
enough to exclaim that he “shall live forever and ever and ever. […] I shall find
out thousands and thousands of things. […] I shall never stop making Magic.
I’m well! I’m well! I feel—I feel as if I want to shout out something—something
thankful, joyful!” (158). When Colin is able to meet Dickon’s mother, Susan
Sowerby, he questions her about her belief in Magic; she admits she believes but
calls it the “Big Good Thing” which “goes on makin’ worlds by th’millions—
worlds like us” (161). In the garden, Colin finally discovers that he will live but
also that the garden can bring life to his dead mother. This symbolic resurrection
of his mother also regenerates his father from his lifeless condition, which leads
him back to his son. In other words, Burnett appears to suggest that life is given
meaning through death, the Big Good Thing, which nourishes us to grow strong
in the real world.
MacDonald’s Diamond, conversely, is born to die, because Death (repre-
sented by the loving yet ambiguous North Wind) is literally what gives us life,
or More Life—all capitals—as MacDonald might state. In his adult fantasy
Phantastes (1858), the wandering Anodos is told at the end that a “great good”
is coming, which will be the beginning of his life, reinforcing MacDonald’s
paradoxical belief that in death there is more life. The same holds true for
Mr. Vane in Lilith (1895). In “The Golden Key” (1867), MacDonald takes two
children—Mossy and Tangle—on an adventure to death, which seems to give
them more life. This paradox is at the heart of At the Back of the North Wind,
which makes the fantasy a unique children’s book, particularly one serialized in a
children’s magazine Good Words for the Young between 1868–1870 and published
in a single volume in 1871. Its celebration of death, however, is not lugubrious
or morbid but uplifting, because Diamond’s voyage to the back of the north
wind is a voyage to Heaven—the beginning of life. MacDonald can convince
his readers of this by the combination of the realistic text where pain, misery,
and death are a part of that reality along with the fantasy text, where liberation
takes place in the fantastic. Diamond’s adventures with North Wind represent his
illness (probably consumption), and give him new insight into the importance of
life. At the Back of the North Wind, then, flaunts Diamond’s creation of nonsense
poems that he replicates from his experience at the back of the north wind,
which is also reflected in Nanny’s illness, where she recounts an otherworldly
dream that has the texture of a fairy tale. Indeed, Mr. Raymond visits the chil-
dren’s hospital and tells them a full-length fairy tale—“Little Daylight”—which
uses nature’s cycle of light-darkness to save the princess. Because the prince
and the princess discover the sun rising at the end of the tale, we can imagine a
new beginning as well as a sense of “ever after” life that is consistent with fairy
tales. To MacDonald, the fantasy or fairy tale is needed to counter the realistic
depiction of Diamond’s death so death can be seen as new life. Burnett tried
to do a similar thing in “A Far, Fair Country” and in The White People, but she
seems to have recognized that her imaginative talents were not realized in the
fantastic (or ghostly) but in the realistic. Thus, we could make a convincing case
that At the Back of the North Wind becomes a foundational intertext, one that is
as important—or maybe more important—than other intertexts that influenced
Burnett.
Overall, we have the secret garden at the back of the north wind—one a phys-
ical space that can be tilled and planted with seeds, the other an ethereal space
that one desires, even though that desire will lead to death. Yet, the “secret” in the
garden is that it is also an ethereal space where the living can interact with the
dead. In both spaces, life and death intermingle, the narratives trying to convince
readers that death is something to embrace, not to fear. In Death: The Final Stages
of Growth, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross writes that “dying is an integral part of life, as
natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration,
death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means
possible in our modern society. […] It is difficult to accept death in this society
because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see
it” (5). MacDonald and Burnett, this essay has argued, were dedicated to making
death visible; North Wind becomes a familiar motherly figure to Diamond and
the garden a place for the children to see that the natural cycle of spring-summer-
fall-winter is something to embrace, celebrating the rebirth of Colin and his father
while finding new life for Colin’s mother and his father’s wife. Part of At the Back
of the North Wind’s and The Secret Garden’s popularity may reside in Kübler-Ross’s
seeming paradox—that dying is natural, but not necessarily welcome. MacDonald
and Burnett create welcoming spaces for death. Roderick McGillis writes that “the
ongoing movement of life with its seasonal rhythms that indicate permanence amid
change, death within life, presence and absence is what The Secret Garden is all about,
and what children’s literature is all about” (234). This is also an apt description of
what At the Back of the North Wind is about. In fact, MacDonald’s fantasy becomes
another secret in the garden, the touchstone text about death that provides Burnett
with theme and structure that continue to resonate with readers of all ages.
note
1. MacDonald’s influence on Burnett goes beyond The Secret Garden, further reinforcing that
MacDonald is central to Burnett’s imagination. In A Little Princess (1905), for example, Sara
is moved by Miss Minchin to an attic room after receiving news that Sara’s father has died and
not left any money to cover Sara’s expenses. Burnett writes, “Yes this was another world. The
room had a slanting roof and was whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy and had fallen off in
places” (49). Diamond, the hero of At the Back of the North Wind, has his bedroom in a hayloft
above the stable of the horse also named Diamond. His room is described as made of boards
that “were soft and crumbly. To be sure, they were tarred on the outside, yet in many places
they were more like tinder than timber” (47). North Wind has no trouble entering Diamond’s
bedroom and whisking him off to magical and mystical adventures. Similarly, Sara’s room has
a skylight that becomes the portal for Ram Dass, a kind of human North Wind, to enter her
room and bring Sara exotic food and other childish delights. Sara believes that these visits are
some kind of “Magic.”
Another connection may be to her now-infamous Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), which finds
Cedric Errol torn between two worlds—England and America—the way Diamond is torn be-
tween gritty London and the seductive land at the back of the north wind. Diamond, a sickly yet
noble character, becomes a page for his benefactors, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond, and “was dressed in
a suit of blue from which his pale face and fair hair came out like the loveliest blossom, and took
up his abode in the house” (272). Arthur Hughes’s illustrations of Diamond depict him with curly
hair, often wearing a nightgown or clothes that made him particularly androgynous and feminine.
Cedric, of course, created a late-Victorian, Edwardian fashion craze: “What the Earl saw was a
graceful, childish figure in a black velvet suit, with a lace collar, and with lovelocks waving about
the handsome, manly little face, whose eyes met his with a look of innocent good-fellowship,” the
Van Dyke style made most famous by the illustrations from the novel. Diamond is a precursor
to Cedric and reflects larger issues about the Victorian and turn-of-the-century child. Katherine
L. Carlson argues that Cedric reflects “the androgyny and moral influence which characterize
Victorian revisions of the Romantic child” (40). Carlson also recognizes the arguments of U. C.
Knoepflmacher, as she contends that Fauntleroy is “part of a competing tradition of the male
hero—on one side being the masculine heroes of schoolboy novels and on the other the feminized
boy characters of Ruskin, MacDonald, Craik, and others […]” (49).
works cited
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Boëthius, Ulf. “‘Us is near bein’ wild things ourselves’: Procreation and Sexuality in The Secret Garden.”
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 22.4 (1997–98): 188–95. Print.
Burnett, Francis Hodgson. The Secret Garden. Ed. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. New York: Norton,
2006. Print.
———. In the Garden. Boston: Medici Society, 1925. Print.
———. “A Far, Fair Country.” The Secret Gardens. By Francis Hodgson Burnett. Ed. Gretchen Hol-
brook Gerzina. New York: Norton, 2006. 219–21. Print.
———. The White People. Project Gutenberg. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.
Cadwallader, Jen. “The Three Veils: Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in The Secret Garden.” Francis
Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden: A Children’s Classic at 100. Ed. Jackie C. Horne and Joe
Sutliff Sanders. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. 119–35. Print.
Carlson, Katherine L. “Little Lord Fauntleroy and the Evolution of American Boyhood.” Journal of
History of Childhood and Youth 3.1 (2010): 39–64. Print.
Carpenter, Humphrey. Secret Gardens. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Print.
Dusinberre, Juliet. Alice to the Lighthouse. New York: St. Martins, 1987. Print.
Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook, ed. The Annotated Secret Garden. By Francis Hodgson Burnett. New
York: Oxford, 2007. Print.
———. Francis Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden. New Bruns-
wick: Rutgers UP, 2004. Print.
Gubar, Marah. Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2009. Print.
Horne, Jackie C. and Joe Sutliff Sanders. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden: A Children’s
Classic at 100. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. Print.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. Death: The Final Stage of Growth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
Print.
Lundin, Anne. “The Critical and Commercial Reception of The Secret Garden.” The Secret Garden. By
Frances Hodgson Burnett. Ed. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. New York: Norton, 2006. 277–87.
Print.
MacDonald, George. At the Back of the North Wind. Ed. Roderick McGillis and John Pennington.
Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2011. Print.
McGillis, Roderick. “The Secret Garden—Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.” Horne and Sand-
ers 231–44. Print.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987. Print.
Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
2008. Print.
Pennington, John, and Roderick McGillis, eds. Behind the Back of the North Wind: Critical Essays of
George MacDonald’s Classic Children’s Book. Hamden, CT: Winged Lion Press, 2011. Print.
Plotz, Judith. “Secret Garden II; or Lady Chatterley’s Lover as Palimpsest.” Children’s Literature Associ-
ation Quarterly 19.1 (1994): 15–19. Print.
Prickett, Stephen. Preface. At the Back of the North Wind. By George MacDonald. Ed. Roderick
McGillis and John Pennington. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2011. 9–12. Print.
Spariosu, Mihai. The Wreath of Wild Olive: Play, Liminality, and the Study of Literature. New York:
State U of New York P, 1997. Print.
Stewart, Garrett. Death Sentences: Styles of Dying in British Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.
Print.
Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts
Journal Press, 1982. Print.
Wullschläger, Jackie. Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear,
J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A. A. Milne. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Print.
part three
Those Left Behind

chapter seven
How Men Grieve

A Contemporary Allegory of the
Grieving Process in Sir Orfeo
rebekah m . fowler
Perhaps nowhere in medieval literature is the process of grief more beautifully ren-
dered than in the Breton lay Sir Orfeo (ca. 1300). In this tale, Orfeo’s wife, Heurodis,
is abducted by fairies, leading Orfeo to engage in actions that parallel the stages of
grief established by both the attachment theory of John Bowlby in his volume Loss:
Sadness and Depression (1980) and by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in On Death and Dying
(1969). This essay argues that the story of Sir Orfeo can be read as an allegory for
the process of grief by using the trappings of medieval romance to provide a literal
context through which we might read both Bowlby’s and Kübler-Ross’s stages at the
allegorical level. That is, the elements of this fourteenth-century story parallel the
stages established by twentieth-century scholars of loss and grief. Mapping Kübler-
Ross and Bowlby onto Sir Orfeo provides a compelling perspective on how medieval
peoples similarly represent responses to loss, suggesting the timelessness of modes
of grief. Furthermore, this mapping serves as a comforting reminder that grief does
eventually subside and that life begins anew.
At the literal level, the events of the tale begin with the abduction of Queen
Heurodis by the Fairy King with the warning that she must be prepared to go with
the fairies the next day, never to return. This news drives Heurodis temporarily mad
and causes Orfeo to promise her his protection or his company wherever she may
go (130). Orfeo attempts to prevent her abduction by posting one thousand guards
around her, which proves futile. Having lost his wife to the Fairy King, Orfeo gives
up his kingdom, dons pilgrim’s garb, and retreats to the forest, where he remains
for ten years. He only leaves the forest when he spies Heurodis one day among a
102 | rebek ah m . fowler
troop of fairy ladies and follows her into a rock that leads to the fairy otherworld.
Here, he disguises himself as a minstrel, finds his lost wife, and bargains for her re-
lease by playing his harp for the Fairy King. As the poem ends, he brings Heurodis
out of the otherworld and returns with her to Winchester, where he reclaims his
kingdom. Allegorically, we can read these events through Kübler-Ross’s five stages
of grief—denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance—combined with
Bowlby’s four—shock and numbness; yearning and searching; disorganization and
despair; and reorganization and recovery—to depict Heuorodis’ struggle to accept
her immanent, though metaphorical, death, and Orfeo’s complex, yet complete,
process of coping with his loss.
Kübler-Ross’s influential study articulates the experiences of terminally ill pa-
tients and their processes of coming to terms with their own mortality. The study
recognizes five principle steps found to be common among the terminally ill in a
series of case studies conducted by Kübler-Ross and others. The first of Kübler-
Ross’s stages is denial and isolation, which follows the “temporary shock” of news
of one’s terminal illness (37). Once the shock has passed, claims Kübler-Ross, the
individual may experience denial, which “functions as a buffer after unexpected
shocking news [and] allows the patient to collect [herself ] and, with time, mobi-
lizes other, less radical defences” (35). However, before the patient can get to the
point of “less radical defences,” she may experience isolation, either self-imposed
or resulting from the reaction of others to her insistent denials (42–43).
“Anger, rage, envy, and resentment” frequently follow as the patient asks, “why
me?” (44), and the patient projects onto the outside world and others the frus-
tration of her situation. The patient engages in the bargaining stage, when she
begins asking for “just one more chance” to complete various tasks, postponing the
inevitable. Such bargaining may be the result of subconscious guilt over what is
left undone or the fear of what is to come. Depression arises once the realization
of impending death sets in and the patient experiences sadness and guilt. Kübler-
Ross recognizes two kinds of depression: reactionary and preparatory (76), the
former referring to past loss, such as removal of a diseased body part, and the latter
addressing future losses “of all the love objects” (77). These losses, argues Kübler-
Ross, should be mourned as an outlet for feelings of regret, shame, guilt, and loss
of hope. During this period, the patient merely needs to know that her life meant
something. The final stage, acceptance, is reached if and when the patient has had
sufficient time to work through her grief. At this point, “[she] will have mourned
[her] impending loss of so many meaningful people and places and [she] will con-
template [her] coming end with a certain degree of quiet expectation” (99).
At the end of her text, Kübler-Ross briefly addresses how those close to the
terminally ill individual experience similar stages, but with slightly different effects.
Such effects include the addition of a period of separation (due to feeling rejected
by the patient) and detachment from the patient prior to accepting her death. John
h o w m e n g r i e v e | 103
Bowlby focuses more directly on the survivors and how they demonstrate their
grief. Grief is based on the bond between the bereaved and the deceased (or the
patient), and when this bond is severed, the bereaved experiences a loss.
Though Bowlby agrees with Kübler-Ross that stages may occur in any or-
der and may sometimes be skipped, he believes the stages “begin” with a period
of shock and numbness. This period—an emotional coping mechanism for the
bereaved until they are ready to face the loss—coincides, to a certain extent, with
both Kübler-Ross’s denial and anger stages in that the sufferer (here the bereaved
rather than the patient) may experience disbelief and denial about his or her loss.
The second of Bowlby’s stages, yearning and searching, refers to a period of time
in which the bereaved longs for the return of the lost beloved and may engage
in behaviors ranging from crying to “outbursts of extremely intense distress and/
or anger” (Bowlby 85). This is the period most often associated with the tears of
grief resulting from missing the deceased and may include actions similar to those
found in Kübler-Ross’s bargaining phase. Disorganization and despair, Bowlby’s
third stage, refers to a period of “detachment and depression” (31) that involves a
withdrawal from others as well as a sense of despair over the loss, both of which
may result in apathetic behavior and a refusal to be consoled, much like Kübler-
Ross’s stage of depression. The last of Bowlby’s stages, reorganization and recovery,
finds the bereaved ready to face the loss and enjoy memories of the deceased as
intense grief and despair subside. As with Kübler-Ross’s final stage, then, there is
acceptance of the loss.
While the primary emphasis of Sir Orfeo is on Orfeo’s reaction to his wife
Heurodis’ loss, the poem provides a thoughtful blending of representations of grief
from the perspectives of both the patient, who knows her demise is imminent, and
the beloved, who must first face the news of his impending loss and then cope with
its aftermath. The literal reading of the Fairy King’s warning to Heurodis of her
future abduction, her sharing of the news with Orfeo, the abduction itself, and Or-
feo’s response at each stage provide the foundation for us to interpret allegorically
a tale of the patient learning of her terminal illness, her sharing of the news with
her husband, her death, and the spouse’s reaction, respectively, thus incorporating
Kübler-Ross’s and Bowlby’s stages as both the patient and the bereaved grapple
with loss and death.
The action of the poem begins with Heurodis enjoying the garden on a spring
day with her ladies, which is interrupted by an unwelcome visit from the Fairy
King, who threatens to abduct her. Heurodis’ abduction presents as a “terminal”
condition—a reality that the queen cannot avoid and that the Fairy King has de-
clared to be permanent. The garden walk represents Heurodis in the springtime of
her life, vibrant and in the full bloom of youthful femininity. The queen and her
two ladies stop to rest, and Heurodis alone falls “on slepe opon þe grene” (asleep
upon the green; 72), under the shade of a grafted tree (ympe-tre). Her ladies comply
with their queen’s request and stop with her, allowing her repose—regardless of
the fact that it is midday, a time of day often associated with fairies and at which
time one should certainly not, according to fairy lore, lie under a grafted tree. The
connections to fairy tip the medieval reader off to the likely perils of Heurodis’ sit-
uation—an inevitable brush with fairy.2 The modern reader, though, can interpret
Heurodis’ sudden desire to sleep as the onset of her illness.
In the midst of her nap, Heurodis dreams, but her dream is terribly real. The
Fairy King and his retinue come into her garden and steal her away, taking her
to the fairy otherworld where she sees a magical landscape and a glorious castle.
Here, the Fairy King informs her that he will return for her the next day and
take her to “liue wiþ [them] euer-mo” (live with them forever; 168). Furthermore,
declares the Fairy King, no matter what she says or does, she cannot prevent this
abduction from happening: “no þing help þe no schal” (nothing shall help you;
172). The Fairy King’s role is much like that of the doctor who must impart the
news of the severity of her illness to the patient. Though indelicate, the Fairy King
firmly explains to Heurodis that she will literally be taken from the garden—that
she, in effect, will die. While Heurodis does not literalize Kübler-Ross’s denial or
bargaining stages, the Fairy King seems to sense that Heurodis will deny the real-
ity of his message and bargain for her life, as indicated by the forthrightness of his
point that she cannot avoid her fate. The Fairy King thus tells Heurodis that she
is “terminal” and that nothing can be done to save her life.
Heurodis wakes from her dream in an agitated state: “sche froted hir hondon
& hir fet, / & crached hir visage—it bled wete” (she fretted her hands and her feet, /
and scratched her face until it bled wet; 79–80). Her face is now bloodied and
scarred by her own hand, and she wears the mental wounds of the knowledge of
her abduction/death. The dream represents Heurodis’ denial and isolation—the
initial shock of the situation in which she remains removed from the reality around
her—while her self-mutilation suggests a self-directed state of “anger, rage, envy,
and resentment” that follows her initial state of shock at the news (Kübler-Ross
44). Ellen M. Caldwell, alternatively, argues that Heurodis’ self-mutilation is done
in an attempt to avoid her abduction by making herself less attractive to the Fairy
King (305), who collects beautiful objects. In this regard, Heurodis’ mutilation
may not be only her rage at the situation, but an attempt to bargain for her life.
The ladies, however, are presently still unaware of the details of Heurodis’ situation
and do not understand her erratic behavior. Hence, while she raves, or rages, her
frightened ladies leave her to find help. As with many patients who enter the stage
of anger and resentment, Heurodis drives away those close to her. In their fear and
concern, they seek someone who can diffuse the situation by calming Heurodis, or
at least by taking her to safety.
Once ensconced safely in bed in her privy chamber, Orfeo is summoned, and
he quickly comes to her bedside, where she is still in an agitated state. He notices
her behavior first, and then her complexion that “was so red” and is now “al wan,
as þou were ded” (all wan, as though you were dead; 107–08). At Orfeo’s sweet
insistence and assurance that he loves her and wishes to know what is wrong,
Heurodis becomes calm and weeps: “Ðo lay sche stille atte last, / & gan to wepe
swiþe fast” (Then she finally lay still, and began immediately to weep; 117–18).
Having worked through her anxiety, Heurodis here enters into a quiet sadness,
leading to the acceptance of what is to come gained only through the telling of
her dream. Knowing that Orfeo is there and concerned frees her to acknowledge
the truth, as she reveals her dream and tells Orfeo, “—Do þe best, for y mot go”
(No matter what you do, I must go; 126), advice that Orfeo will later ignore in his
attempt to hold on to Heurodis.
After announcing her terminality, Heurodis seems to accept its inevitability
and reassures Orfeo before her voice goes silent for the remainder of the lay. At
this point, Heurodis presents a quiet acceptance that precedes Orfeo’s vast ten-
year silence after losing her. The last time we see her in Winchester, she is once
again lying in the castle garden under the grafted tree at noon—a young woman
in the flower of youth, tired and sleeping at fairy time only to be taken without a
trace. Death, represented by the Fairy King, quietly appears and takes Heurodis
with no fight, leaving Orfeo and his men useless to protect her or keep her from
this inevitable outcome.
When Heurodis shares her dream with Orfeo, he experiences the anxiety that
accompanies “the threat of loss” (Bowlby 40). The Fairy King threatens to break
the bond between the couple, having made it clear to Heurodis that the place for
whence she is bound is one where Orfeo cannot accompany her. For the first time
in their lives together, they cannot go “wiþ” one another. Bowlby explains, “The
unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security and
the renewal of a bond as a source of joy”; challenges to the bond produce either
anxiety in the “threat of loss,” or anger in the event of “actual loss” (40). During
Heurodis’ retelling of her dream, Orfeo experiences a threat to his bond with
Heurodis, initially producing behaviors consistent with Bowlby’s first phase of
grief, which is “numbness.” He denies what she is telling him, insisting that he will
go with her, thereby also denying the fact of her imminent loss.
If his initial response is to deny the reality of Heurodis’ tale, Orfeo’s exclam-
atory response to her report exemplifies the depth of emotion he feels at hearing
these bad tidings: “‘O we!’ quaƿ he, ‘Allas! Allas! / Leuer me were to lete mi liif /
Ðan to lese þe quen mi wiif!’” (“Oh dear!” he cried, “Alas! Alas! It would be better
for me to lose my life than to lose the queen, my wife”; 175–77). His exclama-
tory speech illustrates the “outbursts of extremely intense distress and/or anger”
common to those faced with a loss (Bowlby 85). Here, his anxiety is evident, as
revealed in his cries of “Allas! Allas!” and his claim that he would rather die him-
self than lose Heurodis. At this point, he still believes that there is something to
be done to prevent this future loss. Alongside the obvious anxiety in his forceful
outcry, his anger at having been threatened is also apparent in his busying himself
to protect Heurodis. Bowlby’s research demonstrates that this too is not unusual
in loving attachments, as “any situation that seems to be endangering the bond
elicits actions designed to preserve it” (42). He therefore attempts to stave off
the inevitable by gathering “ten hundred kniӡtes” (183), all armed, to fend off the
interlopers and keep Heurodis safe. That he musters so many knights to protect
one individual attests to his extremity of emotion, as well as his deep devotion to
his bride. Pleading with Heurodis, announcing his own willingness to die in her
stead, seeking counsel, and then gathering an army to protect her all demonstrate
an escalation in his own attempts to prevent the severance of his marital bond.
Still, Heurodis is gone without a trace, having been magically abducted by
the Fairy King, and Orfeo is unable to prevent this loss. Orfeo feels helpless;
he could not save her. In their study on traumatic loss, Ginny Sprang and John
McNeil assert that those who suffer traumatic loss are more likely to be embroiled
in “self-directed anger due to a perceived ‘failure’ to protect the loved one” (60).
Bowlby asserts that all loss is traumatic and that many sufferers of separation ex-
perience self-recriminations for their inability to prevent the loss (143), or for not
doing things “better” while their loved ones lived. Orfeo saw Heurodis’ pain and
fear, yet he could not prevent it, nor could he prevent her from being taken. Since
her disappearance was so sudden and mysterious—“Men wist neuer wher sche
was bicome” (No one ever knew where she went; 194)—Orfeo is unable to fathom
how he will rescue her, or if he can at all, and he sinks into depression. He retires
to the privacy of his chamber, where he “swoned opon þe ston, / & made swiche
diol & swiche mon / Þat neiӡe his liif was y-spent” (swooned upon the stone floor
and made such dolorous cries and moans that his life was nearly spent; 197–99).
Having privately expressed his grief in his chamber, Orfeo then enacts his sorrow
in the wilderness—a common conceit in medieval romance—where his disorgani-
zation and despair become most evident.
As a responsible king, Orfeo must put some things in order before he goes,
and he calls together his advisors in order to appoint his steward as regent of
Winchester and to command them to call together a parliament to elect a new king
only when word of his death has reached them. However, while this move seems
prudent and reasonable, he has not taken his decision under the advisement of his
counsel. In fact, now that Heurodis is gone, he will not take counsel nor comfort.
Bowlby associates such rejection of assistance to both a sense of detachment and to
anger after a loss, stating that the loss of a loved one may lead “to a cry for help, but
sometimes also to a rejection of those who respond” (30). This “hostility toward
comforters” results, Bowlby claims, from the bereaved wanting “assistance towards
reunion” rather than “comfort in loss” (92). That is, they want to reestablish their
affectional bond, not accept that the loss is permanent. Whereas Orfeo sought
assistance before Heurodis disappeared, now he pushes others away, making direc-
tives and shouting orders before physically detaching and leaving Winchester for
the wilderness. Orfeo’s decision is independently made, and he expects the others
to abide by it, lashing out at them when they cry and beg him to stay: “Do way!
[…] It schal be so!” (“Stop it! It shall be so!”; 226). The medieval audience would
have understood that this refusal of council is unkingly and a signal of Orfeo’s slide
into deep despair.
Orfeo’s despair and disorganization become clearer once he leaves Winchester
for the forest. He makes himself dead to the courtly world, eschewing all civilized
company and consolation. Indeed, he despairs to the point of a “more serious form”
of depression that has “intense […] morbid features” (Bowlby 143). That Orfeo is
able to sustain himself on the offerings of the forest, but barely, suggests that he is
precariously alive, and readers are told that he has grown terribly thin as a result
of his misfortune: “Al his bodi was oway duine” (his body had dwindled away;
261). In his despair, he allows his beard to grow long—“to his girdle-stede” (waist;
266)—over the ten years he remains in the forest. His beard is also “blac & rowe”
(black and unkempt; 265); in ten years’ time Orfeo’s beard should be grizzled with
age rather than black, which is a testament to his melancholy. Melancholy, Isidore
of Seville explains, is “black bile,” so named “because it is a large amount of bile
mixed with the dregs of black blood” (IV.v.4), and is the humor responsible for
causing the state of melancholy, or depression, in medieval medical thought. Galen
claims to be able to recognize an overabundance of “atrabilious humor” (melan-
cholia) in a person if they “look lean, darker and hairy” (Siegel 195). Similarly,
Avicenna claims that melancholics “show […] blackness and thickness of hair and
head” (77). Thus, the black hair belies the black mood, the leanness, darkness, and
unkempt hairiness admitting to the melancholy. Orfeo’s lack of concern for his
general health and appearance is also suggestive of Bowlby’s “detachment” and
of what George Engel views as “suffering and an impairment of the capacity to
function, which may last for days, weeks, or even months” (31, 18), and that has
occasionally been observed when a man loses his spouse. For Orfeo, this period of
detachment and disorganization lasts for ten years—long enough to suggest that
he may never overcome his despair.
Yet, Orfeo does recover; he enters into a state of searching and yearning fol-
lowed by reorganization and the successful reimaging of himself in a “new” role.
This climbing out of despair is not easy for him, however, as Orfeo seems haunted
by the memory of Heurodis and his longing for her is renewed, thus initiating his
“searching and yearning” for the lost wife. When Orfeo sees Heurodis again after
ten years, riding in a hunt with a troop of fairy ladies, he is unable to speak with
her. The encounter in the text is a literal one, but, allegorically, the inability to
converse indicates the longing of the bereaved Orfeo to reconnect with his depart-
ed wife to the point of imagining this moment of reunion. However, the reunion
fails, and Orfeo is full of “wo” at having, once again, to be separated from Heurodis
(331), and he appears at his self-reproachful best. This fresh encounter reopens the
wounds of his earlier failure to keep Heurodis safe. He laments, “Allas! To long last
mi liif, / When y no dar nouӡt wiþ mi wiif / (No hye to me) o word speke” (Alas!
I have lived too long when I dare not even speak a word to my wife and she does
not hasten to me; 335–37). He admonishes himself for his inability to speak to
her and, once again, to keep her. He is so reproachful of his own behavior that he
wishes repeatedly for his own death, saying, “Whi nil deþ now me slo?” (Why will
death not slay me?; 332), and bemoaning the fact “þat y no miӡt / Dye now after
þis siӡt” (that I may not die now, after this sight; 334). Orfeo’s morbidity nonethe-
less seems to mobilize him into action, as he declares, “Of liif no deþ me no reche”
(I don’t care whether I live or die; 342), and follows the fairy huntresses into the
hill in a strikingly ambivalent gesture that propels him to his own potential death.
Ironically, it is Orfeo’s death drive that revives him and more assertively pro-
pels him back into the second of Bowlby’s phases, “yearning and searching for
the lost figure” (85). Having incidentally encountered Heurodis, Orfeo renews his
efforts to reclaim her and save her from an eternity in the otherworld. Of attempts
by the bereaved to reunite with their lost loved ones, Bowlby explains, “evidence
shows that, at perhaps increasingly long intervals, the effort to restore the bond
is renewed: the pangs of grief and perhaps an urge to search are then experienced
afresh” (42). Orfeo’s original attempts to “restore a bond” with Heurodis by pro-
tecting her against her abduction were not successful, nor were there any attempts
during Orfeo’s ten years in the forest to put forth any further effort to renew that
bond. He seems to be so traumatized by his experience that he is in a deep melan-
choly from the moment he enters the woods to his espying Heurodis among the
hunting party. Only when glimpsing his wife is he reminded of his earlier joy in
“the courtly rituals once practiced by him” (Saunders 140), and only then does he
show signs of climbing out of despair. Corinne Saunders observes that “he laughs
at a memory of long ago, thus participating in an alternative reading of the forest
as a landscape of sport, and triggering his own action” (140). It is not the sport,
however, that pushes him to renew his attachment with Heurodis. While it incites
him to take a closer look at the hunting party itself, he is not motivated until he
risks losing Heurodis again and feels he has nothing more to lose.
R. R. Gros Louis contends that “the increasing isolation” Orfeo experienc-
es during his ten years in the forest reads as “a substitute for death” (247), and
this life that he has been living “approximates death” (247). In his melancholic
state, Orfeo could barely be said to be living; yet, at this moment, he makes the
decision to confront death head-on. As with Freud’s death instinct/drive, Orfeo
attempts “to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged
to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces” (612; emphasis in the
original). In other words, Heurodis’ appearance after ten years of separation serves
as an impetus in Orfeo to return to the state of life he had enjoyed prior to her
abduction, or to join her in her current state. This cycling back (or forward), how-
ever, in Freudian terms, is connected to the urge to become inorganic once again
(613). That is, “the aim of all life is death” (613; emphasis in the original). 3 Thus
Orfeo “experiences afresh” his urge to be reunited with Heurodis, whether in life
or in death. As Bowlby’s research finds, in some instances of extreme despair and
disorganization, morbid thoughts may turn suicidal. Orfeo’s glimpse of Heurodis
thus serves as the first indication that Orfeo is prepared to leave behind his long
melancholy, whether in a positive or negative turn.
While Orfeo’s initial instinct is for death, it leads him toward renewed vigor.
Indeed, the Fairy King acknowledges that Orfeo is more alive than dead when
he fails to recognize Orfeo’s potentially suicidal maneuver and tells Orfeo that
he “No sent neuer after ƿe” (I never sent for you; 424), calling Orfeo “fole-hardi”
for coming (426). Orfeo’s own morbid thoughts are hence deemed foolish, and
he sets about realizing a more productive end. His newfound motivation overlays
with Bowlby’s assertion that “if all goes well this phase [of searching] may soon
begin to alternate with a phase during which [the bereaved] starts to examine the
new situation in which he finds himself and to consider ways of meeting it” (94).
In the case of a widower, the bereaved begins to reinvent himself as a widower—a
spouseless individual who sets about the task of reorganizing his life. In these
cases, the new urge to be reunited with the lost spouse does not lead to a physi-
cal reunion, but rather to one in which the beloved becomes enmeshed with the
bereaved through memory and an acknowledgment of the importance the loved
one had in his life. The bereaved does not, therefore, relinquish the bond to the
deceased. Bowlby writes, “it seems likely that for many widows and widowers it
is precisely because they are willing for their feelings of attachment to the dead
spouse to persist that their sense of identity is preserved and they become able to
reorganize their lives along lines they find meaningful” (98). Orfeo exemplifies
this persistent attachment quite aptly. His fresh bid for a reunion with Heurodis
cements his bond with her and confirms his identity as her spouse while simulta-
neously providing him with the potential to break free of the bonds of his melan-
choly and move forward with his life, signalling a changed—or changing—man
on the brink of reorganization.
Orfeo begins the upturn toward reorganization once he gains entrance to the
fairy underworld under his minstrel’s disguise. He is surprised at what he finds
inside the fairy castle, and the reader is left doubtless that this place has an inti-
mate relationship with death. There, among the beauty and glory of the bejeweled
palace, are all manners of people who have been brought to the otherworld in
various attitudes of death. The poet lists among the occupants those who died
in childbirth, in battle, by choking, drowning, or fire. Those who are, apparently,
not dead are said to be “awedde” (400), this word stemming from “wode” (mad),
an attribute earlier ascribed to Heurodis. Orfeo finds in the castle folks who were
“ƿouȝt dede, & nare nouȝt” (were thought dead, and were not not [or, barely alive];
390), among them, Orfeo “seiȝe his owhen wiif, / Dame Heurodis his lef liif, /
Slepe vnder ympe-tre” (saw his own wife, / Dame Heurodis, the love of his life, /
asleep under the grafted tree; 405–07). Despite having seen her in the forest, that
Heurodis sleeps under the ympe-tre, just as she did when taken from Orfeo, places
her at the moment of her “death” and sees Orfeo struggling to accept the reality of
his loss by removing Heurodis from this place of the dead.
Though Orfeo’s journey to the otherworld results in the literal rescue of a
living Queen Heurodis, allegorically, he claims instead a positive memory of the
departed and moves on from his loss. He first must face Heurodis in her moment
of trauma beneath the grafted tree, the image that Orfeo has carried of Heurodis
for these ten long years, and the attitude in which she has remained in the other-
world for the same period. In order to alter the image to a more positive one, he
must reclaim her as his queen—the fair, lovely woman that she was prior to her
abduction. The method by which he does this is first through his music. From the
beginning of the lay, we are told that Orfeo loved to play, was good at playing, and
found joy in the music of the harp. During his period in the forest, his harp was
the only thing that brought him any pleasure, though the animals that were his
audience would flee once the music ceased, indicating its inability to bring lasting
comfort at this point. Somehow, though, he had always failed to connect the joy
of the harp with his happiness with Heurodis. Now, he will use his joy in harping
to bargain with the Fairy King for Heurodis. That is, he will use the pleasure of
music as a means of positively remembering his beloved wife by connecting it to
her release, playing the harp further revealing an Orfeo once again productively
engaging in activities that he had once enjoyed.
So begins Orfeo’s bargain with the Fairy King—Death. He asks for Heu-
rodis as the price for his beautiful harping, but the Fairy King thinks her, a
fair noblewoman “wiþ-outen lac” (perfect, or without blemish), too precious for
such a “lene, rowe & blac” (lean, unkempt, and dark) man (459–60). However,
this external appearance, the remnant of his depression, no longer represents
the Orfeo on the verge of reorganization. Orfeo is no longer despondent; he
has lost his torpor and is demonstrating as much through his cleverness in his
dealings with the Fairy King. Orfeo is reengaging life by accepting Heurodis’
death. Contrary to assertions made by Dean Baldwin that Orfeo has accepted
“the inevitability of death,” as well as Heurodis’ loss, as early as his decision to
leave Winchester (247, 249), Orfeo does not truly accept either until he visits
the otherworld. Though he has lived alongside death in a liminal state, he has
not really grasped—despite his apparent acknowledgement and engagement in
the grieving process—that Heurodis’ death is, indeed, permanent and that his
own life is immanent. Having now seen Heurodis in this place of death, Orfeo
accepts, finally, that she is dead and that he must reorient himself to a new life.
This coincides with Bowlby’s assertion that:
The bereaved must come to the point where he come[s] gradually to recognize and accept
that the loss is in truth permanent and that his life must be shaped anew. In this way only
does it seem possible for him fully to register that his old patterns of behaviour have be-
come redundant and have therefore to be dismantled. (93)
As with Bowlby’s widower, who “remarked: ‘I think I’m beginning to wake up now.
I’m starting living instead of just existing’” (94–95), Orfeo is “starting living,” and
begins by removing himself (and Heurodis) from the place of the dead.
Literally, Orfeo takes Heurodis by the hand and takes her away from the oth-
erworld (474). Yet, as Oren Falk stresses, the fact that Heurodis never again speaks
after she tells Orfeo her dream admits to a change in her status from central to an-
cillary or, I argue, from living woman to memory (260). When Orfeo first arrives in
Winchester after escaping the otherworld and finds shelter, Heurodis is mentioned:
“Þer he tok his herbarwe / (To him & to his owhen wiif ) / As a minstrel of pouer
liif ” (There he took lodging (he and his wife) with a poor minstrel; 484–6). Howev-
er, Orfeo leaves her behind when he goes initially to face his steward and court and
announce his return. Orfeo also mentions Heurodis as his traveling companion from
the fairy realm when he speaks to the steward, stating that he “hadde y-won mi quen
o-wy / Out of þe lond of fairy, / & hadde y-brouӡt þe leuedi hende / Riӡt here to þe
tounes ende, / & wiþ a begger her in y-nome” (had won my queen away from the
land of fairy, and had brought the courteous lady right here to the edge of town, and
left her with a beggar; 561–65). Employing Christine Rose’s claim that “medieval
readers, trained in allegorical interpretation, were no strangers to holding two ideas
in mind at once and enjoying the richness of meaning this medieval hermeneutical
exercise afforded” (24), these lines leave little question as to Heurodis’ literal presence
in the tale at this point, but also leave room to read this presence as symbolic.
Orfeo, after all, brings no ocular proof of Heurodis’ rescue for the steward and
the court. He merely tells them that she is with “a begger,” which he himself now
appears to be. Orfeo is the beggar and Heurodis is “with” him in memory. Bowlby
writes of several of the widows in the case studies that he references who, “a year
after losing their husbands[,] still spent much time thinking of [them] and some-
times had a sense of [their] actual presence” (96). Indeed, widows found “the sense
of the dead husband’s presence [so comforting] that some deliberately evoked it
whenever they felt unsure of themselves or depressed” (97). The same experience
was true, he found, of widowers (103). Allegorically, then, Heurodis can be read
at this point as a “sense of presence” to comfort and assure Orfeo as he returns to
Winchester after his ten-year absence. He prepares “to organize his life afresh, for-
tified […] by an abiding sense of [Heurodis’] continuing and benevolent presence”
(243), which Bowlby deems a healthy response.
Likewise, Heurodis is brought to the palace in a procession, but not until after
Orfeo is “baþed,” “schaued,” and attired “as a king” (585–86). The poet writes that
“þai” formed a procession and “brouӡt þe quen in-to þe toun” (588–89). Again, on
the literal level, Heurodis is royally received back into the realm. Allegorically, her
return is as a pleasant memory while Orfeo pushes beyond his torpid exile and into
reconciliation with his people. Heurodis, then, is no longer missing—no longer lost.
She has been reintegrated into the public consciousness as a “living” memory rather
than the queen who “was stolen away” (491). While Orfeo is transformed from
beggar/minstrel into a king—changed through his grieving process—Heurodis is
brought to the castle from the beggar’s house, silent, but otherwise unchanged from
the day she was last on the castle grounds.
Heurodis’ continued silence, though, marks the change in Orfeo’s attachment
to her. Where she had been the corporeal presence of a woman and a wife prior to
her abduction, she is now no less a figure of attachment for Orfeo, but his attach-
ment is to her now-positive memory, a “sense of presence,” rather than her person
lying prone under the grafted tree. That she is so clearly ancillary after his return
demonstrates that Orfeo is no longer ruled by this particular attachment, and thus
can rule as king apart from it. Contrary to R. H. Nicholson’s assertion that “King
Orfeo is himself again” (179), Orfeo is a new self, reorganized. Orfeo is, after all,
“newe coround” (593, emphasis mine)—the old Orfeo is gone, along with the ab-
ducted Heurodis.
Nicholson also asserts that the genre of the lay, particularly the English ren-
dition of this form, is one that highlights “the pleasurable recovery of prosperity
or place after a season or more of distress” (174). The poem does just that, liter-
ally providing a touching story of a man reclaiming his wife from the fairies who
abducted her after ten years’ hardship in the wilderness. Allegorically, the tale
also provides a carefully plotted illustration of grief, both that of the terminally ill
individual and that of the loved one who suffers her loss. Sir Orfeo thus provides a
fascinating window into how medieval writers represented the process of grief and
holds up a mirror that reflects our own grief processes as they have been observed
and shared by Kübler-Ross, Bowlby, and others. Sir Orfeo provides hope for the
modern reader that, even after a long “season of distress,” grief can—and does—
give way to “the pleasurable recovery of prosperity or place” through eventual ac-
ceptance of the loss and reorganization into a newly meaningful life.
notes
1. Noted folklorists, such as Briggs and Lewis Spence, have found abundant evidence that many
Celtic and other cultures have associated the fairy realm with the dead or with those who died
too soon (Briggs 170). Additionally, in the Orpheus myth, Eurydice, bitten by a snake, falls into
“the world of Death and flowing Darkness” (from Horace Gregory’s translation of Ovid, Book
X, 273). Dean Baldwin and Penelope Doob similarly address the overt connection between the
otherworld and death, Baldwin by pointing out the “hazy” line between fairy abduction and
death in medieval lore (134) and Doob by following a similar tack in her discussion of the Celtic
land of the living dead (198).
2. “Fairy” is a term used interchangeably for the individual fairy, the fairy Otherworld (land of the
fairies), and for the culture of fairies, generally. Here, “fairy” refers to fairy culture and the mag-
ical properties that accompany it.
3. Freud is not claiming that this is true only of the death instinct, which is in opposition to Eros.
Eros is associated with the libido—the life instinct, which seeks to preserve life. For a more
thorough discussion, see Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
works cited
Avicenna. “Black Bile and Melancholia.” The Nature of Melancholy from Aristotle to Kristeva. Ed. Jen-
nifer Radden. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 55–60. Print.
Baldwin, Dean R. “Fairy Lore and the Meaning of Sir Orfeo.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 40 (1977):
129–42. Print.
Bliss, A. J., ed. Sir Orfeo. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1954. Print.
Bowlby, John. Loss: Sadness and Depression. New York: Basic, 1980. Print. Attachment and Loss Vol. 3.
Briggs, Katharine. The Fairies in Tradition and Literature. London: Routledge, 1967. Print.
Caldwell, Ellen M. “The Heroism of Heurodis: Self-Mutilation and Restoration in Sir Orfeo.” Papers
on Language and Literature. June 2007: 291–310. Print.
Doob, Penelope B. R. Nebuchadnezzar’s Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature.
New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1974. Print.
Engel, George L. “Is Grief a Disease?: A Challenge for Medical Research.” Psychosomatic Medicine.
23.1 (1961): 18–22. Print.
Falk, Oren. “The Son of Orfeo: Kingship and Compromise in a Middle English Romance.” Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 30.2 (2000): 247–74. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: Nor-
ton, 1989. 594–626. Print.
Gros Louis, R. R. “The Significance of Sir Orfeo’s Self-Exile.” The Review of English Studies 18.71
(1967): 245–52. Print.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: McMillan, 1969. Print.
Nicholson, R. H. “A ‘Kynges Noote.’” Review of English Studies 36.142 (1985): 161–79. Print.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. 1951. Trans. Horace Gregory. New York: Penguin, 2001. Print.
Rose, Christine. “Reading Chaucer, Reading Rape.” Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern
Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Christine Rose. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 21–60. Print.
Saunders, Corinne J. The Forest of Medieval Romance. Cambridge, UK: Boydell, 1993. Print.
Seville, Isidore of. The Etymologies. Trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver
Berghof. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.
Siegel, Rudolph E. “Constitution by Humors: C. Galen’s Description of Constitution by Humors.”
Galen on Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System. Basel, Swit-
zerland: Karger, 1968. 185–99. Print.
Spence, Lewis. British Fairy Origins. London: Watts, 1946. Print.
Sprang, Ginny and John McNeil. The Many Faces of Bereavement: The Nature and Treatment of Natu-
ral, Traumatic, and Stigmatized Grief. New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
chapter eight
Haunting and Melancholia

A Reading of the Revenant in Seamus
Heaney’s “Casualty”
carolyn ownbey
Written during the violent political turmoil of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, Sea-
mus Heaney’s works of the 1970s often reflect upon and respond to the sectarian
tensions and brutal killings of the conflict. In many ways, Heaney is what critic
Daniel W. Ross calls a “[poet] of cultural trauma” (110), addressing the Troubles
explicitly in his works and attempting to create a poetic language commensurate
with the devastation and violence around him. While in many of his earlier poems,
such as those in Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975), Heaney appears to rely
on a traditional concept of mourning—on the importance of properly burying the
dead, on the communal process of the funeral to accomplish this end, on achieving
closure through the proper and complete work of mourning. In the poem “Casu-
alty” of his 1979 collection Field Work, Heaney’s work shifts focus. “Casualty,” I
will argue, marks a turning point for Heaney, a point at which the certainty of the
corporeal and funereal mourning is upset, at which Heaney puts the noncorporeal
figure of the ghost (a figure which will appear again and again both in Field Work
and in Heaney’s later works) into play.
“Casualty” reflects on the death of an acquaintance of Heaney’s, Louis O’Neil,
killed in sectarian violence despite (and indeed because of ) his refusal to acknowl-
edge sectarian allegiances in general. In the poem, Heaney’s speaker testifies to the
sudden death of this familiar man while revealing something of the psychological
trauma caused by such a loss; he attempts to refigure his place in society and his per-
sonal identity in tragedy’s wake. This chapter will explore the way in which even the
very structure of Heaney’s poem keeps its speaker necessarily engaged in the death
of this man rather than allowing him to forget. This interminability of engagement
116 | c ar olyn ownbe y
becomes the focus and message of the poem: the speaker no longer finds traditional
mourning adequate; instead he adopts a melancholic approach, conjuring the ghost
and keeping a line of questioning open and available rather than closing it off and
consigning it to a realm of supposed closure. The poem’s ending, on some level,
must register as a pathological response—the speaker’s desperation in his call to be
haunted—but it also, I will argue, signals something more: the double movement
of the speaker’s refusal to participate in the public, funereal process of mourning
for this man and the insistence on speaking with his ghost opens a space for future
possibility outside of the restrictive sectarian model. This chapter will examine
Heaney’s approach to mourning in earlier poems before distinguishing “Casualty”
in particular as a point of departure. While Heaney’s poems generally display a deep
concern for what is at stake in a post-traumatic subject, the shift in “Casualty” away
from closure and toward an uncertain and open future instead marks an under-
standing of the political and ethical necessity of the work of melancholia.
The bog poems, such as Wintering Out’s “The Tollund Man” and North’s
“Punishment,” bring together Heaney’s poetic attempt to address death in 1970s
Northern Ireland and his encounter with P. V. Glob’s The Bog People, a book that
documents the finding of 2000-year-old corpses preserved in the peat bogs of
Jutland. These earlier poems “[pore] over sacrificial remains in forensic detail, but
[fail] to leave any real impression of their suffering” (Hancock 116). Heaney en-
deavors to create a link between his speaker and the corpses, but the effect does
not parallel the personal connection his speaker in “Casualty” has with the dead, or
his depiction of the violence and “terror” of the fisherman’s death. In “The Tollund
Man,” Heaney writes,
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eyelids,
His pointed skin cap.
[…]
Out there in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home. (62–63)
Heaney’s speaker calls “Out there in Jutland” a place where he is “[u]nhappy and
at home,” but the identification is broken by the fact that he only “[s]ome day” will
go, that he “will feel” at home, but does not quite yet. The death of the man has
already happened, but it is remote, and the speaker’s encounter with the physical
reality of his corpse is left in the hazy future of “[s]ome day.” In “Punishment,”
Heaney’s speaker inserts himself over and over again–repeating “I” six times and
calling the girl’s corpse “[m]y poor scapegoat”—but the point of connection to
Heaney’s life is not with the girl herself but with her “betraying sisters,” who are
barely mentioned. The efforts in each poem to produce an immediacy or a strong
haun t i n g a n d m e l a n c h ol i a | 117
connection between the speaker and the corpse are undone in the speaker’s “would
have” (“Punishment”) and “will go” (“Tollund Man”).
These poems focus on the corpse and the corporeal, but “Casualty” does some-
thing quite different. Russell explains “the poem’s refusal to gaze upon the body of
O’Neil after his death, unlike The Tollund Man’s dwelling on that preserved body”
(240), and he identifies the non-corporeal status of Heaney’s new dead: “O’Neil is
rendered present in a spectral, questioning sense” (240). The fisherman of “Casu-
alty” is denied a post-mortem body, unlike these bog-preserved corpses, the ref-
erences to his body restricted to the speaker’s memories from before his death.
His face at the moment of the explosion becomes “[b]linding,” not allowing the
speaker’s memory to see the physical at the moment of or beyond death. Even the
poem “The Strand at Lough Beg,” appearing earlier in Field Work than “Casualty,”
provides a body for its otherwise spectral subject—the speaker finds the dead “on
[his] knees” with “roadside muck in [his] hair and eyes,” and the speaker’s mourn-
ing for the dead explicitly involves a physical burying. Heaney’s “Funeral Rites” of
North also focuses on the physical, taking note of the “eyelids glistening” and the
“dough-white hands” of the bodies in their coffins. The physicality and finality of
burial here and in “The Strand at Lough Beg” take on a ceremonial aspect. The
speaker of “The Strand” gently unites his cousin with the land of Ireland, saying to
the dead “I plait / Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.” In “Funeral Rites,”
the speaker and his community “pine for ceremony, / customary rhythms.” These
burials give physical closure to the living, and, indeed, in “Funeral Rites,” Maurice
Harmon argues, “Whatever personal feelings [Heaney] has about death and suf-
fering are deflected into large, ceremonial gestures” (55).
The speaker of “Casualty” rejects the ceremonial, communal process of mourn-
ing for the fisherman and refuses to pore over the physical remains of the corpse.
Although the funerals of “Funeral Rites” and “Casualty” are clearly paralleled—the
“purring family cars” of the former echo in the latter’s “Purring of the hearse”—the
speaker of “Casualty” chooses not to acknowledge the “megalithic burial mound”
(Russell 241) that “Funeral Rites” reveres. The funeral ceremony is “trance-like,”
Harmon insists, and, he says,
the extended, binding procession enables [the mourning subjects] to allay their preoccupa-
tion with the past, to feel that the divisions that caused feuding have been placated and in
this state of forgetting and forgiving they imagine that the victims of violence from their
community whom they have buried are ‘disposed.’ (57, emphasis mine)
Each of these words—“allay,” “placated,” “disposed”—appears directly in the clos-

ing section of Heaney’s poem, but there is no parallel here to “Casualty.” Perhaps
in “Casualty,” the speaker’s missing of the funeral stems from the fact that the dead
fisherman was “blown to bits,” leaving an impartial, incomplete corpse (if any). The
burial, therefore, must necessarily be more ceremonial than literal for mourners
of the fisherman. However, the poem seems also to indicate that something in
particular about the fisherman’s death has caused the speaker to deem this ceremo-
nial process of mourning inadequate. Indeed, after the funeral of the thirteen men
in which he does participate, the “divisions that caused feuding” have not been “pla-
cated,” neither “forgotten” nor “forgiven.” The fact that the fisherman’s death occurs
only three days after the Bloody Sunday shootings—“three nights / After they shot
dead / The thirteen men in Derry”—affirms this inadequacy.
George Cusack identifies in this poem, and in the other historically specific
poems in the beginning section of Field Work, a “tone of historical and political
entrapment” (56), and he describes “Casualty” in particular as “ensnaring both the
speaker and his elegized subject in the Northern Irish conflict, despite the best
efforts of both men to remain uninvolved” (60–1). Heaney’s speaker enacts this
entrapment in his language especially. The repetition of turnings in each section of
the poem—the fisherman’s “turned back,” (mentioned twice in the first section),
the speaker’s image of him “as he turned,” and in the boat near the poem’s end,
“The screw purling, turning” —keeps the poem from accomplishing any simple
linear or forward movement. The sense of multiple “turnings” and “returnings” in
“Casualty” parallels the speaker’s process of mourning, one that demands the con-
tinual asking of questions rather than the providing of definitive answers. Henry
Hart has commented that, “In Field Work, Heaney often appears to be walking
through a mine field of his own design. He knows where the mines are, locates
them, defuses them, but as he keeps versing and reversing over the field he con-
tinues, almost against his will, to plant new ones” (106). Heaney proliferates and
comingles past and present participles throughout the poem as well, further up-
setting any attempt at a linear, progressive sense of time. The pub is “that bombed
offending place,” the fisherman’s thumb is both “weathered” and “calling” in the
same gesture, and he has a “cornered outfaced stare” which is “[b]linding in the
flash.” This sort of present-pastness or past-presentness indicates a confusion and
a tension, the speaker’s bewildered attempt to narrate both the past event and the
distinct presence of the event in his vision (“I see him as he turned,” my emphasis)
that the certainty of the funeral does not rectify. The speaker, then, rejects the fu-
neral in general, the physicality of the corpse (which the particular violence of the
fisherman’s death has, in any case, denied to him) and the static site of the burial
mound, preferring rather to address a ghost and to gesture toward a misty, watery
“Somewhere, well out, beyond […]” rather than toward a grave.
“Casualty” and Field Work more generally mark a point of transition in He-
aney’s work from the corporeality of the bog poems to the spectral worlds of his
later works, including Station Island (1984) and Seeing Things (1991). In Field Work,
Heaney “writes a series of revenant poems featuring ghosts of the Northern Irish
Troubles who flickeringly appear before him” (Russell 239). The ghosts here, in
poems like “Casualty” and “The Strand at Lough Beg,” are no longer anonymous
individuals. While not given names, the dead are drawn vividly, their relationships
with the respective speakers of the poems not consigned to the category of “dead
relations” as in “Funeral Rites.” Perhaps this accounts for their refusal to remain
altogether in the realm of the dead; they have not been fully consigned to it by their
living counterparts. In his book Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and
the Return of the Dead, Colin Davis explains that “the ghost returns in order to be sent
away again. Its incursion in our world is only temporary. Once our symbolic debt
has been duly paid, the domains of the living and of the dead can be kept decently
separate again” (2, original emphasis). In other words, Heaney’s ghosts of Field
Work have not been sufficiently buried—which is why the speaker of “The Strand
at Lough Beg” must bury the revenant ghost of his dead cousin, whether for the
first time or to correct an incomplete or improper burial, in order to keep “decently
separate” the spheres of the living and the dead. Why, then, does the speaker of
“Casualty” avoid attending the fisherman’s burial? Slavoj Zizek explains of burial
rites that “through them, you show your respect for the dead, and thereby prevent
them from returning to haunt you” (100). Does this indicate that the speaker of
“Casualty” is attempting to enact rather than to prevent his own haunting? Is the
“ordinary human remorse and longing” (Tobin 155) at the end of the poem really a
“longing for the dead man, now a ghost, to haunt him?” (Losey 395).
Such questions, although occasionally acknowledged or posed, represent the
point at which critical readers of “Casualty” tend to avert their glances and move
along. Jay Losey, after quoting the poem’s final stanza and asking explicitly if the
speaker longs to be haunted, concludes by calling the poem’s ending “ambiguous”
and “impl[ying] an indeterminacy” (395), but his reading stops there. The final
lines of the poem do, indeed, demand a particular attention, and they demand
that the questions be asked, but critics do not often offer reply. I propose here
that examining the speaker’s “hauntedness” more closely may provide at least the
beginnings of an answer to the questions the poem’s final lines demand.
The speaker’s encounter with the ghost occurs in the last lines of the poem’s
second section, before the fisherman’s funeral in the third, and it reveals in the
speaker an uneasiness—at least with the communal, funereal process of mourning
in general. After asserting that the fisherman breaking curfew was something done
only “naturally,” like a fish “[s]wimming towards the lure,” the speaker questions
himself and is immediately addressed for the first and only time in the poem by
the voice of the dead man:
How culpable was he

That last night when he broke
Our tribe’s complicity?
“Now you’re supposed to be
An educated man,”
I hear him say, “Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.” (149)
Here the fisherman’s ghost, speaking at present (“I hear him say,” my emphasis),
questions the supposed justice of the tribe, and he “comes to give voice to the poet’s
repressed guilt, regrets and personal failures” (Arroyo 5). The speaker is plagued
by the guilt of his own belonging to the tribe and of the tribal complicity that
ultimately led to the fisherman’s death. The question the speaker asks—“How cul-
pable was he”—is reflected back onto him by the ghost; the fisherman’s words here
dare the speaker to “[p]uzzle [him] / The right answer to that one.” The speaker, of
course, must question the extent to which he himself is culpable and complicit in
the death of this man. In refusing, after the fisherman’s death, to attend the funeral
(and thereby refusing to identify with the tribe and its communal, physical process
of mourning), and in commemorating the fisherman through poetry, then, is the
speaker in any way making up for his silent complicity? And, if this sort of bearing
witness does constitute a more just form of mourning than burial and “large, cer-
emonial gestures” on their own (Harmon 55), then, as Cathy Caruth asks, “what
does it mean for life to bear witness to death?” (48, original emphasis).
Emmanuel Levinas takes up this question of survival and culpability in his
book God, Death, and Time, asserting the necessity of such a relation for a surviving
subject to understand his own life after the fact. He explains, “My being affected
by the death of the other is precisely that, my relation with his death. It is, in my
relation, my deference to someone who no longer responds, already a culpability—
the culpability of the survivor” (12). Deference and culpability here connect: one
cannot, Levinas seems to say, show deference without culpability. He continues,
“This would be a responsibility for another in bearing his misfortune or his end as
if one were guilty of causing it. This is the ultimate nearness. To survive as a guilty
one” (39, original emphasis). Heaney’s speaker seems to be grappling with how to
accomplish this deference, this fidelity that is “the ultimate nearness,” through his
dedication to this question of culpability. The speaker’s life itself certainly becomes
defined by his own survival—his physical being is indeed affirmed by its existence
in relation to the no-longer-existing living body of the fisherman; he continues to
live on because he has not been killed. However, as Levinas indicates, there is some-
thing more that happens to the survivor. Asking, “But does not the relation with
the other and with his death go back toward another source of meaning?” (13),
Levinas suggests that there is a psychological element as well. He explains, “Dying,
as the dying of the other [l’autre], affects my identity as ‘I,’ its rupture of the Same
in my ‘I.’” It is in this that my relation with the death of another is neither simply
secondhand knowledge nor a privileged experience of death” (13). Levinas asserts
here that survival itself necessarily includes a psychological disturbance. If one is
to be responsible—to honor one’s “responsibility as a survivor” (Levinas 59) and to
show deference to the dead—one’s subjectivity must experience a “rupture.”
Perhaps through giving voice to the dead man, Heaney’s speaker attempts to
achieve just that. Colin Davis recognizes the need of what he calls “the survivor-
subject haunted by the ghosts of the past” (129) to conjure the voices of history.
The speaker of “Casualty,” like other surviving subjects, believes that contact with
the dead—being questioned by the ghost—is necessary for him to understand his
place in the violence, to figure “The right answer to that one.” The speaker’s insis-
tence upon speaking with the dead reflects his need—one with a tone of despera-
tion in the poem’s final stanza—to keep the dead man within reach. Davis explains
that “The dead cannot speak to us, but if they are not simply to be lost, that is
lost as other, lost in their otherness, then they must retain some residual agency”
(138). The literary process, through which this agency, this ability to speak, is re-
constituted to some degree, is prosopopeia—what Paul de Man calls “the fiction
of the voice-from-beyond-the-grave” (77). Poets “lend their voice to something or
someone inanimate, such as an ancestor or literary precursor, so that a sort of dia-
logue with the dead can be established” (Davis 112, my emphasis). Although it seems
as though the fisherman’s ghost appears in the poem, Heaney’s speaker is the one
who has been speaking all along. De Man insists, “Whenever this [prosopopeia]
happens, it indicates the threat of a deeper logical disturbance” (78). This kind of
mourning, one that does not aim for closure and a restoration of supposed nor-
malcy but rather for a psychological disturbance of some sort, contrasts sharply
with the communal, funereal sort of mourning seen in Heaney’s “Funeral Rites”
and even in the funeral scene of “Casualty” itself. This subjective disturbance is
not “the state of forgetting and forgiving” (Harmon 57) that the funeral provides.
Rather, the speaker of “Casualty,” by speaking for the dead man, does what de Man
describes. Davis explains that “by succumbing to the fiction that the dead may
speak, we give voice to the haunting within ourselves which ensures that we also
are deprived of our own voice” (114).
Turning his thoughts, and his eyes, to the “bombed offending place” where
the fisherman was killed, the speaker of “Casualty” reveals something of his psy-
chological disturbance resulting from the fisherman’s death. In a section first filled
with the past-tense funeral, the sudden present tense of his assertion “I see him as
he turned” marks a break. The vision appears as follows:
I see him as he turned

In that bombed offending place,
Remorse fused with terror
In his still knowable face,
His cornered outfaced stare
Blinding in the flash. (148–49)
This passage is not a memory as such, but rather it is a symptom of a trauma, a

sort of recurrent dream or nightmare that the speaker conjures in his reflection
on the death of the fisherman. In her essay “Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and
Survival,” in which she discusses Freud’s encounter with World War I veterans
and their post-traumatic dreams, Cathy Caruth explains that this sort of trau-
matic vision “seem[s] to turn the psyche itself into the vehicle for expressing the
terrifying literality of a history it does not completely own” (47). The speaker of
Heaney’s poem replays the incident in the present tense—“I see him,” “still know-
able,” “Blinding”—trying to understand this moment that he could not have been
present to witness. According to Caruth, what strikes Freud as “the peculiarity
of this returning” is the fact that “it does not only bring back the reality of death,
but the fright or unpreparedness for it” (47). In “Casualty,” indeed the “[r]emorse
filled with terror” coupled with the “[b]linding[ness] in the flash” gestures toward
a sort of “fright” or astonishment as the defining feature of the speaker’s vision,
rather than the death itself. It is not the “blown to bits” that is drawn so strikingly
in Heaney’s poem—the death in the speaker’s memory is rendered simple: “He
was blown to bits / Out drinking in a curfew / Others obeyed.” Like the deaths of
the thirteen on Bloody Sunday, recorded on the walls as “PARAS THIRTEEN …
BOGSIDE NIL,” the fatality itself is only factual to its survivor. The “flash” of the
frightened, astonishing moment, the “lack of preparedness to take in a stimulus
that comes too quickly” is what causes the Freudian “breach of the mind” (Caruth
50), the post-traumatic psychological need to replay the incident.
Heaney’s speaker’s vocalizing for the dead, then, becomes a sort of produc-
tive mourning, or, rather, a melancholia, producing a disturbance in the speaker’s
own living subjectivity. The distinction between mourning and melancholia here
becomes key; “mourning can normally be brought to an end after […] a certain
lapse of time” (Davis 132) just like the funeral in Heaney’s work ends at the buri-
al mound. Melancholia, conversely, “occurs when for some reason the normal
process of mourning is blocked” (Davis 132)—or, in the case of “Casualty,” re-
jected. Melancholia, therefore, becomes “mourning as interminable, impossible,
and always already begun” (Davis 132). There is no closure or ending for the mel-
ancholic subject like there is for the one simply mourning. The incompleteness
and the unfinished quality of the conversation at the end of “Casualty” reflects
this: there is a demand for further conversation—“Dawn-sniffing revenant …
Question me again”—that is not fulfilled. Further, it is a demand for a ques-
tion, another opening for meaning rather than for an answer or a closure. Davis
explains that
there is the possibility that in melancholia, in some sense, the dead speak; unable to give up
its attachment to what has been lost, the melancholic subject makes itself the forum where
living and dead converse, though there may be a devastating price to be paid in terms of the
subject’s own stability” (135).
Heaney’s speaker indeed makes himself the “forum” for this conversation, which
we see explicitly when his own reflections immediately produce the dead man’s
speech in a single stanza in the poem’s second section. Additionally, the resulting
“devastating instability” becomes, I will argue, a space of potential, wherein a spe-

cial kind of access to (an experience rather than a knowledge of ) the “[s]ome-
where, well out, beyond […]” may become possible.
The figure of the ghost in Jacques Derrida’s work sheds light on what exactly
Heaney’s survivor-speaker gains from this interminable melancholia and from this
subjective instability that he could not get from a finite, funereal mourning. In his
discussion of what he terms hauntology, Derrida contends that a sort of reckon-
ing-with-ghosts is crucial in any responsible act of melancholia. He rejects Freud’s
privileging of mourning over melancholia, insisting that, “I must (it’s the very core
of ethics) carry the other in myself to remain faithful to him, to respect his sin-
gular alterity, a certain melancholia must still protest against normal mourning”
(Béliers 50, original emphasis). Heaney’s speaker indeed remains faithful to the
fisherman, and “Casualty” itself rejects this “normal mourning” both through the
speaker’s missing of the funeral and the poem’s general rejection of the corporeal-
ity of the dead. Derrida defines mourning as “attempting to ontologize remains,
to make them present, in the first place by identifying the bodily remains and by
localizing the dead” (Specters 9, original emphasis). The speakers of Wintering Out
and of North, and even of “The Strand at Lough Beg,” do focus on this sort of
making-present and “identifying” of the remains of the dead. “Nothing could be
worse,” Derrida insists, “for the work of mourning, than confusion or doubt: one
has to know who is buried where—and it is necessary (to know—to make certain)
that, in what remains of him, he remain there. Let him stay there and move no
more!” (Specters 9, original emphasis). The speaker of “Casualty” brazenly rejects
this, calling for the dead man to “Plodder through midnight rain / Question me
again,” to come back, to return over and over, to speak to him once again. The
ghost of the fisherman, like Heaney’s later ghosts in Station Island, only “exist in
the poet’s subconscious waiting for an opportunity to materialize” (Arroyo 7); for
Derrida, however, this itself does not present a problem for the work of melancho-
lia. He says,
If it—learning to live—remains to be done, it can happen only between life and death. Nei-
ther in life nor in death alone. What happens between the two, and between all the ‘two’s’
one likes, such as between life and death, can only maintain itself with some ghost, can only
talk with or about some ghost [s’entretenir de quelque fantôme]. So it would be necessary
to learn spirits. Even and especially if this, the spectral, is not. Even and especially if this,
which is neither substance, nor essence, nor existence, is never present as such. (Specters xvii,
original emphasis)
The ghost does not have to be in order for it to be imperative: the subject must
encounter this space of the in-between through the ghost, despite the fact that
the ghost “is not,” that it is “never present as such.” The experience of “learning to
live,” for Derrida, is a condition not only of mourning, but of justice in general:
one must learn to live in order to be just, in order to mourn, in order to respect
the dead and honor one’s responsibility to him. The subjective disturbance that
Freud finds so problematic in post-traumatic subjects for Derrida becomes in-
dispensable. Derrida rejects the concept that psychological disturbance, that a
being “out-of-joint” (Specters 21) hinders progress or closure and is somehow
disordered. He asks, “And what if disadjustment were on the contrary the condi-
tion of justice?” (Specters 22, my emphasis). The possibility of the ghost in general
necessitates an “out-of-jointness” of time; it is a figure representative of the past
living man, one that exists in the presence of the subject’s consciousness, and it
has the potential to return again and again in the future. The speaker of “Casu-
alty” through his invocation of the ghost, and, indeed, even through his comin-
gling of past and present tenses throughout the poem, appears to insist on this
disadjustment, on the time being out-of-joint, and he signals toward an opening
made possible by this in his “[s]omewhere, well out, beyond.” Heaney’s speaker
is, as Derrida describes of Marx, “someone mad enough to hope to unlock the
possibility of such an address [to the ghost]” (Specters 13, original emphasis).
The lack of closure at the poem’s end reveals that the speaker is not trying “to
understand [the dead] for the final time, but to demonstrate that they can still
surprise us with unexpected potential for meaning” (Davis 140). Heaney’s speak-
er reaches for just that, not satisfying himself with an answer to the ghost’s first
question and not seeking knowledge, but rather looking to be questioned again,
over and over, to keep peering into the openness of an “unexpected potential for
meaning.”
“Casualty,” then, becomes a space in which Heaney reconsiders the rela-
tionship of the survivor with the dead, propelling his speakers forward into
conversations with ghosts rather than allowing them to feign closure through
burial and traditional mourning. The speaking with and for the dead that oc-
curs in “Casualty,” although potentially devastating to the speaker’s subjectivity
in a sense, opens a space of new possibility in dealing with the traumas of the
Northern Irish Troubles. Heaney’s poem ultimately raises and responds to the
questions that Levinas raises when he asks, “[D]oes not my responsibility for
another […] rise up behind the question: What is it to be? Does it not arise
behind the anxiety over my own death? And would time then not call for a
different interpretation of the projection toward the future?” (58–59). In risking
such a devastating psychological rupture, and in attempting melancholia rather
than mourning, the speaker of the poem hopes for a new possibility of justice for
the dead man and for a possibility of justice in general in the future. He must
continually grapple with questions of responsibility and culpability; he must, in
fact, reckon with the ghost in order to show deference to the dead and in order
to do him justice.
works cited
Arroyo, Rane Ramon. “The Haunting of Seamus Heaney: On ‘Station Island.’” Notes on Modern Irish
Literature 8 (1996): 5–11. Print.
Caruth, Cathy. “Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and Survival.” Acts of Narrative. Ed. Carol Jacobs
and Henry Sussman. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 47–61. Print.
Cusack, George. “A Cold Eye Cast Inward: Seamus Heaney’s Field Work.” New Hibernia Review 6.3
(Autumn 2002): 53–72. Print.
Davis, Colin. Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Béliers. Le Dialogue ininterromptu: entre deux infinis, le poème. Paris: Galilée, 2003.
Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Hancock, Tim. “‘Daring to make free’: Seamus Heaney and Ulster Politica, 1968–1979.” English 47
(Summer 1998): 111–26. Print.
Harmon, Maurice. “‘We Pine for Ceremony’: Ritual and Reality in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney,
1965–1975.” Studies on Seamus Heaney. Ed. Jacqueline Genet. Caen: Centre de publications de
l’Université de Caen, 1987. 47–64. Print.
Hart, Henry. “Seamus Heaney’s Anxiety of Trust in ‘Field Work.’” Chicago Review 36.3–4 (1989):
87–108. Print.
Heaney, Seamus. Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, 1998. Print.
Losey, Jay. “‘Demonic’ Epiphanies: The Denial of Death in Larkin and Heaney.” Moments of Moment:
Aspects of the Literary Epiphany. Ed. Wim Tigges. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. 375–400. Print.
Ross, Daniel W. “In Search of Enabling Light: Heaney, Wordsworth, and the Poetry of Trauma.”
Nordic Irish Studies 5 (2006): 109–21. Print.
Russell, Richard Rankin. Poetry and Peace. Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2010. Print.
Tobin, Daniel. Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. Lexing-
ton: U of Kentucky P, 1999. Print.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Cambridge, MA: MIT UP,
2003. Print.
chapter nine
Those Left Behind

The Non-Endings of Primo Levi’s
If This Is a Man and Aharon
Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss
kelly leavitt
In her seminal text On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross notes the fear and
aversion surrounding death: “When we look back in time and study old cultures
and people, we are impressed that death has always been distasteful to man and
will probably always be” (16). She continues: “Death is still a fearful, frightening
happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear” (19). While this anxiety sur-
rounding death exists regardless of time and place, the Holocaust distinguishes
itself as a period in world history characterized by death. Thus, discussing and
representing the Holocaust has been, and continues to be, problematic and con-
troversial. The magnitude and sheer horror of the Holocaust make it a particularly
sensitive subject to approach and attempt to represent or depict, particularly for
its survivors.
Of the numerous scholarly works surrounding Holocaust testimony or survivor
writing, the subject of memory is one of the most discussed topics. Psychoanalysts
since Freud have been concerned with the interrelationship between memory and
trauma. Although this essay will not address the psychoanalytical aspects of survivor
testimonies, I am particularly concerned with the debates surrounding traumatic
memory that spill over into the literary field. For a survivor attempting to recount
his or her experience of the Holocaust, memory plays a primary and ambiguous role
in the testimony process. Such topics of concern or study have included the authen-
ticity and accuracy of traumatic memory as well as the lack of closure concerning
traumatic memories. Holocaust survivor and famous author Elie Wiesel has said,
“[T]he truth is I could spend the rest of my days recounting the weeks, months and
eternities I lived in Auschwitz” (qtd. in Vice 133). Memory, for Wiesel, acts as an
128 | kelly leavit t
intruder and something that he is unable to escape; his memory locates him uniquely
between the past and present. Historian Dominick LaCapra expounds upon
Wiesel’s words and writes about the lack of closure that characterizes trauma. He
says, “Indeed there is a sense in which, while we may work on its symptoms, trauma,
once it occurs, is a cause that we cannot directly change or heal” (207). These prob-
lematic aspects of memory and trauma mentioned by Wiesel and LaCapra high-
light just a few of the difficulties Holocaust survivors face when attempting to relate
their traumatic memories in writing.
As for literary representations of the Holocaust by survivors, there is a strong
debate surrounding the ethical issues of narrative style and approach. There is an
unstated ethical code that underlies “Holocaust writing” and other representations
of the Holocaust. While many argue that traumatic memory, such as those of
survivors, should only be depicted through a serious and solemn narrative “report,”
others support the ability of fiction to portray a trauma that escapes traditional
language. For instance, Terrence Des Pres discusses the “unsaid” rules of Holo-
caust writing. One of the three rules imposed upon writers that he outlines in
his essay “Holocaust Laughter?” states, “Representations of the Holocaust shall
be as accurate and faithful as possible to the facts and conditions of the event,
without change or manipulation for any reason—artistic reasons included” (217).
Here, Des Pres supports the solemn approach to Holocaust writing that favors
non-fiction, autobiographical narrative methods over fictional, fantastic represen-
tations. On the other hand, there are those who advocate the ability of literature to
document the reality of trauma through its imaginative capabilities. In his discus-
sion of Israeli Holocaust fiction, Gilead Morahg rejects the assertion that Holo-
caust writing must be “documented” in a non-fictional, autobiographical manner.
Through his analysis of three Israeli “fantastic” fictions, Morahg comes to the
conclusion that fiction has the potential to be more accurate than non-fiction in
representations of the Holocaust: “By defying the codes of reality and reason, the
fantastic may provide a protective measure of distance and alternative possibility
that makes the horror bearable without diminishing its concreteness” (163). Per-
haps fiction has the ability to depict the chaotic incoherence of traumatic memory
more accurately than the use of traditional language in a documentary style. Des
Pres and Morahg simply represent the two sides of this narrative debate regarding
Holocaust writing. I will further explore and expound upon this debate by examin-
ing two survivor texts that offer contrasting narrative approaches—Primo Levi’s If
This is a Man and Aharon Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss. Despite the contrasts
between the authors’ backgrounds, as well as their divergent narrative styles and
approach to language, Levi’s If This is a Man and Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss
are alike in that they both lack a sense of ending or closure.
Since survivors and their respective texts are so intimately linked, it is nec-
essary to first give a brief biographical background of each survivor in order to
t h o s e l e f t b e h i n d | 129
further understand his or her writing. Levi and Appelfeld write from very different
contexts. As Robert Eagleton notes in “Identification and the Genre of Testimo-
ny,” “The lack of closure also occurs in—or more accurately, as—the oeuvre of a
writer: survivors return again and again to write about the Holocaust” (Vice 133).
Levi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919, to intellectual Jewish-Italian parents. His
father, Cesare, was an engineer and avid reader. Cesare’s scientific and artistic in-
terests greatly influenced Levi when he was younger. Levi went on to study chem-
istry at Turin University, and, as will be discussed later, his professions as chemist
and writer often bled into and affected each other. He was a successful student
and, after graduation, he worked as a chemist for a few years before the war began.
In February 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, and If This is a Man (Se questo
è uomo) was first published shortly after the war in 1947. If This is a Man was not
successful at its first publication because there was a period of silence and desire
to forget immediately after the war. It was not until its second publication in 1958
(when academic departments began to be interested in studying the Holocaust)
that the book was successful, and Levi quickly became known worldwide. In 1987,
after the publication of The Drowned and the Saved, Levi died; whether or not it
was a suicide still remains unknown. Today, he is regarded as one of the most well-
known and canonical Holocaust survivor writers.
Appelfeld’s background, on the other hand, differs greatly from Levi’s. Since
Appelfeld was only a child during the war and his first work was published late
after the war in the 1960s, his novels reflect contemporary writing that explores
fictional representations of the Holocaust. Born in 1932 in Czernowitz, Romania,
Appelfeld was only eight years old when he was deported to a concentration camp.
After a successful escape attempt, he spent three years living alone in the forests
of Ukraine, occasionally living with peasants in deserted Ukrainian villages. The
separation from his family at such a young age was traumatic and has greatly in-
fluenced his writing. Many of his works touch on children during the war or refer
to his three solitary years in the forest. When he eventually made it out of hid-
ing in the forest, Appelfeld joined the Russian army. Making his way around the
post-war refugee camps, he passed through Italy and finally immigrated to Israel,
where he began to face his past and build a new future. Despite his lack of formal
education, he read extensively to pass the numerous exams needed to enter He-
brew University. He studied the Yiddish language and literature among influential
mentors such as Buber and Scholem, who first encouraged his writing capabilities.
The Immortal Bartfuss was published in 1988, following many other short stories,
novellas, and novels, such as Badenheim 1939 and The Age of Wonders.
Having prefaced the essay with each author’s background, which will greatly
assist in the overall understanding of their texts, I will move on to an analysis of
Levi’s If This is a Man and then Appelfeld’s The Immortal Bartfuss. As one of the
earliest survivor testimony texts, If This is a Man did not experiment much with
other narrative styles. The “unsaid” rules of survivor representation, as mentioned

earlier with Des Pres, were strongly upheld directly after the war. Also, during
the late 1950s and early 1960s when “Holocaust studies” took its first steps, there
existed a strong taboo and moral concern with approaching the topic. Questions
of how one should talk about such horror, and whether or not it was even morally
correct to do so, abounded during the time Levi wrote If This is a Man; the debate
still continues to some extent. Fortunately, Levi’s straightforward, “scientific” yet
sensitive narrative approach made the novel a success. By “scientific,” I do not
intend to imply that Levi’s writing was cold, detached, or formulaic. The term
is used to define the teleological style of his writing and to contrast it from any
fictional, lyrical narrative style. In the preface to If This is a Man, Levi refers to
his text as “an account of atrocities” (5). He also adds at the end of this preface,
“It seems unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented” (6). Thus, be-
fore the reader even enters the text, Levi clarifies the genre of If This is a Man as
“non-fiction” and “autobiography.” Different, though, from a journalistic “report”
or historical account, the survivor’s testimony and writing are deeply personal and
subjective. Levi’s writing is no different; also in the preface he says, “The book
has been written to satisfy this need: first and foremost, therefore, as an interior
liberation. Hence its fragmentary character: the chapters have been written not in
logical succession, but in order of urgency” (6). As a survivor writer, Levi is the
author of the text while also being the direct subject of the text. This complicated
relationship both supports the text’s authenticity as well as challenges it. An ob-
jective, documentary narrative style is impossible, according to the flaws of mem-
ory. Thus, Levi’s subjectivity and the impossibility of completely accurate memory
create problems with the simple classification of Levi’s text as “non-fiction.” His
narrative style appears to challenge the limits of literature by straddling the line
between truth and myth.
In addition, the “autobiographical” label used to identify If This is a Man is
also problematic. Judith Woolf stated, “To read Levi’s book primarily as an auto-
biographical account, as if it were a more harrowing version of Anne Frank’s diary,
is to misread it. Levi’s is not in that sense a personal voice” (Woolf 41). If This is a
Man is Levi’s personal look at collective humanity—Man. While he writes about
his own experience, he does not attempt to write a story about himself—Primo
Levi. He references his collective voice and audience with the first person plural
in the preface, “The need to tell our story to ‘the rest,’ to make ‘the rest’ participate
in it, had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the character of an im-
mediate and violent impulse, to the point of competing with our other elementary
needs” (6, italics mine). Levi also remarked in an interview, “I don’t recall ever
having felt shame, modesty, or a sense of exposure when writing If This is a Man
or The Truce perhaps because they weren’t only my stories, they were everyone’s”
(Woolf 41). Also, on the first page—the poem that begins the book—he talks
directly to the reader, saying “You.” Thus, in If This is a Man, Levi has attempted
to document “I,” “we,” and “you”—humanity in general.
Finally, Levi’s use of language is another stylistic aspect of the text where fact
and literary fiction are slightly blurred. As previously mentioned, the book main-
tains the semblance of an “eye-witness account” through Levi’s clear, distinct use
of words. Karl Miller proclaims in regard to If This is a Man, “Primo Levi believed
that writers should try to be plain, practical and truthful. A certain terseness, as of
the inhabitants of Piedmont, his native region, a region hospitable to reason and to
the idea of social justice, is apparent in everything he wrote” (xvii of Introduction).
Levi’s belief in clear communication also relates back to his scientific training.
He loved semiotics and linguistics, the science of language. Belpoliti and Gordon
even analyzed Levi’s use of language and formulated a vocabulary that Levi used
to depict the camp. One of the three systems that they discovered was the scien-
tific principles of inversion and asymmetry or optics/perspectives (Belpoliti and
Gordon 51). By this system of “inversion,” Belpoliti and Gordon proposed that
Levi used language to portray a world that is an upside down reflection of the
current world. Woolf notices his use of language in this “inverted” way and says,
We are able to identify because it is a parodic version of the world we know, one in which
the prisoners organize a market and devise ingenious trades in order to supply themselves
with the basic essentials they lack—spoons, needles and thread, anything that can be bar-
tered for extra rations to enable them to live for one more day—although their only currency
is a lump of grey bread. (Woolf 44)
Thus, Levi’s use of language reflects the clarity and necessity of language in the
Lager. Just as being able to understand the “perpetual Babel” within the camps was
equivalent to survival, Levi writes succinctly and with a purpose, as if his life were
dependent upon his writing (If This is a Man 35). In his book Of Other People’s
Trades, Levi writes, “Writing serves to communicate, transmit information or feel-
ings from time to time. And he who is not understood by anyone does not transmit
anything, he cries in the desert” (169). Being heard and understood is the purpose
of his writing and the underlying compulsion behind his writing. Language is a
necessity for Levi to live; he lives to testify and testifies to live. It is in Levi’s com-
pulsion to testify that there lacks an ending or a sense of closure.
The actual “ending” or last words of If This is a Man encapsulates the
“non-ending” quality of Levi’s writings. What is supposed to be an ending fails
to bring resolution or closure. If This is a Man ends with the Russian liberation of
Auschwitz. Levi and his friend Charles were carrying their friend Somogyi’s dead
body outside to the snow when the Russians arrived. Instead of describing the
liberation and his feelings during it, Levi jumps ahead to tell the current status of
the men with whom he shared those last few days within the camp. He writes, “In
April, at Katowice, I met Schenck and Alcali in good health. Arthur had reached
his family happily and Charles has taken up his teacher’s profession again” (207).
Finally, the last sentence refers to Charles once again. Levi writes, “we have ex-
changed long letters and I hope to see him again one day” (207). These final
words of the book are quite ambiguous and leave the reader with many questions
regarding life after the liberation. Levi’s silence about the Russian liberation at
the end of the book de-emphasizes the event, suggesting that Levi has not truly
been “liberated” from his experience. Although the Russians freed him from the
camp, his life was forever chained to Auschwitz. Of course the sequel to If This is
a Man is The Truce, but this only further points toward the lack of closure theme.
If This is a Man acts as only a fragment of Levi’s experience of the Holocaust
and the experience of the camps by other survivors in general. While Appel-
feld’s The Immortal Bartfuss is a similar fragment of “Holocaust writing” lacking
a sense of closure, Appelfeld’s narrative style and approach to language contrasts
with Levi’s.
Classified as fiction, The Immortal Bartfuss takes an opposing stance to Levi’s
straightforward, “scientific” narrative semblance. Although Appelfeld writes from
a personal perspective, and his past is obviously part of his writing, he believes
in the ability of fiction to accurately depict his Holocaust experience. Instead of
writing about his own post-war struggle, silence, and distance from the world,
he writes about Bartfuss, who is known as “immortal” because he was shot more
than fifty times by German soldiers before escaping and surviving in the forest.
As mentioned above, Appelfeld spent a few years alone in the Ukrainian forests.
Many of his stories have a relation to those traumatic years. As the story continues,
the reader comes to realize the irony of the title in regard to Bartfuss’s immortal-
ity. While he is physically and biologically alive, Bartfuss is dead emotionally and
spiritually. His “immortality” questions the meaning of life for Holocaust survi-
vors. As New York Times reviewer Leonard Michaels says of Bartfuss, “he is to be
understood as not so much alive as merely undead. Ironically, all survivors of the
Holocaust are immortal insofar as none are fully alive.” Instead of writing a preface
to the book like Levi’s, which tells the reader of the non-fiction “account” he is
attempting, Appelfeld rejoices in the distance and indirectness that fiction offers.
Drastically different from Levi, Appelfeld’s fiction speaks more in its silences and
the unspoken than what is actually said. Emily Miller Budick writes, “Appelfeld’s
text is spare, minimalistic, and above all, respectful of its major protagonist, espe-
cially of his similar reticence and silence. Whatever Bartfuss has suffered in one
of the smaller of those notorious camps, the text will not say” (xv of Introduction).
She goes on to discuss the significance of the lack of dialogue in the text: “What
Appelfeld gives us is an exterior that expresses more eloquently than any direct
foray into the mind the mind’s own delicate, untranslatable, interior landscape”
(Budick, xv of Introduction). Instead of attempting to clearly “testify” his experi-
ence, The Immortal Bartfuss offers an obscure look at post-war survivor life.
His unique narrative style is particularly exemplified in the gaps as well as

metaphors or allegories within the text. These “gaps” are points in the text where
Appelfeld begins a narrative action only to move on to another action without
completing the first. For example, in the middle of the story, Bartfuss asks Bridget
what she wants, and she replies, “A watch.” “What kind of watch do you want?”
Bartfuss asked. “Gold-plated,” Bridget said quickly (81). Bartfuss tells Bridget to
come with him to the jewelry store and “They walked through two alleys without
exchanging a word” (82). Strangely, the reader never follows Bartfuss and Brid-
get into the jewelry store. Instead, the narrator becomes immersed in Bartfuss’s
thoughts, and Bartfuss is suddenly alone in one of his oft-visited coffee shops: “His
head sank down to his cup of coffee for a moment” (83). The story then continues
with Bartfuss’s encounter with his friend Schmugler, but it suddenly returns to the
gold watch as Bartfuss remembers that he wanted to buy it for Bridget. Bartfuss
then stops in the jewelry store and buys her an Omega watch, but Appelfeld never
tells the reader if Bartfuss gives her the piece of jewelry or not. Thus, this narrative
action of buying and giving the watch to Bridget is confusing to the reader because
the action was never finished. This is a classic example of the “gaps” that Appelfeld
writes into his stories. Levi, on the other hand, mentions that his document skips
around “in order of urgency,” but his narrative actions are always completed with-
out a confusing detour.
This same example of the watch is also an example of Appelfeld’s metaphor-
ical style. As Ramras-Rauch notes, “Bartfuss’s past is at odds with his present in
Israel. He survived one of the most notorious camps in Europe, and he now lives a
reduced existence in his new homeland, where a certain stagnation has taken over
his life” (118). The watch, then, a literal keeper of time, contrasts the displacement
Bartfuss feels in relation to time. While he is living in the present, his mind cannot
escape the past. Appelfeld places unique emphasis on the type of watch Barfuss
gets when he is finally in the jewelry store: “In the jewelry store he knew already:
nothing but an Omega. The store owner also pronounced the word ‘Omega’ with
a smile on his lips. Bartfuss did not bargain” (87). As the word “Omega” signifies
the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet and can also signify “the end,” it is
apparent why Appelfeld’s emphasis is intentional. Although Bartfuss is seeking an
“end” to the tension between his past and present life exemplified by the brand of
watch Omega, he does not find a resolution. Structurally, Appelfeld demonstrates
this lack of resolution by not completing the action surrounding the watch. Ap-
pelfeld, therefore, utilizes narrative structure as well as allegory to effectively depict
the survivor’s condition instead of directly stating it.
In addition to Appelfeld’s narrative style, his approach to language also differs
from Levi’s. As discussed earlier, Levi uses language out of a compulsion to speak.
While Appelfeld also feels a similar compulsion to speak, he also has a paradoxical
fear of speaking and writing about his experiences. This reluctance toward language
relates strongly to Appelfeld’s background as a child during the war and his years of
hiding in the forest. In his autobiography The Story of a Life, which was published
in 2003, Appelfeld discusses the origins of his silent disposition. Of the moment he
was separated from his father, Appelfeld says, “From that moment, I was an orphan
and now began the loneliness and the closing off. Quickly I learned to speak little
and, if questioned, to reply as briefly as possible” (The Story of a Life 101). This
hesitant attitude toward language is also a prominent theme within The Immortal
Bartfuss. The text is filled with references to Bartfuss’s silence. This is strongly high-
lighted in Bartfuss and Rosa’s marriage. Communication was one of the greatest
problems in their marriage: “He [Bartfuss] hardly spoke, as little as he could. If
he had to answer, he would answer with a single word, or no more than two. Over
the years, he developed a clipped language of refusal, protective syllables that were
accompanied with a shrug of his left shoulder, all of which said, ‘Leave me alone’”
(The Immortal Bartfuss 15). Although there are a few times throughout the novel
when Bartfuss wants to speak, he usually chooses silence, because he fears nobody
will listen – a common fear among trauma survivors. For instance, Bartfuss begins to
talk with his friend and fellow survivor, Schmugler, in a café at one point in the nov-
el. Schmugler’s response is apathetic, which makes Bartfuss quite angry. Appelfeld
writes, “Bartfuss rose to his feet, and with a gesture containing a great deal of rage,
he said, ‘I asked you something.’ Schmugler apparently did not detect the repressed
rage and failed to respond. At that moment Bartfuss was seized by force. His right
hand shot out automatically and pounded Schmugler’s face” (The Immortal Bartfuss
86). This cycle of desiring to speak, finally speaking, and then being let down by
others’ disinterest repeats itself a few times throughout the novel and characterizes
Appelfeld’s ambivalent relationship to language.
Appelfeld’s unsettled approach to language and complicated narrative style
both reflect the non-ending of the novel. Although the last words offer a structural
narrative ending with its actual last words, the ending defies traditional narrative
endings by not offering a sense of resolution. The Immortal Bartfuss ends with
Bartfuss’s return home after a strange, violent encounter with another survivor
named Marian by the sea at night. He returns to his home and his room without
much reflection on the rather bizarre events of the evening. His only reaction is
sleepiness. Before he enters “that mighty sleep, that full sleep, which he had been
struggling against for years,” he takes off his shoes and socks and murmurs to him-
self, “From now on I shall remove all worry from my heart and sleep” (The Immor-
tal Bartfuss 137). With those last words, the reader is left with much ambiguity. As
Ramras-Rauch says, “Can the end of the novel be perceived as pointing to a new
beginning or a change? Can it be understood as a resolution, an indication that
Bartfuss indeed is beginning his recovery? Or is it just another chapter in a life of
denial?” (123). The ending is open, and the readers are left without answers; they
are left to answer their own questions and construct their own sense of the ending.
This “non-ending” only replicates the novel’s non-linear structure and unresolved
predicament with language.
Despite the strong contrasts between Levi’s If This is a Man and Appelfeld’s
The Immortal Bartfuss, both texts attest to the ceaselessness of survivor writing.
For instance, Levi and Appelfeld’s styles are different, as outlined above, but they
are both similar in that their texts challenge literary genre classifications. Levi
takes the position of an autobiographer and almost a journalist with his “account,”
but the tenets of memory as well as subjectivity of survivor writing do not allow
for either of these classifications. As Il Ragguaglio Librario (a reviewer of Levi’s
book The Periodic Table) said, “In Levi, non-fiction was so close to ‘creativity’ that
no distinction was possible” (Angier 591). For Appelfeld, it is the opposite. He
does not attempt to write an autobiography, nor does he claim to write a truthful
story, but it is obvious that Bartfuss is a reflection of himself. In this sense, Ap-
pelfeld’s fiction also challenges literature and the line between truth and fiction.
As Budick has noticed, “Even though Appelfeld does not write documentary or
history, or witness testimony per se—to cite again these more prominent forms of
Holocaust narrative that his own writing actively resists—he still does produce a
form of factual fiction” (xvi of Introduction). Therefore, If This is a Man and The
Immortal Bartfuss demonstrate the unique, ambiguous genre of survivor writing or
testimony. Though Levi’s narrative suggests clarity and accuracy, and Appelfeld’s
rejects narrative order and coherency from the beginning, each writer is similar
in his struggle and inability to tell his story, as well as the true experience of the
Holocaust, with complete precision.
As discussed throughout this essay, Levi’s and Appelfeld’s texts display a lack
of closure in numerous ways—through the writer himself, narrative style and
structure, their approaches to language, and the actual last words of the text. While
Levi and Appelfeld have written in contrasting styles and methods, both of them
have spent, and (in the case of Appelfeld) are currently spending their lives writing
their memories in an attempt to grasp the truth of their experiences in writing. In
The Story of a Life, Appelfeld says, “I’ve already written more than twenty books
about those years but sometimes it seems as though I haven’t begun to describe
them” (92). The trauma of the Holocaust continually haunts each of these writers,
and their writing proves their inability to close their memories and lock them away
in a treasure box like Bartfuss. Continually attempting to write their memories
accurately and truthfully only to be trapped by the flaws of memory is a frustrating
and exhausting task, but it is one these writers, nonetheless, could not live without.
Kübler-Ross writes about patients in the process of dying, moving from denial and
isolation through the acceptance stage; for those left behind, however, the process
of mourning is suspended in a state of irresolution. Unlike Kübler-Ross’ process
of dying, the process of mourning for those left behind does not provide a final
stage of acceptance. For Holocaust survivors, this is particularly true. As for a final
resolution, Jorge Semprun proposes that the only sense of closure these writers
will achieve is with their death. In Literature and Life, Semprun talks specifical-
ly about Levi’s death (what he believes to be a suicide) and says, “only a suicide
could put a signature, a voluntary end to this unfinished—this unfinishable—the
process of mourning” (qtd. in Vice 133). As numerous other survivor testimonies
echo the patterns of “endlessness” demonstrated by Levi and Appelfeld, Semprun’s
proposition remains a strong possibility. Despite the temporary liberation writing
may bring, narrative form does not provide these survivors with a sense of closure
regarding their trauma. The traumatic death witnessed but eluded by Holocaust
survivors haunts their lives; their memories act as phantoms, insisting upon their
testimonies, without offering any closure in return. Perhaps Semprun offers the
only sense of true closure for survivors of the Holocaust—the inevitable, ultimate
ending of endings: death.
works cited
Angier, Carole. The Double Bond, Primo Levi: A Biography. New York: Farrar, 2002. Print.
Appelfeld, Aharon. The Immortal Bartfuss. Trans. Jeffrey M. Green. London: Quartet Books, 1988.
Print.
———. The Story of a Life. Trans. Aloma Halter. London: Penguin, 2004. Print.
Belpoliti, Marco and Robert S. C. Gordon. “Primo Levi’s Holocaust Vocabularies.” The Cambridge
Companion to Primo Levi. Ed. Robert Gordon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 51–66. Print.
Budick, Emily Miller. Aharon Appelfeld’s Fiction: Acknowledging the Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 2005. Print.
Des Pres, Terrence. “Holocaust Laughter?” Writing and the Holocaust. Ed. Berel Lang. New York:
Holmes & Meier, 1988. 216–33. Print.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Scribner, 1969. Print.
LaCapra, Dominick. “From History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory.” Theories of
Memory: A Reader. Ed. Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP,
2007. 206–11. Print.
Levi, Primo. If This is A Man. Trans. Stuart Woolf. London: Everyman Publishers, 2000.
Print.
———. Of Other People’s Trades. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. London: Penguin, 1989. Print.
———. The Drowned and the Saved. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. London: Penguin, 1988. Print.
Michaels, Leonard. “The Way of the Survivor.” New York Times 28 Feb. 1988. Print.
Morahg, Gilead. “Breaking Silence: Israel’s Fantastic Fiction of the Holocaust.” The Boom in Contem-
porary Israeli Fiction. Ed. Alan L. Mintz. London: UPNE, 1997. 143–84. Print.
Ramras-Rauch, Gila. Aharon Appelfeld: The Holocaust and Beyond. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.
Print.
Vice, Sue, ed. Representing the Holocaust: In Honour of Bryan Burns. London: Michell Vallentine &
Co., 2003. Print.
Woolf, Judith. “From If This is a Man to The Drowned and the Saved.” The Cambridge Companion to
Primo Levi. Ed. Robert Gordon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 35–50. Print.
part four
Death and Postmodernism

chapter ten
In The Driver’s Seat

Death and Isolation in Muriel Spark’s
Postmodern Gothic
hannah farrell
The Driver’s Seat (1970) is a fascinating and complex story of a woman, Lise, who,
for unspecified reasons, plots her own murder. Nominated for the Lost Booker
Prize in 2009 and written in the style of the nouveau roman, it is one of Muriel
Spark’s most interesting and elusive novels. By blending both postmodernist tech-
niques and the themes of a Gothic, particularly the representations of death and
friendship, Spark has created a “metaphysical shocker” (Kemp 173) which truly
stands out from the rest of her oeuvre and, indeed, from other contemporary texts.
Although she evokes the Gothic, she does not merely ape it. The threat in the
Gothic is often just that—a threat. It lurks around corners yet is never, or rarely,
executed. Death in the works of most Gothic authors is tragic to the hero or hero-
ine because it threatens to separate them from their loved ones, and only by expe-
riencing symbolic deaths can lovers become reunited. In this aspect, The Driver’s
Seat is almost an exact inverse of a typical Gothic novel, as, for Lise, literal death
is the only means to approach a personal relationship. The “boyfriend” to whom
she refers throughout the text is, in fact, her murderer; the only character with
whom she is shown to approach a friendship is his aunt, not a relative of her own.
In portraying these versions of typical Gothic relationships parodically, and by
relocating them in a post-War, postmodern context, Spark shows how untenable
Gothic idealism surrounding friendship and death is in a period that was defined
by the deaths of many millions and in which friendship was as likely to be formed
in the battlefield as in the clubhouse.
Connecting The Driver’s Seat with a genre that preceded it by two hundred
years may initially seem to be a stretch of the imagination, but, in fact, the structure
140 | hannah farrell
and themes of the text often deliberately echo the Gothic. Upon its first publica-
tion, The Driver’s Seat was dubbed “a spiny and treacherous masterpiece […] so
stark as to be nightmarish” by Stephen Schiff of the New Yorker (qtd. in Srinivasan
70), while the blurb of the New Directions edition said that it was an “unnerving
novel, this is a book to make your flesh creep.” The sense of horror and dread that
permeates the novel must surely reflect Spark’s lifelong professional interest in the
Romantic movement in general, and more specifically, with the practitioners of the
Gothic genre, such as Mary Shelley, about whom she wrote a biography and criti-
cal account, and the Brontë sisters. Another important Gothic author to influence
her work, but on whom she never explicitly wrote, was James Hogg. Hogg is re-
membered primarily for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner, which told the story of a boy encouraged by a nefarious double to commit
increasingly serious crimes. First published in 1824, this text was “rediscovered” in
1947, a mere two years after Spark returned to Britain after spending several years
in Africa. It is likely that Spark, returning to Edinburgh just as this text was being
lauded throughout Great Britain, was caught up in this excitement surrounding
her fellow Scot. Hogg’s novel is a tale of the dangers of religious fanaticism, par-
ticularly Scottish Calvinism, and it is widely accepted that, for this reason, Spark
gave the surname “Hogg” to her most devious and fanatically religious character
in The Comforters, which was published ten years after Confessions of a Justified Sin-
ner’s reissue (Carruthers 26). Echoes of Confessions of a Justified Sinner can also be
found elsewhere in her work, such as in the short story “Bang Bang, You’re Dead.”
This story tells of two young girls who are continuously told how similar they are,
evoking the Gothic trope of doubling: “Sybil suddenly felt she was walking past her
own reflection in the long looking-glass” (Spark, 2001, 60) The story takes a dark
twist when, later in life, one of the girls is mistaken for the other and murdered as a
result. Doubling was of fascination to Spark for reasons beyond her interest in the
Gothic. “Bang Bang, You’re Dead” is, in fact, a loose parallel of events from Spark’s
life, as her “double” from school, Nita McEwan, was murdered by her husband in
the very hotel Spark occupied with her own volatile husband (Stannard 50). “Bang
Bang, You’re Dead” is not the only appearance of a double in her work. Jean Brodie,
for instance, is presented as a woman with unshakeable self-confidence (“‘I wore
a long black gown with a lace mantilla and looked magnificent’”), but is not only
named for but actually descended from William Brodie. Deacon Brodie was, of
course, the inspiration for those most famous of Gothic doubles—Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde (Bold 92). Many of her other characters are frauds (Aiding and Abetting)
or actresses (The Public Image). Others are torn between two different versions of
themselves, such as Barbara Vaughn in The Mandelbaum Gate, whose joint Catholic
and Jewish heritage leaves her confused about her identity. These characters can
be read as Spark’s attempt to bring the Gothic double into the modern world, as
they represent two distinct personalities occupying the same physical form. In other
i n th e d r i v er ’ s s eat | 141
words, by living double lives and taking on multiple personas, Spark’s characters
could be said to become their own alter egos.
Although many of her works contain these subtle allusions to Gothic fiction,
The Driver’s Seat is the first of Spark’s works to which this knowledge of the genre
really applies in any concrete way. Rather than simply being peppered with allu-
sions to other texts, it follows the structures and thematic concerns of the authors
Spark enjoyed. As with so many genres, it is difficult to define what exactly makes
a text “Gothic,” but Eve Kofosky Sedgwick makes a good attempt in her text The
Coherence of Gothic Conventions, including the following themes in her extensive
list of the typical features of the Gothic:
Once you know that a novel is of the Gothic kind (and you can tell that from the title), you
can predict its contents with an unnerving certainty. You know the important features of its
mise en scene: an oppressive ruin, a wild landscape, a Catholic or feudal society. You know
about the trembling sensibility of the heroine and the impetuosity of her lover. You know
about the tyrannical older man with the piercing glance who is going to imprison and try
to rape or murder them. […C]ertain characteristic preoccupations will be aired. These in-
clude the priesthood and monastic institutions; sleeplike and deathlike states; subterranean
spaces and live burial; doubles; discovery of obscure family ties; affinities between narrative
and pictorial art; possibilities of incest; unnatural echoes and silences; unintelligible writ-
ings, and the unspeakable; garrulous retainers; the poisonous effects of guilt and shame;
nocturnal landscapes and dreams; apparitions from the past; Faust- and Wandering Jew-
like figures; civil insurrections and fires; the charnel house and the madhouse. (Sedgwick 9)
That The Driver’s Seat is consciously evoking Gothic conventions is clear if we

accept Sedgwick’s version of the genre. Many of the features here listed appear
and are referred to explicitly by characters. Lise’s holiday is in Naples (The Driver’s
Seat 265) and her traveling companion Mrs. Fiedke comments “‘I never trust the
airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the after-life’” (288), thus
hinting at the “catholic or feudal society” that Sedgwick believes is essential. The
“oppressive ruin” becomes a slightly grubby hotel, and the mental institution from
which Lise’s “boyfriend” has recently been released replaces the monastic insti-
tution, but all of the other elements appear in some form or another. The action
takes place in an unnamed country abroad, but feudalism is hinted at through the
presence of the wealthy businessman whose every wish is granted in his expensive
hotel. Lise apes the behavior of a “trembling heroine,” but who can doubt the
“impetuosity of her lover,” who, when given an opportunity to murder and then
rape a strange woman, actually agrees? With the exception of “doubles” and “dis-
covery of family ties,” parallels for almost all of Sedgwick’s criteria can be found
in Spark’s text. “Guilt and shame,” particularly, form the backbone of the novel, as
it takes as its subject taboo issues such as rape. Indeed, the text can be read as an
interrogation of these themes of guilt and shame, as Spark seems to be challenging
the reader to look into the moral gray area that arises when the victim of murder is
more willing than the culprit. The final line is striking as it repeats the words “fear
and pity, pity and fear” (318), but it is not clear whether they should be applied to
Lise, to her boyfriend, or to the reader themselves.
However, there is one element of the Gothic novel that both Sedgwick and
Spark overlook—the friend. The double, or companion, does not appear in every
Gothic text; however, by 1799, the trope had become so commonplace as to be
among the many elements of the Gothic novel that Jane Austen mocked in her
light-hearted satire, Northanger Abbey:
The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick as its beginning
had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tender-
ness, that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves.
They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm and arm when they
walked, pinned each other up for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a
rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they […] shut themselves up, to read
novels together. (Austen 57)
In Romantic Gothic, protagonists are often accompanied by friendly doubles—

characters whose portrayal is so similar to their own that they become basically
interchangeable. Take, for instance, Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) or Clara
Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1777), both of which are populated by male char-
acters with nothing to help the reader distinguish between them bar their names
and the fact that they are in love with different women. Even as the Gothic evolved
beyond the immediate Romantic period, the double remained a key feature, al-
though it took on a new, more sinister appearance. This kind of double usually
appears because the protagonist has summoned him through hubris and can be
read as symbolizing the dark elements of the protagonist’s own character. The late
Romantic text Frankenstein (1818), and Victorian classics like The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and, as already discussed, The Confessions and
Memoirs of a Justified Sinner conform to this example. In each of these texts, the
protagonist creates or is faced with his double, who then relentlessly pursues
and spurs him on to greater and greater misdeeds; finally, one or both is killed.
Interestingly, even these uncanny versions are often presented as a variation on the
“friend,” or at least companion.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s most famous work, is the best example of this
overlap between the companion and the demonic double. The relationship that
Victor Frankenstein has with his monster is extremely complex, and the monster
himself argues for a loving relationship bound by duty between them. Failing that,
however, he says that they are bounded by “ties only dissoluble by the annihila-
tion of one of us” (Shelley 68). Finally, it is proven that the death of one does not
liberate the other. As Spark says of the text, “There are two central figures—or
rather two in one, for Frankenstein and his significantly unnamed Monster are
bound together by the nature of their relationship” (Spark, Child 134). Spark does
not elaborate on what “the nature” of this relationship actually is, perhaps because
it can be interpreted in such a variety of conflicting ways. However, one interpre-
tation could be that the relationship between the monster and Frankenstein is
founded on death, making this outcome unavoidable. In this, Frankenstein is the
closest model for The Driver’s Seat. Other Gothic texts suggest that death is a con-
structive force which, when overcome, will reunite lost lovers and friends. Several
good examples of this can be found in Lewis’s The Monk. After being separated
from her lover by her jealous aunt, the only way that Agnes, one of the text’s hero-
ines, can escape from the castle to elope with him is by dressing as a ghost (Lewis
148). Only by adopting the appearance of death can she be reunited with her loved
ones. Likewise, in The Italian, impending death reveals to Schedoni that he has a
daughter—however, the revelation only occurs when he sees her kiss his portrait
at the moment she believes is her death (Radcliffe 235). In contrast, both Shelley
and Spark offer a bleaker worldview. In their versions, companionship cannot offer
a respite from these threats, as friendship is linked with death, and death is caused
by friendship.
To explain this further, we must closely examine both texts. Shelley is the
more overt in her exploration of the themes at hand. Although its subtitle, “The
Modern Prometheus,” and its interest in alchemy and discovery might initially
mark it as a cautionary tale about scientific hubris, Frankenstein is equally con-
cerned with the relationships that men forge with one another. In the framing nar-
rative, Robert Walton writes to his sister about an expedition he has undertaken.
However, immediately after the exuberance of the first letter, in which he explains
his mission, he laments:
“I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object
of which I now feel a most severe evil, I have no friend, Margaret. […] I shall commit my
thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling.
I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to
mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend.”
(Shelley 4)
Frankenstein may not specifically repeat these sentiments before embarking on his
experiments with the monster, but Walton is clearly intended to be read as a paral-
lel for his new friend. It may safely be assumed, therefore, that the creation of the
monster during Frankenstein’s lonely months at the university is as much inspired
by a desire to create a companion as by scientific curiosity. Famously, of course, this
companionship takes an extreme form, and the two pursue each other around the
globe until both perish. Death is the inevitable outcome. Unlike Walton, who finds
his friend in a natural, if unusual, way, Frankenstein cobbles his monster together
from corpses and their relationship quite literally begins at the graveside. With such
a macabre beginning, it is little wonder that death should define their relationship.
“He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remem-
brance of us both will speedily vanish” (Shelley 166), laments the monster, proving
the strength of the bond between himself and his creator—neither can live, even
in memory, without the other. However, if their relationship stems from death, so,
then, does death spring from it. When spurned by Frankenstein, the monster makes
it his duty to satiate his thirst for revenge “with the blood of your remaining friends”
(Shelley 68), killing everyone who has known and loved Frankenstein, until all that
are left are the man and his creation.
The Driver’s Seat may lay out its interrogation of friendship and death more
subtly, but it follows the same trajectory as the earlier text. From the first pages,
it is clearly established that Lise does not find it easy to communicate with other
people. The Guardian’s Sam Jordison calls Lise an “excruciating heroine,” and cites
her irrational and often unpleasant behavior in the text as his major reason for
disliking the novel. There are some allusions to people with whom Lise may have
stable relationships: she receives two separate phone calls telling her to enjoy her
holiday and asking her to send postcards (245, 247). However, their natures are
never clearly defined, and only one is given a name. In fact, Lise is such an aggres-
sively isolated character that even the narrator of her story is detached and often
refuses to do more than speculate on her emotions or motivations:
Lise walks quietly out to the cab, still holding in her hand the envelope which contains
the car-keys. She looks at this envelope as she goes, but whether she has failed to leave it
at the door-keeper’s desk by intention, or whether through the distraction of the woman’s
laughter, one could not tell from her serene face with lips slightly parted. (248)
Spark was very interested in the potential of narrators to give added depth of
meaning to a text, as is evident from her first novel, The Comforters, which depicts
a literary critic fearing madness after she hears the events of her life being narrated
by a mysterious disembodied voice. The narrators of Spark’s other works are either
inconspicuous, first-person, or deliberately intrusive. By choosing a third-person
narrator, who writes in the present tense and who has such minimal interaction
with the character, Spark appears to be attempting to draw the reader’s atten-
tion to Lise’s guardedness and distance from others. Her interactions with other
characters emphasize that this isolation is inherent—it is not merely a case of the
nouveau roman style narrator deciding to maintain a detachment from her cre-
ation. The very first interactions of the text, in fact, reveal that Lise is, essentially,
unknowable.
“And the material doesn’t stain,” the salesgirl says.
“Doesn’t stain?” […] The customer, a young woman, is suddenly tearing at the fastener
at the neck, pulling at the zip of the dress. She is saying “Get this thing off me. Off me,
at once.”
The salesgirl shouts at the customer who, up to now, has been delighted with the bright
coloured dress. […] The customer has flung the dress aside.
“Who asked you for a stain-resisting dress?” the customer shouts, getting quickly into
her own blouse and skirt.
“You liked the colours, didn’t you?” shouts the girl. “What difference does it make, so it
resists stains, if you liked the fabric before you knew?” The customer picks up her bag and
goes to the door almost at a run, while two other salesgirls and two other customers gasp
and gape. At the door she turns to look back and says, with a look of satisfaction at her
own dominance over the situation with an undoubtable excuse, “I won’t be insulted!” (242)
The salesgirl and, indeed, the reader, are baffled by Lise’s sudden outburst on being
told that the material is stain proof, and many of her later actions seem equally
incomprehensible. Only two characters appear to understand Lise in a way that
neither the reader nor the narrator can, and both of these characters are, like Fran-
kenstein’s monster, connected directly with her death.
Lise repeatedly refers to her “boy-friend” throughout the novel, although this
title is a misnomer, seeing as he is a stranger to her for the majority of the text. In
reality, she is speaking about whatever man she can find who will kill her and then
rape her afterwards if he likes. She rejects many possible men for “not being her
type,” insisting that she will recognize it when she sees it. She is ultimately success-
ful in finding a man, Richard, with whom her connection is therefore seemingly
inevitable. On hearing Lise make a lascivious comment to another man, Richard,
Suddenly her other neighbor looks at Lise in alarm. He stares, as if recognizing her, with
his brief-case on his lap, and his hand in the position of pulling out a batch of papers.
Something about Lise, about her exchange with the man on the left, has caused a kind of
paralysis in his act of fetching out some papers from his briefcase. He opens his mouth,
gasping and startled, staring at her as if she is someone he has known and forgotten and
now seen again. She smiles at him; it is a smile of relief and delight. […] On the evening of
the following day he will tell the police, quite truthfully, ‘The first time I saw her was at the
airport. Then on the plane. She sat beside me. […] I moved my seat. I was afraid.’ (256–57)
Their mutual recognition is seemingly explained on the final pages, when she
tells him, “‘Stop trembling […] It’s the madhouse tremble’” (315), and accurately,
seemingly from personal experience, describes the clinic he was in. Her “type,”
then, is merely someone who is as mentally disturbed as she is and who can un-
derstand her intentions in an instant. That recognition, however, is not of the
romantic sort found in Gothic fiction when the hero sees a beautiful young woman
and instantly falls in love. Richard’s fear of Lise indicates his realization that she
will cause a relapse in the sexually deviant behavior that necessitated his time in
a clinic, while her delight means that she has also recognized in him a suitable
candidate for her murder.
Richard is not the only acquaintance she makes on her holiday who ends up
implicated in her death. Mrs. Fiedke, the gentle older woman with whom Lise
spends her final day, is fairly typical of the kinds of maternal figures who populate
Gothic novels, like Mrs. Fairfax, the kindly housekeeper who cautions Jane Eyre
on the dangers of marrying Mr. Rochester, or The Italian’s Sister Olivia, whose
loving attitude to the heroine, Ellena, foreshadows the revelation that she is her bi-
ological mother. Like Richard, Mrs. Fiedke appears to understand Lise, although
in a very different way. She joins Lise in pointing out prospective “boy-friends”
and does not question her strange behavior, i.e., when Lise stuffs her passport
behind the seat of a taxi: “The old lady turns her spry nose towards this operation.
She looks puzzled for an instant, but soon complies with the action. […] ‘I left
my passport in the hotel, with the Desk’” (275). Despite this initially sympathetic
appearance, however, Mrs. Fiedke straddles the line between two categories of
Gothic women—not only is she a benevolent mother figure, but she can also be
read as occupying the role of a malevolent woman of authority. These women, like
the proud Mother St. Ursula in The Monk or Madame Cheron, Emily’s aunt in
The Mysteries of Udolpho, assist the villain of the texts in kidnapping the heroines
and exposing them to grave dangers. Shortly after they meet, Mrs. Fiedke tells
Lise that she is meeting her nephew who “has been unwell, we had to send him to
a clinic. It was either that or the other, they gave us no choice” (285). It is clear that
he has committed some crime for which he was sent to a mental institution rather
than prison, and it is unsurprising when Richard, Lise’s “boy-friend,” is revealed to
be Mrs. Fiedke’s nephew: “‘It is in my mind and I can’t think of anything else but
that you and my nephew are meant for each other. As sure as anything, my dear,
you are the person for my nephew’” (289). She encourages Lise and, in doing so,
falls into the pattern of behavior established by the devious characters from The
Monk and The Mysteries of Udolpho, albeit unknowingly. Indeed, she actually gives
Richard a gift of a paper knife, which he will later use to murder Lise. Yet again, we
see that the very characters who appear to be Lise’s friends are actually those who
cause her death. Just as is seen in Frankenstein, the ideas of friendship and death
are inextricably linked in these texts, which are constructed with significantly more
cynicism than others in their genre.
This theme of dangerous friendships is found throughout Spark’s entire oeu-
vre. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, her most famous work, charts the rise and fall
of the so-called “Brodie set” of schoolgirls, whose friendship, although ultimately
destructive, provides the locus of identity for all of its members. That friendship
begins to fall apart, however, when the eponymous protagonist’s fascistic teachings
send a young protégée off to her death in the Spanish Civil War (122). Seeing that
involvement with their teacher can literally end their lives, the Brodie set dissi-
pates following this event. Other early works echo the pattern of death destroying
friendships. In The Girls of Slender Means, the death of one of the girls living in
the May of Teck Club following the war leads to a splintering of the group. The
text opens with a sense of unity, not only between the girls but between society
at large. The “huge organic murmur of the crowd” (Spark, Prime 137) as people
gather to celebrate the end of World War II on VD Day is referenced, while the
girls unite in the front room of their boarding house to complain about the color
of their wallpaper (Spark, Prime 132) and compare dieting tips (Spark, Prime 149).
However, by the end of the text, the death of Joanna Childe, of whom the entire
club was proud “not only because she chucked her head up and recited poetry, but
because she was so well built, fair and healthy looking” (Spark, Prime 140) forces
this unity to give way to the realities of post-war society. Her death occurs in a fire,
during which one of the club’s members, Selina, steals for herself the very symbol
of the girls’ friendship, a beautiful Schiaparelli dress that they all shared (Auerbach
178), while the novel’s close shows a brutal murder on VJ Day replacing the good-
will of VD Day.
Spark’s 1958 novel, Robinson, also deals with the ramifications of death with-
in a community of friends even more explicitly, as the relationships between the
temporary residents of a desert island become increasingly strained following
the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of their de facto leader, Miles
Robinson. There are also notable exceptions to this pattern of communities falling
apart following a death. Memento Mori (1959), Spark’s blackest comedy, tells how
a group of elderly people are united when they all begin to get phone calls telling
them to “[r]emember [they] must die.” Various theories are mooted as to the ori-
gin of the calls, but the text seems to settle on the idea that it is Death itself who
is ringing them. The Hothouse by the East River is another significant exception, as
the couple at its center—Elsa and Paul—are haunted by faces from their past, only
to realize that they and all of their friends have been dead since the Second World
War and are living as ghosts.
The Driver’s Seat, however, maintains a distinct vision of death from both of
the two portrayals found elsewhere in Spark’s work. Regardless of whether they
see death as detrimental to the survival of a community or essential in the main-
tenance of it, her other novels presuppose that bonds of friendship exist between
characters. With Richard and Mrs. Fiedke, Lise gains understanding and an
approximation of a friendship. However, the text shows that this is, ultimately,
fleeting, while Lise’s isolation will be permanently fixed through her death. Early
Gothic novels, being conservative, end with a wedding, or, in the case of a text like
Dracula where the protagonists are already married, the birth of a child. Relation-
ship bonds are formalized, and past dangers are forgotten. Even Victorian Gothic
texts, which often prioritize male friendships over romantic relationships, end on a
point of understanding, usually through a final act exposition of a mystery. This is
seen in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, when Utterson reads his friend
Jekyll’s diary and finally understands his strange behavior. At the ends of these
texts, the reader is left with a sense of satisfaction, as a logical zenith is reached in
the relationship we have been following. Friendships in The Driver’s Seat, however,
do not finish on such a high point. In fact, expectations are entirely subverted, and
we are left in a moment of misunderstanding, betrayal, and heightened isolation.
Having found her boyfriend, Richard, Lise brings him to a spot she has picked in
advance, where she has arranged for him to tie her up and stab her, with the caveat
that he not rape her until after she has died. Despite this, “he plunges into her,
with the knife poised high” (318). Lise’s response to this betrayal of their agree-
ment is to remind him of what he was supposed to do: “‘Kill me,’ she says, and
repeats it in four languages.” We have already seen her linguistic ability during her
attempt to make herself understood to the hotel porter by trying “first in Danish,
then French. She tries Italian, lastly English” (269). In this instance, the use of four
languages is necessary to cut across cultural boundaries, so when Lise again uses
four languages on the final pages to attempt to communicate with Richard, it is
clear that the mutual understanding that drew them together has now vanished.
This may be a natural result of her demise, as the unique nature of one’s death is
something that another person can never understand. However, the nature of her
death also impacts Lise and Richard’s ability to understand one another. By raping
her, he has violated the terms on which the bond they shared was founded, and
Lise is again isolated.
In Gothic fiction, rape is often portrayed as a twisted inversion of a wedding
night. The act is an imitation of intimacy, and, as such, is often posed as a threat
to the real intimacy between the protagonists of the text. In The Monk, one of the
few Gothic novels to actually portray a rape rather than merely hint at it, the rapist,
Ambrosio, speaks to his victim Ántonia as though she were his betrothed:
She reclined upon her funeral Bier, she seemed to smile at the Images of Death around
her. […] Perceiving that she was fully restored to existence, he caught her in rapture to
his bosom and closely pressed his lips to hers. […] “This sepulchure seems to me Love’s
bower; This gloom is the friendly night of mystery which He spreads over our delights.”
(Lewis 381)
Likewise, The Driver’s Seat shows Lise and Richard exchanging symbols of do-
mesticity before the brutality they have agreed to begins, as she gives him a pair of
slippers that his aunt has purchased for him. The mundane comment she makes,
“You can pick them up later” (315), belies the enormity of what is about to happen
and makes them appear, albeit briefly, like a normal, married couple. The illusion
is, however, quickly shattered, so that the eventual betrayal makes Lise seem all the
more isolated for its brief glimpse.
The very title of the novel should alert us to the fact that Lise will always
remain remote from other characters, and that any relationships she does forge
will ultimately be temporary. The driver’s seat is, after all, a reference to an entirely
unique position—to put it simply, there cannot be two drivers in a car. While
passengers all share the same status, the driver is always separate. This simplistic
reading of the title is echoed by Randall Stevenson (Gardiner and Maley 98), who
suggests that the title is referring to Lise’s autonomy from her narrator: “As the ti-
tle suggests, free will and control are […] central issues in this novel, which shows
another character seeking autonomy and a destiny independent of authorial in-
tentions.” The independence that Lise has achieved from her narrator and, subse-
quently, from other characters, is also important for any discussion of The Driver’s
Seat’s engagement with various literary forms, for The Driver’s Seat was not merely
the most overtly Gothic of Spark’s works, but it also marked the beginning of a
new phase of her writing. Although her first novel, The Comforters, was in many
ways as experimental as any of the texts from the seventies, this period saw her
delve deeper into postmodernist techniques, particularly those borrowed from the
nouveau roman. Matthew Wickman, when attempting to write on Spark’s version
of postmodernism, defers to Ihab Hassan’s contrasting definitions of modernism
and postmodernism. Hassan argues:
Modernist literature privileges design whereas postmodern texts highlight the play of
chance; modernism strives for depth whereas postmodernism celebrates surfaces; modern-
ism exhibits features of paranoia whereas postmodernism bears the hallmarks of schizo-
phrenia. (Gardiner and Maley 63)
All of this can certainly be applied to The Driver’s Seat, which is a masterpiece
of narratorial detachment and which could be viewed as taking schizophrenia as
its subject matter.1 Interestingly, the more experimental of her novels, including
The Driver’s Seat, are often also concerned with typically Gothic topics, like the
encroachment of the supernatural onto “reality.” The Comforters tells of a woman
haunted by the sound of a disembodied voice and typewriter who narrates her life,
while The Hothouse by the East River (1973), Spark’s strangest novel, is literally a
ghost story. Within the world she creates, the supernatural can bleed into reality
with ease. Another text, The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), tells of a gently Faus-
tian version of the devil called Dougal Douglas who is taken on as an advisor in
a factory that wants to move into the modern world and improve its productivity.
For Spark to put the devil to work in a nylon factory is typical of her sardonic
view, and a similar balance of old and new elements lends The Driver’s Seat much
of its tensions—tensions that are mirrored in the character of Lise. In fact, syn-
thetic materials like nylon play an important role in this text, as we see from its
prominent mention in its first line. Lise’s angry outburst on being told that her
dress is stain-resistant is significant for what it tells us about her character, but it is
also important for historical context. It positions the action in the post-war peri-
od, as “stain-resistant” could only refer to modern fabrics. Synthetic materials like
nylon became popular during World War II when the disruption of trade routes
and, later, hostilities with Asian countries, meant that silk could no longer be im-
ported for parachutes. Nylon was soon being used for stockings, as, being made
from plastic, it was more durable than anything that could be found naturally. The
popularity of these products can be seen elsewhere in Spark’s work, for instance, in
The Girls of Slender Means when the possession of hard-to-find nylons is seen as a
real coup. Lise, conversely, outright rejects the dress she is offered on the first page
precisely because it is made of this new synthetic material. In fact, the dress that
Lise eventually purchases is made of “washable cotton” from a sales girl who has
never even heard of stainless materials (244). Tellingly, Lise refers to the combi-
nations of garish colors in the dress as “very natural,” although the combination of
lemon yellow, bright orange, mauve, and blue, paired with a red-and-white striped
coat are anything but. The second salesgirl laughs at this, thinking that Lise is
referring to the colors as natural, but, in fact, it is the organic material of which she
approves. By having her choose this dress over the other, then, Spark is symboliz-
ing Lise’s conflicted position. Lise, after all, is the heroine of a novel whose plot,
when broken down to its basic elements, could have been written centuries ago.
The progression of the plot—young woman leaves home, comes under guardian-
ship of older woman, witnesses political or religious upheaval, and is threatened
with sexualized death at the hands of a deviant man—is the exact same as that of
countless Gothic texts, from The Mysteries of Udolpho to Northanger Abbey. Howev-
er, the context against which the plot is set has changed dramatically, leaving Lise
in the conflicted position we see reflected by her choice of dress.
While the Gothic movement took place against the backdrop of the French
Revolution, Spark was writing in the decades immediately after the Second World
War. The former had been a struggle for the ideals of freedom and equality, but
World War II, although also a fight against oppressive forces, was of a different
nature. Even aside from the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by the
Nazis, much of the war had been characterized by morally dubious behavior on
both sides. Spark herself, for instance, spent the war working in “Black Propagan-
da,”2 also known as “Psychological Warfare,” for the Foreign Office—work which
she later described as being “detailed truth with believable lies” (Spark, Curriculum
148). Some politicians were ambiguous about the benefits and morality of using
such propaganda, with a former member of the war cabinet, Stafford Cripps, say-
ing that “if this is the sort of thing that’s needed to win the war, I’d rather lose
it” (Rankin 304). This blurring between the lines of fiction and reality, good and
bad, was typical of this new era and the fiction that went with it. Death was at the
forefront of people’s minds, as the deaths of over sixty million people during the
Second World War were within living memory. Speaking on the popularity of
the Gothic novel, the Marquis de Sade commented that “most people had gone
through so many dreadful experiences during the Revolution that the most ex-
citing novels seems dull in comparison and a new thrill had to be provided at all
costs.” The period following the even more dreadful years of the Second World
War was, therefore, ripe for a renaissance of Gothic, such as Spark attempted, and
the backdrop of social upheaval provided a suitable context against which the con-
cerns of the Gothic could be plotted. However, it could not simply reappear in its
old form, as the postwar generation was more scientifically aware and spiritually
skeptical than those who had gone before them. Stephen Spender spoke about
the influence that the War had on conceptions of the supernatural, saying “the
angels and demons of an earlier time have simply been suppressed into our own
consciousness” (qtd. in Stevenson 105). In other words, the doubts and fears that
were manifested as ghosts and goblins in Gothic fiction were no longer necessary
as people became aware of themselves as psychological beings. Some are critical of
attempts like these to cast the supernatural elements of the Gothic in a psycholog-
ical light. For instance, Elizabeth Napier has argued that there is no psychological
aspect to the genre at all, citing the ability of characters to recover quickly from
the traumas they have endured (Napier 3) as proof that these texts have no psy-
chological elements. The threat of incest, the near-death experiences, and the long
imprisonments that haunt them, not to mention the terror of ghostly appearances
in the night, are all forgotten once the plot is neatly tied up with wedding bells.
In The Driver’s Seat, however, we see how this has changed and psychology takes
center stage, as both Lise and Richard appear to suffer from recurring mental
illnesses. Where evil monks and demonic figures complicated the lives of Gothic
protagonists, the threats of the modern world are internalized in Spark’s text.
If the modern period represented a threat to the self, then, ideas of friendship
must also change. The years following the end of World War II were ripe for fic-
tional accounts of friendships that would previously have been unthinkable. J. B.
Priestly’s novel Three Men in New Suits (1945), for instance, shows how fighting
together in the war has made three men from disparate social strands much closer
to one another than they are to the friends and family they left behind. Things
that had previously been taken for granted in friendships—that you would be of a
similar background and education to your companions—were no longer true. Of
course, this new freedom was found objectionable by others. In another post-War
text, The Village (1952) by Marghanita Laski, the new social order in a village is
rejected by its upper-class residents despite their wartime friendship with their
former servants. This is staunchly different from the friendships that we see in
Gothic fiction, in which the friend is not only of the same background as the
protagonist but is often an extension of the self, sharing all of the personality traits
of a character to the point where the two are indistinguishable. The possibility of
this kind of friend, one who shares all of Lise’s characteristics, is hinted at in the
dress scene: “This dress […] of which three others, identical but for sizes, hang
in the back storeroom […] have been too vivid for customer’s taste” (242). With
the Gothic framing of the text in mind, the implications of these three identical
dresses become clear. The dress Lise wears, and the three that are identical to it,
becomes more significant, as the presence of the three identical dresses points out
that she will not find an imitation of herself for the simple fact that there is no
one who looks or dresses like her. Interestingly, there is no mention of any other
version of the dress she eventually does buy, suggesting that it, like Lise, is unique.
Other forms of doubling in the Gothic tend to be the results of scientists tamper-
ing with nature or supernatural interference in the “real” world. These doubles are,
more literally, a copy of an original, and nature demands their deaths because her
rules have been transgressed—both cannot exist in the same space. Lise’s unique
position, however, means that her death is not dictated by any external force, even
that of the narrator. She has no double, so no law demands her expiration. In high-
lighting these three unworn dresses made of new, stainless material, Spark presents
Lise’s undeniable uniqueness, thus making her death appear not as an inevitable
solution to a transgression against nature, but as a brutal tragedy caused by the
isolation and violence of the modern world.
Lise is not the only indication that modern society lacks a cohesive element,
though. There is a general sense that society is splintering into distinct factions
which can never be reconciled. Several violent incidents occur throughout the
novel, including the forceful removal of hippies from a department store and the
student riot that Lise witnesses. The story states,
Suddenly round the corner comes a stampede. Lise and Mrs. Fiedke are swept apart and
jostled in all directions by a large crowd composed mainly of young men, with a few smaller,
older and grimmer men, and here and there a young girl, all yelling together and making
rapidly for somewhere else. “Tear-gas!” someone shouts. […] A band of grey-clad police-
men come running towards them, in formation, bearing tear-gas satchels and with their
gas-masks at the ready. (292)
The gas-masks, a prominent feature of both World Wars, are an interesting inclu-
sion in this description, and explicitly link the eruption that Lise witnesses with
history’s most brutal chapters. Even in fiction, there is no respite from the violence
in the world Spark creates, as Lise’s choice of reading material reflects the tensions
of her own life and the period in which she lives. Throughout the entire text, she
is seen holding a novel, chosen for its lurid color, which she insists on describing
as a “whydunnit in q sharp major” (314). Of course, this phrase could be used to
describe The Driver’s Seat itself, a text that never answers the questions it raises.
At the end of the text, one is left with a sense of bewilderment; there are no real
reasons given for Lise’s actions. Spark confirms that Lise is mentally unstable and
hints that this is a relapse rather than a first-time breakdown, but the cause of the
relapse is left mysterious.
Ultimately, then, The Driver’s Seat is an examination of modernity itself. By
evoking Gothic clichés but turning that genre’s portrayal of death on its head,
Spark exposes the changes that have been wrought in humankind since the days
of Ann Radcliffe et al. She proves that the era of Romantic innocence is over, and
that, in the twentieth century, one’s lover is more likely to plunge a knife into his
beloved than to enact a last-minute rescue. Supernatural elements are no longer
appropriate in this vision of the twentieth century, and the comfort of an eter-
nal companion is replaced by the isolation of mental illness. Therefore, it is only
appropriate that in the last seconds before her death, Lise perceives “how final is
finality” (318). In the age of grim reality, there will be no ghostly second comings
and no one to remember her life.
notes
1. For a discussion of Spark and schizophrenia, see Patricia Waugh’s essay “Muriel Spark and the
Metaphysics of Modernity: Art, Secularization and Psychosis.”
2. Black propaganda essentially masquerades as information from one side of a conflict but is ac-
tually produced by the enemy. It is often inserted into genuine sources of news, such as radio
reports, and contains strategic fabrications designed to rot the morale of those who see or hear
it. For more on Black Propaganda, see Sefton Delmer’s autobiography, Black Boomerang. Spark’s
novel The Hothouse by the East River is also a good, although fictionalized, account of the work
she did during the war.
works cited
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Middlesex: Penguin, 1972. Print.

Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. Print.
Bold, Alan, ed. Muriel Spark: An Odd Capacity for Vision. London: Barnes & Noble, 1984. Print.
Bomarito, Jessica, ed. Gothic Literature: A Gale Critical Companion. Vols.1–3. Detroit and London:
Thomson/Gale, 2006. Print.
Carruthers, Gerard. “‘Fully to Savour Her Position’: Muriel Spark and Scottish Identity.” Muriel
Spark: Twenty-First Century Perspectives. Ed. David Herman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
2010. 21–39. Print.
Gardiner, Michael, and Willy Maley, eds. The Edinburgh Companion to Muriel Spark. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 2010. Print.
Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth
Editions, Ltd., 2003. Print.
Jordison, Sam. “Looking Back at the Lost Booker: Muriel Spark.” The Guardian 13 May 2010. Web.
25 Oct. 2011.
Kemp, Jonathan. “‘Her lips are slightly parted’: The Ineffability of Erotic Sociality in Muriel Spark’s
The Driver’s Seat.” Muriel Spark: Twenty-First Century Perspectives. Ed. David Herman. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 173–87. Print.
Lewis, Matthew. The Monk. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Napier, Elizabeth. The Failure of Gothic: Problems of Disjunction in an Eighteenth-Century Literary
Form. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. Print.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Italian. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Rankin, Nicholas. A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars. Ox-
ford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. London: Methuen, 1986. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1994. Print.
Spark, Muriel. Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Hadleigh, UK: Tower
Bridge Publications, 1972. Print.
———. The Complete Short Stories. London: Viking, 2001. Print.
———. Curriculum Vitae. Manchester: Constable and Company Ltd., 1992. Print.
———. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver’s Seat, The Only Problem.
London: Everyman’s Library, 2004. Print.
Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark: The Biography. London: Phoenix, 2009. Print.
Srinivasan, Archana. Biographies 20th Century Writers. Tamilnadu, India: Sura Books, 2007. Print.
Wolfreys, Julian. “Muriel Spark’s Mary Shelley: A Gothic and Liminal Life.” Theorizing Muriel Spark:
Gender, Race, Deconstruction. Ed. Martin McQuillan. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 155–70. Print.
chapter eleven
Death and Dying as

Literary Devices in Brite’s
Exquisite Corpse and
Palahniuk’s Damned
claudia desblaches
Chuck Palahniuk and Poppy Z. Brite are considered transgressional postmod-

ernist fiction writers. The former is known for his minimalist style and his
volunteer work with terminally ill patients. The latter is a figure of American
underground Gothic literature using splatterpunk fiction, i.e., horror novels that
explore desolate characters. Indeed, in Exquisite Corpse (1996), the necrophiliac
and serial killer Andrew Compton expresses as an art his need to kill, to master
the others’ deaths through murder and torture. In Damned (2011), Madison, a
thirteen-year-old girl, plans to convey the exact sensation of being dead; in Hell,
she is dying to meet a nice guy who knows a lot about demonic anthropology,
so she crosses a desert made of dead skin, wasted sperm, beetles, centipedes, fire
ants, earwigs, wasps, and spiders. Thus, humor is one of the ways to face death in
the book and one of the means the text has found to cope with the unnameable
and intolerable end.
Exquisite Corpse embraces a poisonous violent logic, while Damned offers a
somewhat humorous treatment of death. Both novels deal with death and rotting
corpses. Faced with this morbid universe, the reader might appear as the unwanted
witness of a taboo territory. How can the reader handle such encounters? Why do
writers write (about) death? Is Chuck Palahniuk trying to mourn the death of a
former patient or his relatives? (His grandfather killed his grandmother, and his
father was a murder victim.) Whatever answers the novels might offer, exploring
death might be to no avail; as Louis-Vincent Thomas notes, there is no knowledge
to be acquired about death in books, but simply “a science of dying” (9).
156 | claudia desblaches
This unfathomable and uncharted terrorizing territory might explain why

most characters in the two novels are fascinated by death to the point of seeing
it as the sole aim of their lives. The figurative architecture will be discussed here,
since it seems to prepare the ground for the surge of death. Anthropophag-
ic visions are imposed upon the reader, who ultimately seems to recover from
these atrocious passages by a successful mixture of “terror and elation” (Brite
214). Although the topic can be truthfully contested (and censored), it is unde-
niable that the vital energy of the rhythm of prose counterbalances the deadly
accounts. Each book succeeds in its own way in recovering from “fantasies of
viscera” (Brite 120) through “the amazing miracle of death” itself (Palahniuk,
Fight Club 35). These books go through familiar paths, notably the history of
serial killers and conspirators. However, they also point at a new way of han-
dling death, a subject few dare to bring up. It might finally be through skill-
ful poetical descriptions that literature asks for forgiveness: when Tran and Jay
are killed at the end of Poppy Z. Brite’s novel, the text offers aesthetic life-
in-death images. We will specifically focus on those rare “breathing” paradox-
ical moments when literature seems to be the right vehicle to tell about death
and dying.
f i g u r e s o f d e at h
Historical Figures of Death

The innovativeness of both Brite’s and Palahniuk’s writing styles lies mostly in
a type of “literary vampirism” as recognized by Christine Marcandier-Colard in
crime novels (252). It is as if myths and legends about death were ingested to
be reused and reinjected within fictional veins. Such is the case in the reference
to Kübler-Ross’s masterpiece. Tran, Compton’s future victim, refuses to read the
famous volume On Death and Dying, which deals with a pattern of adjustment
to death. Instead of accepting the idea of death, Tran chooses artificial addictive
pleasures (LSD). He will soon pay a heavy price for his carelessness: dehumanized
death and dying are in store for him, as if his neglected shared literary knowledge
was a sign of an ill-fated end. The relevance of the “large glossy volume on death
and dying” (Brite 49) is questioned when the future victim admits no one has ever
read it, and that he never will:
He knew his parents had seen plenty of mangled corpses up close in Vietnam—neighbors,
teachers, family. They’d never take such a book off the shelf. Tran flipped through full-page
color shots of humans in various stages of mutilation, decay, and general disrepair until he
found the Baggie he’d stashed there, which contained fifty hits of LSD and five crisp green
portraits of Ben Franklin. (49)
death and dyi n g a s l i t e r a ry d e vi c e s | 157
His family’s initial descriptions prepare the ground for his tortured fate. What is
repressed in our collective and private pasts resurfaces in the text as a tool for the
horror to follow; the mangled corpses tell in advance of his being hacked and torn
by Jay and Andrew, the two serial killers. Instead of simply going through Kübler-
Ross’s five stages of grief when faced with death (i.e., denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance), he will also have to overcome “mutilation, decay and
disrepair” as a consequence of his self-created countercultural environment. The
chapter reveals the impossible adjustment to death and suffering, the denial of
communal understanding, and acceptance of torture as part of his family inheri-
tance. In Vietnam, “neighbors, teachers, family” did not die with dignity and peace,
and neither will Tran.
In Damned, Archer, one of Madison’s companions, refers explicitly but inac-
curately to Kübler-Ross’s scholarly book. When he discusses what he calls “death-
death” (161), he misspells the psychiatrist’s name, lists only four stages, and counts
seven:
Really, your physical body dying is the easy part. Beyond that, your memories must die.
And your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope, all that Personal Identity
Crap can take centuries to expire. “All people ever see is how the body dies,” Archer says.
“That Helen Gurley Brown only studied the first seven stages of us kicking the bucket.”
I ask, “Helen Gurley Brown?”
“You know,” Archer says, “denial, bargaining, anger, depression …”
He means Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. (181)
According to Madison’s acolyte, the book explores the dying part, but not Hell
as a place of remembering the process of bodily regeneration, the impossibility of
“absolute death” (56). Even if Archer’s gross knowledge is rectified by Madison
(the only character who really accepts her own death), the study is revealed as in-
complete. In Damned, it is living among the dead that is brought to the fore. Thus,
both novels by Chuck Palahniuk and Poppy Z. Brite do not mention the extended
grief cycle; a hectic “death-death” gives a second life to the dead, and brutality and
crudity replace meaningful dialogues with the dying.
The novels hint at ill-famed figures of death to finally discard them. In Ex-
quisite Corpse, Compton’s instinctive discretion leads him to deny any resemblance
to Jack the Ripper (24, 182). Similarly, the reference to Guy Fawkes, the historical
seventeenth-century conspirator who planned to assassinate King James I, paves
the way for the murderer’s compulsive escape (notably Compton’s jailbreak from
the autopsy chamber) and his torturous deeds. Fawkes was finally caught and tor-
tured before trying to escape. These initial overt mentions of dead or deadly fig-
ures demonstrate that death has to be anticipated by the reader.
Damned gives voice to other imaginary tortured characters, especially Lemuel
Gulliver (the second volume of his memoirs, 1726). Captured by giants, Gulliver
is enslaved and forced to satisfy the giant women’s lust. One could account for the
crudeness of the passages by the hypothesis that Jonathan Swift himself suffered
from perversion:
Yes, I might be dead and rather imperious and steadfastly opinionated, but I know the
blunt stink of misogyny when I smell it. And that it’s very likely Jonathan Swift found
himself the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and was now venting his rage in the pas-
sive-aggressive avenue of fantasy fiction. (73)
A few pages later, Madison compares herself to Gulliver when she tries to save
Archer’s blue head from the giant’s grip. Going through the giantess’s pubic hair
(like Jonathan Swift’s character in the memoirs), she tries to recover Archer’s
legs by giving an orgasm to the female monster. The parody is pushed even
further when Madison decides to play the bully and defeat Adolph Hitler by
pulling out his dammed moustache to finally vanquish Caligula. Death offers
her a golden opportunity: one of power, one of “die-ability” (207). Death allows
her to “see beyond the veil” (79) and encounter many famous dead like Charles
Darwin or Marilyn Monroe. Coaching an army of productive dead people, she
becomes “the nominal ruler of Hell” (245). As paradoxical as this may seem,
Madison does not miss being alive, thus turning down the offer made by demons
to be resuscitated.
Tropes of Death
The reader of the novel is brutalized by the use of various stylistic processes, such
as oxymoron, paradox, or synaesthesia. Archetypal conceptions of death are con-
stantly broken. In Hell, Madison describes her prison-like state: “Picture the ar-
chetypal all-white room, featuring no windows, which Jungian analysts say best
represents death. A demon with cat’s claws and folded leathery wings leans close
to adjust a blood-pressure cuff which is wrapped around my upper arm” (86).
Demons aside, Madison would side more with Jung’s view of an afterlife or the
conception of death as a goal than with her parents’ denial of death:
If they perceived death at all, it was only on the most superficial level, as the wrinkles and
gray hairs of very old people fated soon to expire. Therefore they seemed heavily invested
in the belief that if one could constantly maintain one’s personal appearance and mitigate
the signs of aging, then death would never be a pressing issue. To my parents, death existed
as merely the logical, albeit extreme, result of not adequately exfoliating your skin. (89)
Her “death-death” experience counterbalances her star-like parents’ shallow ap-

prehension of death. Even if Madison does not really long for her living parents,
the novel lingers upon the neglected relationship between the dead and the living.
The strangled Madison describes her spirit hovering in the room, watching her
mother scream. She draws the hotel curtains closed and turns on the light, but no
one notices; therefore, the power that death gives you is:
a kind of pointless, impotent power.
No one is discriminated against more than alive people discriminate against the dead.
Nobody is as badly marginalized. If the dead are portrayed in popular culture it’s as zom-
bies … vampires … ghosts, always something threatening to the living. The dead are
depicted the way blacks were in 1960s mass culture, as a constant danger and menace.
Any dead characters must be banished, exorcised, driven from the property like Jews in the
fourteenth century. Deported like illegal-alien Mexicans. Like lepers. […]
In the prejudiced, bigoted modern world, alive is alive. Dead is dead. And the two fac-
tions must not interact. […]
In reality, the dead are always around the living. (165)
Her new job in Hell is a perfect example of that wish coming true. As a telemar-
keting agent, the dead Madison is calling people from the afterlife, encouraging a
sad old lady to kick the bucket because “death will make her feel better” (111), or
telling a Memphis lady dying from cancer that “Hell is the happening place” (122).
She then meets them in Hell, along with her murderer Goran and her little living
kitten “no longer dead and stuffed in the plumbing of some luxury hotel” (219).
She indeed ends up having more around her once dead than when she was alive.
The living and the dead constantly interact.
Like the unwilling Lothario in J. G. Ballard’s “The Smile” (1976), Andrew
Compton takes decaying corpses to his bed to “cradle [their] creamy smoothness
all night” (3). In Brite’s novel, cadavers are not mannequins bought for sex, but
they are treated like “big dead dolls with an extra weeping crimson mouth or two”
(3). Both Lothario and Andrew keep the taxidermist’s or anatomist’s works in an
armchair, doing their best to maintain the bodies’ appearance of life before letting
them suffer, decay, and rot.
In the latter cases, the dead are given a tinge of life. In other cases, however,
the living see the dead as only living particles, or the living pretend to be dead.
In writing, death is definitely rubbing shoulders with life. This is what Danielle
Wieckowski observes in Mallarmé when she explains that “veiled displacements
are played against the crudeness of a morbid reality to bear the excessively brutal
encounter with nothingness and death” (my translation, 131). In Exquisite Corpse,
dying is an art. Once arrested for murder, the necrophile tries to experiment with
death by playing dead: “Sometimes I enhanced my natural pallor with blue-white
makeup, and later a trace of purple here and there, my own artistic interpretation
of lividity and gaseous stain” (7). Compton’s survival instinct leads him to reach
this hovering state between consciousness and void, which is achieved lexically as
well. The paradoxical makeup vision keeps blue overtones (like living veins) and
white shades (like a dazzling light). This is only an “artistic interpretation” that
contradicts the reality of corpses normally going through chromatic modifications.
Green, violet, and black color tones are the pragmatic reality of death, running
counter to the stereotyped spectral whiteness mentioned here. This initial descrip-
tion that retains some living traces corresponds to Compton’s body feigning death;
it has nothing to do with the thanatomorphic pictures to follow (i.e., rotting, stig-
matized, evil-smelling, murdered, and horrendous corpses).
Approaching or faking death can be repellent but fascinating, i.e., Marla and
Tyler (Fight Club) faking cancer to enter a talking group in a hospital, where they
meet the dying Chloe. With “dying and death and loss and grief ” (38) around her,
now Marla can live her life to the fullest. The dead are taken advantage of. This
echoes Compton’s consideration of the murdered Sam (a physics student) as noth-
ing but living particles and a regretted credit card code number:
He was nothing but particles now, if he had ever been anything more. I had only altered the
speed at which his particles were vibrating. Nothing in the universe had been disturbed. (64)
Just this morning I’d been dead too. I wished there were some sort of information inter-
change beyond the grave, some ghostly data bank listing the vital statistics of no-longer-
vital souls. (68)
The murderer focuses on the derisory nature of life (the body is nothing but living
particles lost in vastness) and the living’s function as consumers. Individual death
leaves the world unchanged. Similarly, when Tran is murdered and Jay is killed at
the end, both corpses fall on each other in oxymoronic descriptions: “they gave
birth to worms, generation after generation, until their bodies were covered as if
in a living blanket. Soon they were picked clean, their bones an ivory sculpture-
puzzle shining in the dark, waiting to tell their mute love story” (248). In a way,
they are restored to life in a stupendous sculpture and memorized through this art.
Christine Marcandier-Colard refers to a miniaturization strategy that leaves the
corpse with a trace of life or the sign of an aesthetic intensity (140). In this last de-
scription, exceptionally and almost sentimentally, Brite praises the glory of wormy
murdered bodies. Throught the novel, bodily integrity has been transgressed, and
it is restored here in a vainly compassionate vision.
In Damned, resuscitation is a constant condition. This liveliness is also ap-
parent in the idioms used that play on the contradiction between life and death,
usually by simultaneously flattening and maintaining the figurative level. The pol-
ysemous game on the verbs “die” or “live” provides a semantic gap that puts for-
ward the comic interchange between life and death. This process is best explained
by Bertrand Ferrier, who claims that “the reader is sent back to the complexity of
the concept of death itself through the different meanings of a sole word” (my
translation, 282). For example, the football man, Patterson, is restored only to
be tortured again forever after the leftovers are tossed back into his hellish cage.
At this point, Madison, who is getting bored in her cell, claims to meet a horned
figure—indeed, a demon of the Iranian desert called Ahriman: “Hello?! Madison,

here! … I’ve been dying to meet you!” (26). Of course, her expression works both
literally and metaphorically. That obvious double entendre favors the humorous
treatment of death. Again, in Hell “old habits die hard” (58). Indeed, while buried
in the coffin, Madison strives to listen to her heartbeats as if a static representation
of death was to be denied.
Brite’s climactic representation of the death pall as “a living blanket” made of
worms and Palahniuk’s insistence on heartbeats hyperbolically reinforce the inten-
sity of life in death. Damned traces back the way it felt for Madison “to be alive
and living” (133). Here, once more, our preconceptions of death are disturbed by
the modified idiomatic expressions (“to be alive and kicking”). Once dead, you are
more alive. Clichés are reinvested by imaginative impulses. The mystery of death
is rendered by the constant oscillation between what is known (culinary images are
an example) and what is unknown (images revolving around morbidity). At the in-
tersection of the two, the reader is faced with two cannibal serial killers sharing the
murdered flesh. Eating and dying can coexist as compatible partners; thus, death
is reduced to something that can be consumed (Brite, “that final taboo,” 161), or
that which is potentially edible or wasted (Damned). Madison describes herself
lying strangled on the floor of a hotel suite and being “reduced to the status of the
cooling food which surrounds [her]: [her] life only partially consumed. Wasted.
Soon to be consigned to the garbage. [Her] swollen, livid face and blue lips, they’re
merely a conglomerate of rancid fats” (159).
Further, during the deadly French kissing game, she describes her physi-
cal reactions as follows: “The skin of my cheeks had swollen slightly, becoming
puffy, similar to a soufflé d’apricot. My eyes, open only as slits, appeared as
glazed as the glassy surface of an overly caramelised crème brûlée” (144). Con-
trary to the previous passage, in which Madison’s murdered body was stripped
of all symbolic meaning (it was nothing but meat that had gone bad), the tasty,
exquisite corpse is reified but revitalized. In a similar vein, in Exquisite Corpse,
the reader is faced with “beautiful objects that their bodies were, the bright rib-
bons of blood coursing over the velvet of their skin, the feel of their muscles
parting like soft butter” (2). As in Antinéa’s neurosis, mentioned by Louis-Vin-
cent Thomas, the murderer is excited by the contemplation of his lover’s corpses
(18). With the culinary comparisons, the body is not treated as offal because the
deleterious effects of rotting and dying are postponed; thanatological writing
gives the illusion of a living corpse. Another possible understanding is that bod-
ies are made up to help the reader continue reading, paradoxically transcending
horrible descriptions through food imagery. Compton, the murderer, and the
deceased Madison are striving to get a last glimpse of eternal life by leaving their
culinary marks on themselves or on others. Death is indeed more practiced than
yielded to.
t h e p r a c t i c e o f d e at h
Near-Death Experiences
In both novels, the world of the living happens to be polluted and threatened. In
Damned, while on the phone with a certain Emily dying from AIDS, the strangled
Madison learns that the crowd next to her workstation in Hell is “a jillion tourists
[who] died of food poisoning from eating bad lobsters” (137). Some people in
Exquisite Corpse are said to be dying from cancer contracted at a chemical factory
(33). Another cause of death is HIV, seen by Tran as the abortion of life. Flirting
with death can also take the shape of near-death experiences. Literature seems to
be the adequate device to tell of those irrational adventures.
In these novels, though, near-death experiences are accounted for as fake or
unfathomable. Similarly, in Fight Club, Tyler, the narrator, describes Marla saying:
“I’m dying. Dying. I’m dying. Dying. Die-ing. Dying. […] She was doing the big
death thing, Marla told me” (59). Here, the repetition of the progressive form in
“-ing,” as well as the accentuated form “die-ing,” shows that death is something
voluntarily experienced, almost “lived” in the present. Indeed, death is only one ex-
perience among others, as Marla recognizes: “This was it, Marla said. The tunnel,
the light leading her down the tunnel. The death experience was so cool, Marla
wanted me to hear her describe it as she lifted out of her body and floated up” (60).
Her near-death experience is only that of a fake suicide from which she finally re-
covers. In Damned, the death tunnel’s existence is denied when Madison describes
the dying process as follows:
You can forget about the fabled tunnel of bright, spectral-white light and being greeted by
the open arms of your long-deceased grandma and grandpa. […] Those people enjoyed
what’s clearly labeled “a near-death experience.” I, on the other hand, am dead, with my
blood long ago pumped out and worms munching on me. (8)
The real near-death experience that she confesses having been through is the
result of the first French kissing game from which she recovered (144). While
some characters are flirting with their own potential deaths or looking at their
corpses from an ironic distance, other characters administer indecent deaths to
others through murder and torture. In Exquisite Corpse, Tran, the future Asian
victim, wishes what he calls “a decent death” on his poisonous former lover (Luke
planned to inject the HIV virus into his arm). This wish bedazzles his future
murderer ( Jay): “A decent death. The phrase struck Jay as odd. He supposed all
the deaths he delivered were flagrantly indecent, yet that was why he enjoyed
them” (113). At first, Tran’s innocent wish prevents Jay from killing the boy,
since he tries to “distract himself from fantasies of viscera” (120). However, this
distraction is short-lived.
Murder and Torture or Dying as Indecency

Jay and Compton’s fascination with tortured bodies and corpses soon returns as a
recurring pathological type of behavior. The book might show how killers think
they can apprehend the victim’s absolute singularity by trying to grasp their “in-
visible soul” (Derrida, Gift 15). Derrida refers to “a fleeing of the body towards its
interior” during the passage to death (15). In Brite’s novel, however, this process
is distorted: it is the one who gives death ( Jay, Andrew, and others) who is after
the victim’s interior. Starting from this misconception, murderers clearly enjoy the
others’ deaths and dying moments while perversely forgetting the idea that “death
is very much that which nobody else can undergo or confront in my place” (42).
Still, death is tentatively stolen from the victim. Murderers are thus striving to be
included in the others’ deaths, but their goal is never reached, as the victims’ suf-
fering renders it impossible and inaccessible. What is thus given preeminence is
the brutal spectacle of murder itself. Precise, anatomical, and scientific representa-
tions make readers pull back, but, since the narrator is the murderer, the narrator’s
accomplice—the reader—is inevitably drawn into the scene of torture.
The murderer, through his fascination with viscera, is seeing what Derrida
calls the “visible in-visible” (90), to get access to something secret and inaccessible
through sight. The inaccessible singularity of a human being is desecrated in Ex-
quisite Corpse. As we shall see, the dying corpse is paradoxically treated as a sacred
or defiled object while conveying an artistic impression. Thus, literature allows
itself to say everything to overcome death in writing. After having tortured a boy
he met in a café, Jay lets him die in his bathtub. The junkie sees his reflection in
a mirror, and then comes the horrible yet precious description of the dying boy:
He was a silver-white specter awash in the waterlight of dawn, his naked flesh luminously
pale. His chest and abdomen were crisscrossed with dark spray patterns of blood, delicate
as sea foam. His hair was stiff with it. His eyes were wide and wild, glittering.
He entered the bathroom. The dazzle of light on black and white tile was relieved by
glistening scrawls and blots of red, like handfuls of rubies thrown about. The boy was
curled upon himself in the bathtub, trussed at the wrists and ankles and tightly round
the skinny smooth thighs, his eyes bright with acid and hideous awareness. His body was
scoured, scraped away to raw nerve. Over the sharpest points of his body, cheeks and knees
and hips, Jay could see the blue-white gleam of bone. […]
The sun would be risen before the boy died. (75)
The raw vision offers the inverted description of the male corpse into a fetus when
“the boy was curled up upon himself,” as if the narrative superimposed images
of birth onto death. The impressionistic yet unbearable picture echoes Charles
Baudelaire’s repulsive and fascinating visions of female cadavers. In Baudelaire’s
“The Death of Lovers” (1857), the two spirits are reunited in mystic blue and
pink colors, and “the lifeless flame” is revived. In Brite’s text, red colors (blood
and rubies), as well as blue-white hues, take up the same idea of a potential revival
while simultaneously retaining Baudelaire’s idea of beauty that can turn into an
infectious object, as seen in “The Carcass” (1857). The point of view of Brite’s
corpse prose section is that of an omniscient narrator looking at a dying corpse,
killing him coldly with knife and words, with no mention of positive emotional
connotations except artistic tinges of light. Baudelaire’s corpse poems often men-
tion with clarity the poet’s attachment to the skeleton (“The Death of Lovers”),
or his “decomposed love” (“The Carcass”). In Poppy Z. Brite’s prose, the corpse is
deprived of all emotions, except artistic ones with the shared solar reference at the
end, ready to “shine down upon that putrescence” (Baudelaire’s “The Carcass”).
Like Baudelaire, who blurs the line between life and death, offering the vision
of a beautiful but stinking cadaver, Brite constructs an experimental contradicto-
ry biotope; strangely, it seems to mingle the work of an anatomist with that of a
painter or poet. Signs of death are disguised, yet the embalmed body retains signs
of vitality with “delicate” light images and reddish colors. The dying process appears
as a purification ritual as the words “awash,” “sea foam,” “relieved,” and “waterlight”
suggest. It is as if Brite wrote like a mortician, desecrating the corpse with her tech-
nical style and the violence of her accurate visions while also purifying the corpse,
thus rendering it visible and bearable to the readers. The scene paves the way for
death; the stiffness of the boy’s hair prepares for the stiffness of his limbs, and eyes
“wide and wild” are the testimony of his suffering and awareness of death. The im-
pressionist watercolor (the term “waterlight” might allude to Monet’s water lilies)
collides with morbid expressionist doodling. The moment catches precious rubies
to finally discard them, as if to show how the victim’s life is wasted. Louis-Vincent
Thomas argues that “giving death means dominating someone to be destroyed and
reduced to nothing; death is mastered by holding it in the hollow of one’s hand;
death is stripped of everything that could be mysterious or transcending” (159, my
translation). In effect, the description moves from light and watercolor images to
metonymic descriptions; the reality of the horrendous corpse gets the upper hand.
The metonymic strategy as a way to picture horror is recognized by Barthes in
Sade’s writing style (173). Brite’s victim, who “was a silver-white specter awash in
the waterlight of dawn,” can only transform into decaying body parts, “cheeks and
knees and hips,” or bone. What could be seen as transcending, artistic, or iridescent
fades away and ends up with the clear mention of the boy’s deferred but imminent
death. In addition to artistic visual images used as temporary ornaments to hide
indecent morbidity, humor is an “entertainment or diversion strategy to put a veil
on death” (149, my shortened translation of Guiomar’s formula).
Humor as a Coping Mechanism

Whereas dying is seen as a failure by those living around Madison, for her, death
is a big joke. The situation conveyed by Madison in Dammed is much lighter and
more derisory (she hopes to succeed in giving a slice of her death through humor)
than the dying part, as shown in Exquisite Corpse. The latter confronts the reader
with bloody corpses and dying victims, whereas in Damned, the dead are “no lon-
ger slave to a corporeal self ” (19). In Damned, torture is a funny feast. The football
player whose legs and torso are torn apart by a horned figure regularly comes back
to life (26). Because “the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part” (1),
her “death-death” (57) becomes a fascinating lived experience; as demonstrated by
the often grotesque and cartoon-like imagery.
Decapitation is laughable when a gigantic demon can “catch Archer and lift
him—cursing, kicking his boots, slashing with his pin—to where the teeth snap
shut, and in a single bite guillotine off his vivid blue head” (60). The stereotyped
image of the blue-blooded king armed with a longbow is here “irreversibly fucked
up” (45). Thus, Archer is seen as Madison’s powerless companion who is coma-
tosely murdered like a Lilliputian (Archer was a shoplifter but desires to be con-
sidered a serial killer). This dwarfish status finds its echo when Madison discusses
death’s illegality (“I mean, worms get to eat you. It’s like a complete violation of all
your civil rights”) and compares her tragic end to that of her goldfish flushed down
the toilet or to that of her kitten blocking the pipes (5).
Another coping mechanism appears to be the text’s sonorous body: accord-
ing to Jay in Exquisite Corpse, “the dying body falls into the rhythm” of the text.
Christine Marcandier-Colard suggests that sonorities and the flesh of the text
are one way to handle death’s incomprehensibility. For the critic, “writing about
murder is a form of poetic art, a mise-en-abyme of the effects of language” (246,
my translation).
h o w t o h a n d l e d e at h ’ s i n c o m p r e h e n s i b i l i t y
Dying as Absentia
One way to overcome death is to minimize or deny it. In Damned, Madison
denounces the lack of respect that the living impose upon the dead. For the
living, the dead are dead, and being dead is “a flaw” (4), an inferior status (3,
157), a “Big Mistake” (4). In Marcandier-Colard’s words, descriptions of death
appear at the crossroads between “ellipsis and a spectacle of the extreme” (171);
it is something that cannot be accounted for, rendered at best through blanks or
emptiness:
That’s what it’s like to be dead. Yes, I know the word absentia. I’m thirteen years old, not
stupid—and being dead, ye gods, do I comprehend the idea of absentia.
Being dead is the very essence of traveling light.
Being dead-dead means nonstop, twenty-four/seven, three hundred sixty-five days a
year … forever. (3)
After her parents’ shallow denial of anyone’s potential death, Madison is faced
with the void and uselessness that death entails, i.e., the fact that the living deny
her post-mortem existence. This theoretical void is nonetheless compensated
for by her actual hectic life in Hell, which the book invites the reader to explore
through humor.
The spectacle of the extreme characterizes Poppy Z. Brite’s writing style,
which offers transparent, direct, and absolute images of death. This frontal impact,
created by crude, raw, and often unbearable visions of dying and rotting corpses,
sometimes urges the reader to skip pages. With this reaction in mind, the reader
himself mimics the common denial of death. Even if Brite achieves a certain trans-
parency in her (re)presentations of death, it is the reader who refuses the idea that
language is able to offer its direct representation or “symmetrical transparency”
(Sollers, 18), one of the two poles that Philippe Sollers points out in the move-
ment of language. According to Sollers, “language oscillates between two poles
that are never reached […] that of insurmountable opaqueness and the symmetri-
cal pole of absolute transparency” (18, my translation).
In Brite’s case, death is directly rendered visible without being minimized, but
it is inevitably altered through words. Describing corpses amounts to crossing the
line. Literature can break taboos, allowing the reader to see the corpses as ordinary
objects or as something that can be transgressed or transcended through language.
Writers seem to lead readers into a dance of death, a sort of “danse macabre” to put
them face to face with their own potential end. However, this literary confrontation
has nothing to do with a morbid paralysis; on the contrary, the dead are exhibited as
alive and kicking. The ancient sacred feature of corpses, however, is erased. What is
kept in the writing process is, according to Louis-Vincent Thomas, “the fetishism
around death, aesthetic narcissism or poetic creation as means to overcome and
cancel the fear of death” (71). Louis-Vincent Thomas’s hypothesis might help the
reader understand Jay when faced with mutilated bodies. Indeed, torture and dying
bring some kind of ecstasy to the murderer: “Their flesh becomes like clay. Their
insides cleave to your lips. It becomes a collaboration” (180). This fusion goes as
far as becoming the peak moment when the tortured body “falls into your rhythm”
(180). Jay explains this process when torturing a boy:
[O]nce the body realizes it’s definitely, irrevocably going to die at your hands, it begins
to work with you. You might be choking a boy, or cutting or burning him, or your fingers
might be knuckle-deep in his guts, but at a certain point his body not only stops resisting—
it falls into your rhythm.
He reached for my hand across the table; it was the sort of bar where you could do that.
His fingers were damp where they had held his beer bottle, slightly bony, very strong. (180)
Thus, the surgical process that torture implies for Jay and Compton could serve
as the starting point for the parallel understanding of writing as dissection, the
exploration of the flesh of language. The murderous fingers are that of a writer
(and the reader) who plunges into textual matter, working with sounds and words,
displacing them, removing them, building up a poetic rhythm that compensates
for atrocity.
Similarly, we can understand Chuck Palahniuk’s constant use of refrains as a
way of introducing distance from eternal death. The syntactical echoes (each chap-
ter starts with the same refrain: “Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison”) function
as ironic tools that recall Madison’s liveliness and quick-wittedness: “I may be dead
and vivacious, but I’m not in denial concerning the manic first impression I can
make” (38). These hypothetical constructions are one way of creating a familiar
rhythm to palliate murderous descriptions. Can we consider that the text reaches
salvation and forgiveness when it displays a lyrical rhythm that beautifully ampli-
fies or tones down the scenes?
Death’s Din
In our contemporary society, cadavers tend to be regarded as cumbersome waste,
and corpses are impersonalized and stripped of their symbolic meaning. The way
both novels dare to deal with death displays the need to repair that loss. Writing
death or about death might be understood as an aesthetic and ideological man-
ifesto in an attempt to restore death’s symbolic relevance. This clue is echoed by
Kristeva’s idea that “the murderous apocalypse offers its lyrical face” (177). The
presence of death is acutely felt through its sound transcription or representation,
and the ontological havoc that death entails might be repaired via the softness of
sounds and the symbolic envelope it creates. That explains why readers continue
to read material on death. It might also account for Compton’s erotic murder of
Waring, one of the men responsible for his autopsy:
The almost-forgotten but instantly familiar thrill of the sagging weight in my arms …
the rapturous glaze slicking the half-closed eyes … the little way the fingers would stiffen,
tremble with some dying palsy, then curl into the palms … the sweet face lost in its endless
empty dream. I always liked blonds. Their complexions are naturally milky, so that the
tender veins show blue at the temples, and their blood-soaked hair is like pale silk seen
through ruby glass. (21)
What is experienced by the subject is akin to the little death or orgasm that the ex-
pression “the little way” might hint at. Some of the images are full of erotic energy,
which Bataille describes as erotic urges “assenting to life up to the point of death”
(Howarth and Leaman 175). Indeed, the text oscillates between pulsations of life
and ecstasy (the serial killer is killing and making love to the boy; he is “thrilled”
by his “rapturous gaze” and fascinated by the blue blood of this blond boy who dies
in “his arms”). This frenzy is toned down by an overall reasonable impression of
tenderness. Actually, the words used to connote love and beauty themselves alter-
nate between occlusive consonants (k, b in “milky,” “blood,” “blonds”) and alveolar
sounds (s, t, n, l in “little,” “sweet,” “liked,” “naturally,” “tender,” “silk”), creating an
impression of violence through fluidity. This aggressiveness is shown in the repe-
tition of occlusive sounds in words connoting death (“forgotten,” “sagging,” “lost,”
“endless empty,” “dying palsy,” “stiffen,” “pale”) combined with fricative consonants
(f and s sounds) that create a turbulent, sometimes vibrant, but continuous noise.
The sonorous envelope of the text mimics the shocking but sublime description of
the dying mortal’s coil in a killer’s arms.
This passage is a striking example of the way literature can draw beauty from
loss of life. The initial rhythm of the text (“the almost-forgotten but instantly
familiar thrill of the sagging weight in my arms”) alternates between soft sounds
(i.e., nasal, fricative and alveolar sounds) and violent occlusive consonants. This
alternation between open vowels (a) and closed ones (i, u) shows that the dying
boy with his “half closed eyes” hovers between life and death, the text moving from
heartbeats, pauses, and “dying palsy” to return to the final memories of the lovers’
erotic embrace. Truly, the refined poet has dirty hands; Brite’s poetry is crude but
vivid. The vital energy of the formal texture seems to run counter to the exhibited
morbidity of the scene. M. Raynal-Zougari puts forward the importance of “scan-
sion, the organic manifestation of speech which is similar to the movements of the
body” (139). It is thus the flow of the text and its poetic rhythm that absorbs the
shock of killing and dying. At other times, the text inscribes deadly moments in
its metaphorical architecture. This wish to prepare the ground for death and dying
functions as a parallel to the serial killers and their premeditated murders. For
example, when Jay and Andrew are waiting for Tran to arrive in order to kill him,
the narrative projects death fantasies onto the environment:
A pearly gibbous moon rode high in the curdled purple sky. The cathedral’s spire soared
upward, lacy as a New Orleans sepulchre, stabbing at veins of cloud. On the cobblestones
below, the ragtag nighttime denizens of the square drank, sang, ranted, or simply slept. “We
must have him,” I said with utter confidence, “and we shall have him.” (184)
Those inscape strategies make the reader share the experience of death through
the familiar metaphoric paths. Or, shall we consider that the text indicates to the
reader that all this is nothing but literature and that “this world of torture and
delicacies” (185) should not be taken for granted? Death is “a Christmas parcel, a
cornucopia of rare fluids and stinking scarlet treasures” (191) offered to the avid
reader. Aside from the direct speech of the murderers which makes their wishes
clear, the description above relishes in metaphors, often conventional ones. For
example, comparing the cathedral spire to a dagger is spiced up by the image of
the delicate and lacy tomb that alludes to Tran’s fragility and imminent death. The
anomaly of the landscape (the moon is misshapen and the sky is blemished with
the drunken crowd below) is a metaphorical trick that digs Tran’s grave.
Contrary to what M. Henaff analyzes as the depletion of the metaphorical

pole in Sade’s fragmented writing of the obscene body (29–30), in Brite’s novel,
writing takes on the metaphorical and emotional veins. It is not that Brite wants to
avoid dealing with death right in the reader’s face, but it is probably a roundabout
means of sublimating death and murder. She often resorts to the symbolic, thus
maintaining a way to see death as something else. However, the dagger is never far.
Mathet argues that “writing will always trim unbearable moments of the real, the
rawness of morbid reality, and suppress the mortiferous and brutal confrontation
with nothingness and death, but resort to dream, which shows the impossibility
of representation” (11, my translation). Effectively, when Birdy (a young junkie)
is killed by both Andrew and Jay, the reader is left with the disturbing poetic de-
scriptions of murder:
when I saw that first drop of blood—always, when I saw the first drop of blood, something
melted inside me. Like a wall of earth crumbling and dissolving in a hard rain, like a sheet
of ice breaking apart and letting a river run free. The knife parted skin and muscle, skated
over breastbone. (191)
After the series of similes that exhibit Jay’s feeling of freedom through murder, the
symbolic strategy fails, and the reader has to face the brutality of mutilation with
the metaphor of skating as a symbolical remnant.
With death as the main focus of the narrative and the anatomist work exerted by
the text, the disgusted but avid reader is like a surgeon who has the awkward feeling
of crossing a forbidden line. He has to face death. In Exquisite Corpse, literature does
not ask for forgiveness, since, according to Derrida, “Literature implies in principle
the right to say everything” (Gift 157) “because literature can say everything, accept
everything, receive everything, suffer everything, and simulate everything” (Demeure
30). The final descriptions speak for themselves. Luke (Tran’s ex-boyfriend) tries to
save Tran from Jay and Andrew’s murdering hands. He arrives too late:
Late in the year, New Orleans still has its hot days. In the slave quarters, Jay and Tran blos-
somed like the giant stinking carrion-flowers that grow in humid jungles. Their ravaged
abdomens swelled and burst like red-black petals, a jubilee of rot. Their putrescent fluids
pooled on the concrete floor and in the hollows of their disintegrating bodies. (247)
The paradoxical picture of the corpse as blossoming and stinking retains the
post mortem lightness of certain saints, Saint Theresa’s flower perfumes, and mys-
tic cadavers mentioned by Michel Fromaget (145–69); it also suggests what time
and murder can inflict on them. Chuck Palahniuk’s corpses are not mystic, but
friendly, as he mainly resorts to humorously hypothesizing about an afterlife. In
Damned, if one would die there, one would be alive. In Exquisite Corpse, the pro-
cess is inverted, which corresponds to Andrew Compton reading inscriptions on
the wall in the New Orleans French quarter: “IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D
BE DEAD” (147).
Both novels indeed invite readers to understand death as a gift, however excru-
ciating it might be. Death makes corpses change color according to the narrator’s
point of view and the writer’s offered vision. This vision is offered as a challenge
to the reader who is expecting to learn how “to take death upon himself ” (Derrida,
Gift 46), to use Derrida’s expression. The reader is experimenting with something
that is impossible to live, skipping pages the way we deny our fatal end—coming
back to it later, censoring some passages, or accepting them as art. Damned and
Exquisite Corpse are, in turn, experimenting with the idea of death as a vivid entity,
something to face and embellish before we all perish.
works cited
barthes, Roland. Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971.

Baudelaire, Charles. “Une Charogne,”, “Mort des Amants,” “Les Fleurs du Mal.” Ed. Auguste Poulet-
Malassis. Paris, 1857.
Brite, Poppy Z. Exquisite Corpse. 1996. London: Gollancz, 2008.
Derrida, Jacques. Demeure, Maurice Blanchot. Paris: Galilée, 1998.
———. The Gift of Death, and Literature in Secret, 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008.
Ferrier, Bertrand. “Les mots qui tuent. Enjeux des représentations de la mort dans les romans contem-
porains pour adolescents,” in Violence et écriture, violence de l’affect, voix de l’écriture. Ed. Sandrine
Bazille and Gérard Peylet, Eidôlon N°81. Pessac, France: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux,
2008. 263–295.
Fromaget, Michel. “Les cadavres extraordinaires, essai de thanatologie mystique,” in Etudes sur la
Mort, Revue de la Société de Thanatologie Paris: L’Esprit du Temps, 2006. 145–69.
Guiomar, Michel. Principes d’une esthétique de la mort. Paris: José Corti, 1988.
Henaff, Marcel. Sade ou l’invention du corps liberti. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978.
Howarth, Glennys, and Oliver Leaman, eds. Encyclopedia of death and dying. London: Routledge,
2001.
Kristeva, Julia. “Douleur/horreur,” in Pouvoirs de l’horreur, Essais sur l’abjection. Paris: Éditions du
Seuil, 1980. 163–82.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Scribner, 1997.
Marcandier-Colard, Christine. Crimes de Sang et scènes capitales, essai sur l’esthétique romantique de la
violence. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998.
Raynal-Zougari, Mireille. “Plasticité du texte brutal, ‘forme corvéable à merci’ de Pierre Michon,” in
Brutalité et représentation. Ed. Marie-Thérèse Mathet. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. 133–51.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Damned. London: Jonathan Cape, 2011.
———. Fight Club. New York: Vintage, 1996.
Sollers, Philippe. L’écriture et l’expérience des limites. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971.
Thomas, Louis-Vincent. Mort et pouvoir. Paris: Payot, 1999.
Wieckowski, Danielle. “Brutalité sur un plat: Mallarmé et Les Noces d’Hérodiade,” in Brutalité et
représentation. Ed. Marie-Thérèse Mathet. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. 117–33.
chapter t welve
“Stories Can Save Us”

Rewriting Death in Tim O’Brien’s
The Things They Carried
lori f . smurthwaite
introduction
Readers familiar with the ongoing critical discussion of Tim O’Brien’s fiction will
have recognized that one of the most frequently explored aspects of his work is his
persistent tendency to blur fiction and fact, imagination and memory, story and
truth. Tobey C. Herzog comments that O’Brien “frequently introduces narrative
deception and contradictions [lies] into his novels” and “draw[s] attention to his
narrators’ and his own unreliability” (893). Maria S. Bonn argues that the structure
of the novel Going After Cacciato (1978) makes it difficult for readers to “be certain
about what is present, past, and dreamed, what is the book’s fiction, and what is its
reality” (8). Tina Chen calls The Things They Carried (1990) “quasi-memoiristic”
(79), Lucas Carpenter describes the stories in the work as “fragments of Vietnam
experience constructed from both memory and imagination” (48), and Herzog
explains that O’Brien purposefully “creates confusion in […] readers’ minds about
whether details in the story emerge from O’Brien’s memory or imagination” (896).
Even O’Brien’s supposed memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone (1975), is, in Herzog’s
words, “marked by a jumbled chronology and fictional techniques of dialogue,
scene setting, dramatic heightening, imagery, and symbolism. The fictional devic-
es so dominate the factual events that early publishers of the book had difficulty
deciding whether the content was indeed fiction or nonfiction” (899).
Many critics connect O’Brien’s ambiguous manipulation of fact to the metafic-
tional nature of several of his works, commenting on the multiple ways that his
172 | lori f . smur thwaite
fiction, especially The Things They Carried, draws attention to itself as fiction. Car-
penter, in his “critical examination of the postmodern ‘status’ of both the war and
its fiction,” says that the stories in TTTC share “an ironic awareness of themselves”
as fragments of experience and memory (48). Catherine Calloway explores the
work’s “epistemological ambivalence,” calling it “a work of contemporary metafic-
tion” (250). Steven Kaplan explains that “[i]n The Things They Carried, representa-
tion includes staging what might have happened in Vietnam while simultaneously
questioning the accuracy and credibility of the narrative act itself. The reader is
thus made fully aware of being made a participant in a game, in a ‘performative
act’ […]” (48). Robin Silbergleid calls TTTC a work of “autobiographical metafic-
tion,” arguing that “the collection simultaneously acknowledges the epistemologi-
cal problem of postmodernity—the loss of certain knowledge—and establishes the
credibility that more traditional readers, perhaps, desire” (132). Like Silbergleid,
Martin FitzPatrick recognizes that O’Brien draws attention to the problem of
epistemological uncertainty in TTTC. FitzPatrick labels the work “subjunctive
narrative,” which he defines as “uncertain narrative, marked by an inherent un-
knowability” (244). The critical analyses mentioned constitute only a small sample
of the larger conversation about the factually ambiguous and metafictional nature
of O’Brien’s work.
While many critics have analyzed these aspects of TTTC to explore its place
in relation to Vietnam literature, historiography, postmodernism, or autobiography,
not as much has been said about O’Brien’s persistent attempts in the work to re-
write death. The fact that TTTC ends with a story titled “The Lives of the Dead”
suggests the significance of the dead to O’Brien and to the thematic content of the
work; in stories, “the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world,” he
asserts (255). It should not be surprising, then, that much of O’Brien’s metafictional
effort in TTTC is directed toward writing and rewriting the deaths of his charac-
ters. His goal is not preservation of their lives through stories, for that word implies
a fixed status; by writing alternative narratives for himself and for the dead, and
by refusing to grant the status of “truth” to any particular narrative, O’Brien opens
multiple and fluid narrative possibilities within which the dead can live.
truth and “story-truth”

In TTTC, alternatives to factual truth appear even before the narrative itself be-
gins. The copyright page contains the following disclaimer (albeit in very small
print): “This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author’s
own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary.” In addition, the
title page asserts that TTTC is “a work of fiction by Tim O’Brien.” Yet, O’Brien
acknowledges that he went to great effort to “compose a fiction with the texture,
“ s to ri e s c a n s av e u s ” | 173
sound and authentic-seeming weight of nonfiction,” a work that would “adhere to

the conventions of a memoir […]” (Smith). The dedication page informs read-
ers that “this book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in
particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry
Dobbins, and Kiowa,” suggesting that these men are (or were) actual soldiers.
Only a couple of pages later, an epigraph forcefully attests to the “truthfulness” of
“[t]his book” and commends it to the reader “as a statement of actual things by one
who experienced them to the fullest.” This epigraph is a quotation from John Ran-
som’s Andersonville Diary, a work about the Civil War, originally published in 1881.
Obviously, the original statement was not made in reference to TTTC but is pre-
sumably included as an epigraph to suggest the truthful nature of O’Brien’s work.
To add to this illusion of truth, the narrator of most of the stories in TTTC is an
author named Tim O’Brien, who recounts his experiences as a soldier in Viet-
nam. Flesh-and-blood author Tim O’Brien served as a soldier in Vietnam, and he
and fictional author and narrator Tim O’Brien share many significant biograph-
ical characteristics: both were born in Minnesota, graduated from Macalester
College, and did graduate work at Harvard after returning from the war.2 Both
wrote books titled If I Die in a Combat Zone and Going after Cacciato. However,
they are not the same person, as is evidenced by the moment when narrator Tim
O’Brien confides in us the difficulty of answering his daughter’s questions about
Vietnam, a daughter that flesh-and-blood author Tim O’Brien did not have when
he wrote TTTC (Bawer A13).
Despite the disclaimers (which readers may not see) that the work is fiction,
many readers conclude that what they are reading is more akin to autobiography.
Narrator Tim O’Brien repeatedly reinforces but then undermines this belief, al-
ternating claims like “this is true” (75), “it’s all exactly true” (77), and “it’s time to
be blunt” (203) with disclaimers like “even that story is made up” (203), “that’s a
true story that never happened” (90), and “even if it did happen, it didn’t happen”
in the way the real O’Brien has just described (91). As Jon Volkmer points out, “In
many places the narrative claims to be dropping the pretense of fiction in order to
tell the reader what ‘really’ happened, only to snap the fictive trap” (246). In one of
the most oft-quoted lines of TTTC, O’Brien declares to the reader, “I want you to
know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (203). Fiction, he
explains in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” can “heat up the truth” and “make
it burn” so that the listener or reader feels the truth (101). In the story titled “How
to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien states, “A true war story, if truly told, makes the
stomach believe” (84). Story-truth, however, is not equivalent to merely privileging
fiction or emotion over fact. Donna Pasternak explains that the episodic, non-lin-
ear nature of O’Brien’s war stories “mirror[s] the actual act of remembering events
from long ago” (43); added to that act of remembering is “the employment of the
imagination to achieve the ‘idea of truth’” (42). The resultant “history,” Pasternak
adds, “whether actual or fictional, is communicated through fantasy to achieve the

sense of atrocity and horror, and also to evoke the sense of detachment, encoun-
tered in Vietnam” (44).
The desire to sort fact from fiction in both O’Brien’s stories and biography is
understandable, but it misses the point of his project. Story-truth, like the post-
modern era TTTC was written in, is not a fixed entity. Story-truth is a process of
narrating and re-narrating. As O’Brien describes it in “How to Tell a True War
Story, “all you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting,
making up a few things to get at the real truth. […] You can tell a true war story if
you just keep on telling it” (91). Pasternak argues, “Realistic representation is not
enough for O’Brien; he is determined to represent experience fully even as he iron-
ically realizes this is a representation which can never approach true experience”
(44). She adds, “Intrinsic to these works is a postmodern awareness of the futility of
this entire exercise—the writing of the work itself—and of how O’Brien will never
overcome this sense of awareness while he is simultaneously dedicated to complete
the exercise anyway and attempt, one more time, to tell his stories again” (44–45).
Moreover, the fluid nature of story-truth applies not only to what is told but also to
the teller. In story-truth, even every “O’Brien” is changeable: “The narrative voice
in The Things They Carried is neither Tim O’Brien the character nor Tim O’Brien
the author nor Tim O’Brien the narrator—such a process of identification is
not germane in the pursuit of this ‘truth.’ Each O’Brien is called into question”
(Pasternak 48).3 Thus, story-truth also transforms the teller. O’Brien explains,
“[A]s I write about these things, the remembering is turned into a kind of rehap-
pening” (36), an act of “invent[ing] myself ” (203). The teller does not just relive
experiences (again, implying their fixed status) but experiences slightly altered re-
alities with each telling and, like O’Brien, becomes a changed and changeable nar-
rator. The “truth,” then, found in story-truth, exists only in varying iterations—of
the events and the people who experience them—transformed by memory and
imagination, always calling for reiteration.
keeping the dead alive through stories
Story-truth can transform even what is seemingly the least negotiable human ex-
perience—death. Stories “make things present,” explains O’Brien (204); the men
of Alpha Company “kept the dead alive with stories” (267). Stories are “a way of
bringing body and soul back together, or a way of making new bodies for the souls
to inhabit” (267–68). He asserts, “The bodies are animated. You make the dead
talk” (261). The stories in TTTC make the dead present, thereby offering the dead
and their narrative creators new possibilities for life. Thus, “stories can save us,”
O’Brien concludes (255).
Fellow Vietnam soldiers Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa, along with
an unknown Viet Cong soldier, are among those who are reanimated through
continuously varying, sometimes even contradictory, narratives of their deaths.
Readers are first introduced to Ted Lavender in the title story, one of the few
stories in TTTC in which the narrative voice does not belong to Tim O’Brien or
some other named narrator. This voice is, for the most part, a matter-of-fact and
objective third-person. All we learn of Lavender is that he “was scared” and “car-
ried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in
mid-April” (4). He is mentioned again at the end of the paragraph in the context
of the weight of the things the men routinely carry, including “a green plastic pon-
cho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent” to protect
against the cold and the monsoons. “With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed
almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted
Lavender was shot,” the narrator adds flatly, “they used his poncho to wrap him
up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took
him away” (5). In this context, both Lavender and the poncho are simply burdens
the men carry “by necessity” (4).
However, the next two paragraphs begin the process which is continued
through the rest of the title story, of revealing some of the more human aspects and
emotional weight of what the men carry. The platoon leader, Jimmy Cross, “car-
ried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men” (6). The medic,
Rat Kiley, carried “morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and
comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M’s for especially
bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 20 pounds” (6–7). Ted Lavender, “who
was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and
he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition,
plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquil-
izers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear” (7). This version repeats the infor-
mation readers initially learned about Lavender—that he was scared, that he took
tranquilizers, that he was eventually killed outside Than Khe—but the revised
version of Lavender emphasizes his humanity in the form of a frightened soldier.
Subsequent retellings of the event by Lavender’s fellow soldiers emphasize
their reactions to his death: “Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching
a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down—not like the
movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over
teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom.
Down” (7). Platoon leader Jimmy Cross “blamed himself,” believing he was care-
less because he was distracted by thoughts of a girl back home (8). This narrative
reiterates that the men “wrapped Lavender in his poncho” but adds that they
“sat smoking the dead man’s dope until the chopper came.” Drugs do not pro-
vide sufficient escape from the reality of what they have just witnessed; the men
load Lavender’s body onto the helicopter for evacuation, and then the narrator
adds matter-of-factly, “Afterward they burned Than Khe” (8). In this version of
burning the village, there is no elaboration on that act of anger and vengeance.
The reader is left to imagine the destruction they wreak. Clearly, however, de-
stroying the village does not alleviate the pain of Lavender’s death, as evidenced
by Kiowa’s need to keep talking about it: “how you had to be there, how fast it
was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said.
Like cement” (8). Kiowa’s obsessive reiterations, sprinkled throughout the title
story, seem to freeze the moment that Lavender dies, as if to prevent time from
resuming without him.
After Lavender’s body is taken away, phrases such as “In the first week of
April, before Lavender died” (9), “Until he was shot” (10), “Before Lavender died”
(11), and “On the morning after Ted Lavender died” (22) reinscribe his presence
by establishing the chronology of events in relation to when he is shot. However,
the overall chronology is jumbled and disordered: Lavender is dead, and the men
burn Than Khe; then he is alive again, watching with the rest of the men as Lee
Strunk crawls into a tunnel to search it; then Lavender “pop[s] a tranquilizer,”
moves away from the group to urinate (12), and is “shot in the head on his way
back from peeing” (13). At this point, the story emphasizes the gruesome reality
of his wounds (“He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was
a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone”) and, again,
the men’s need to keep talking about him (“Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy’s
dead. The guy’s dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound—the guy’s dead. I
mean really”) (13). That night, Kiowa again describes Lavender’s death to Norman
Bowker: “I swear to God—boom, down. Not a word” (17). Bowker initially tells
Kiowa to shut up but later tells him to “talk,” to “tell it” again (18). In one sense,
words are life: Lavender died without “a word,” but the living can bring him back
through “talk.”
This time, after the chopper takes Lavender away, the narrative offers a much
more detailed description of the destruction of the village, an act that, in this ver-
sion, seems precipitated by Jimmy Cross’s feelings of guilt over Lavender’s death,
for readers learn that “Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned
everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village well, they called
in artillery and watched the wreckage, then they marched for several hours through
the hot afternoon, and then at dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died,
Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling” (16, italics mine). In the next story,
“Love,” Cross visits O’Brien “many years after the war.” A photograph of Laven-
der, a representation of him in life, leads Cross to admit that “he’d never forgiven
himself for Lavender’s death” (29). Here, Ted Lavender exists to remind readers
of the irreversible and endless consequences of the war in the lives of the soldiers.
However, O’Brien will not let this be the end of Lavender’s story or his life. In
“Spin,” the story that follows “Love,” Lavender is back, on tranquilizers, declaring,
“‘We got ourselves a nice mellow war today’” (36).
a lt e r n at i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s f o r t h e l i v i n g a n d t h e d e a d
The repeated reanimations of Lavender establish a pattern for how O’Brien will
overwrite the death of other characters in the rest of the work. In “Spin,” Curt
Lemon, like Ted Lavender, is first introduced to us in a phrase that abruptly es-
tablishes his death as a fait accompli: “Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree.”
The cause of his death is not clear, but the impact of the memory on O’Brien is:
“the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening. Kiowa yells at me. Curt
Lemon steps from the shade into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining,
and then he soars into a tree. The bad stuff never stops happening; it lives in its
own dimension, replaying itself over and over” (36). Like Kiowa, O’Brien cannot
stop telling stories that demand to be told. His daughter tells him that he should
“forget about” the war stories, “[b]ut the thing about remembering is that you
don’t forget,” O’Brien reminds us, “The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up in
your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows
in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a
writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as
they come at you” (38).
In “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien returns to Curt Lemon’s death.
However, he describes it as if Lemon’s death is a new event and O’Brien is pro-
cessing it for the first time. We do not find out for several paragraphs that the
death is Lemon’s and the sentence that begins the account actually refers to Rat
Kiley: “A friend of his gets killed, so about a week later Rat sits down and writes
a letter to the guy’s sister” (75). In this letter, Rat tells stories about his friend that
are, alternately, worrisome (he volunteered for “dangerous stuff, like doing recon
or going out on these really badass night patrols”), vulgar (he had “stainless steel
balls”), racist (he “liked testing himself, just man against gook”), unintentionally
disturbing (he “made the war seem almost fun, always raising hell and lighting up
villes and bringing smoke to bear every which way”) (75), and horrifyingly funny
(one Halloween, a “real hot spooky night, the dude paints up his body all different
colors and puts on this weird mask and hikes over to a ville and goes trick-or-
treating almost stark naked, just boots and balls and an M-16”) (76). The stories
depict the force of Curt Lemon’s personality, but equally important is how they
reveal the depth of Rat’s feelings for his friend. The inappropriate nature of these
stories being sent to the dead man’s sister never strikes Rat. He “pours his heart
out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world,” so
he is saddened and angered when she does not write back (76).
The next paragraph finally tells us that “the dead guy’s name was Curt Lemon”
(77), and, if readers are able to merge O’Brien’s earlier account with the details
of Kiley’s letter, they will realize that Kiley’s friend is the same man who soared
up into a tree. This version depicts Rat and Curt together, playing catch with
smoke grenades, “giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly
game they’d invented.” O’Brien assures readers that what he is telling us is “all
exactly true” (77), but, only a few lines later, he admits that “[i]t’s hard to tell you
what happened next. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which
must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step
from the shade into bright sunlight” (78). Readers may well focus on the implied
danger suggested by the word “detonator” in the previous sentence and overlook
the doubt suggested by the words “I suppose.” That phrase, following the assertion
that the story is “all exactly true,” makes the latter claim questionable. The story
of Lemon’s death, O’Brien confides, is one that makes his “stomach believe” (84),
so it is not surprising that he admits he has told the story of Lemon’s death “many
times, many versions” (85). One of the most horrifying versions is not the story of
Lemon’s death, exactly, but the story of Kiley’s response to it. In one of the most
brutal scenes in TTTC, Rat slowly kills a baby water buffalo, shooting off pieces of
the animal a little at a time. The account of the baby water buffalo’s death, which
in “real time” took place after Lemon died, precedes and anticipates the next, also
horrifying, rendition of Lemon’s death in that both animal and soldier are literally
blown to bits:
In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said some-
thing to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sun-
light, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging
there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember
the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that
must’ve been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me
up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts. (89)
The final account of Lemon’s death told in “How to Tell a True War Story” repeats
several details mentioned in earlier versions: “the sunlight on Lemon’s face,” his
“half step from shade into sunlight,” and “his face suddenly brown and shining.”
Then O’Brien speculates about Lemon’s thoughts at the moment of death: “When
his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that
was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round.” O’Brien’s
commentary reveals his compulsion to tell and retell the story in spite of his frus-
tration at not being able to capture the truth of the experience: “If I could ever get
the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and
lift him high into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that
light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last
thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth” (90). This
final version again acknowledges the inability of language to contain the “truth”
of events yet emphasizes the need to keep telling stories, which is the only way to
approach the “truth” about events and about the dead. In O’Brien’s words, “When
a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and
then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then
afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness,
which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and
exact truth as it seemed” (78).
d e at h a n d r e s p o n s i b i l i t y
The question of truth as it seems becomes especially relevant to O’Brien when he tries
to work through the guilt of his own complicity in the war effort and, therefore, in
the deaths of other people, both Vietnamese and American. True to form, O’Brien
first mentions Kiowa’s death only in passing, as he remembers “Kiowa sinking into
the deep muck of a shit field” in “Spin” (36). He does not elaborate until over halfway
through TTTC, in the fifteenth story, “Speaking of Courage,” which jumps ahead
in time to just after Norman Bowker has returned home from Vietnam. The story
follows Bowker, driving his father’s Chevy around a lake in his hometown over and
over again. Bowker is weighed down by his war experiences, rehearsing the stories he
would like to tell, but fears he cannot tell, to others—his father or an ex-girlfriend,
for example. He fantasizes about telling his father that he “almost won the Silver
Star,” an award given for “uncommon” bravery or valor. He wants to be able to talk
“about the medal he did not win and why he did not win it” (161).
Gradually, as Bowker circles the lake, the story is revealed. Unintentionally,
Alpha Company makes camp one night in a field the villagers used as a toilet.
The rain is falling hard, and then the camp starts getting hit with mortar rounds.
Bowker hears screaming and then sees Kiowa almost completely immersed in the
muck. He tries to pull Kiowa out but is overcome by the smell and the horror
of the scene: “He pulled hard but Kiowa was gone, and then suddenly he felt
himself going too. He could taste it. The shit was in his nose and eyes. There
were flares and mortar rounds, and the stink was everywhere—it was inside him
in his lungs—and he could no longer tolerate it. Not here, he thought. Not like
this.” Bowker “released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away” (168). Later stories
about that night, told in “In the Field,” reveal that other men of Alpha Company
also blame themselves for Kiowa’s death, among them Jimmy Cross, because he
gave the order to camp there, and a young unnamed soldier (possibly O’Brien),
because he turned on a flashlight in order to show Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend
and gave away the position of their camp.
The piece that follows “Speaking of Courage” is simply called “Notes.” It is

not a stand-alone story, as it purports to be author Tim O’Brien’s reflections on
how the story “Speaking of Courage” came to be. O’Brien explains that it was
written “at the suggestion of Norman Bowker,” who read O’Brien’s first book, If
I Die in a Combat Zone, and wrote to him, asking him to write about the night
Kiowa died. “Norman Bowker’s letter hit me hard,” confides O’Brien; it prodded
him to rework a story he had originally written for Going After Cacciato (179–80).
O’Brien details his process of reworking the story, describes what he added and
omitted, and finally confesses that he feels the original version failed because of
his own “failure to tell the full and exact truth about our night in the shit field”
(181). Bowker’s letter is poignant; he asks O’Brien to “write a story about a guy
who feels like he got zapped over in that shithole. […] This guy wants to talk
about it, but he can’t […]” (179). Bowker’s story is even more heart-rending when
we learn that he later hanged himself from a water pipe in a YMCA. So, ten years
after Bowker’s death, O’Brien hopes “that ‘Speaking of Courage’ makes good on
Norman Bowker’s silence” (181). Then he adds, “In the interests of truth, however,
I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what
happened to Kiowa. Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He
did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my
own” (182). At the moment of this admission, it is easy for readers to forget that
Bowker is a character, one of the fictional members of Alpha Company, and, thus,
in spite of O’Brien’s declaration that he has tried to tell the “full and exact truth”
in this revised version, whatever Bowker has asked or inspired him to tell is part
of O’Brien’s fiction.
What impels O’Brien to take responsibility for a death he has fictionalized
gains clarity and force as, five times during the course of four separate stories, he
tells us about his involvement in the death of a young Viet Cong soldier. The first
account is a minimalist seven sentences that not only reads but is also structured
on the page like poetry:
A red clay trail outside the village of My Khe.
A hand grenade.
A slim, dead, dainty young man of about twenty.
Kiowa saying, “No choice, Tim. What else could you do?”
Kiowa saying, “Right?”
Kiowa saying, “Talk to me.” (40)
In the second version, related in “The Man I Killed,” soldier O’Brien cannot stop
describing the appearance of the young man whom he has apparently just killed
with a grenade. O’Brien details his wounds (“His jaw was in his throat, his upper
lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole
[…]”), and the features that are unaltered by the explosion (the cowlick in his hair,
his “lightly freckled” skin, his clean fingernails, his “bony legs,” “narrow waist,” and
“long shapely fingers”) (139). These features lead O’Brien to ponder the man’s
identity, and he creates a hypothetical backstory for the young man: “His chest
was sunken and poorly muscled—a scholar, maybe.” Perhaps he would have grown
up “in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province,
where his parents farmed, and where his family had lived for several centuries
[…]” (139).
Inwardly, O’Brien speculates about the soldier’s doubts and fears or perhaps
projects his own onto the young man: “He would have been taught that to defend
the land was a man’s highest duty and highest privilege. […] Secretly, though, it
also frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and
frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics” (140).
“‘Stop staring,’” Kiowa tells Tim, but all O’Brien can do is tell himself the man’s
story again. Some details are the same: his fingernails are clean; his chest is “sunken
and poorly muscled” (142). He is a mathematician, but this time he also writes
“romantic poems in his journal” and falls in love with a classmate at the university
(143). “He knew he would die quickly” once he went to war; “He knew he would
fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people” (144). Significantly,
the story “The Man I Killed” ends with Tim still silently pondering the body while
Kiowa repeatedly demands, “‘Talk,’” thereby inviting O’Brien to invent other pos-
sibilities for the dead soldier and for himself.
Other versions, told in “Ambush,” are precipitated many years later by
O’Brien’s daughter, Kathleen, when she asks if he killed anyone in Vietnam. He
cannot tell the nine-year-old Kathleen the story of the Viet Cong soldier, but he
wants “someday” to be able to tell the grown-up Kathleen “exactly what happened,
or what I remember happening” (147). This version focuses on how O’Brien felt
when he saw “the young man come out of the fog.” O’Brien does not call him a sol-
dier. He recounts that the man “seemed at ease,” unaware of the Americans nearby.
Pulling the pin and throwing the grenade were “entirely automatic,” O’Brien says,
prompted by “the reality of what was happening in my stomach”:
I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of
morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow
whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and
sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him
go away—just evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill
up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. (148)
Reflecting on this event twenty years later, O’Brien concludes that “[t]here was
no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will
always be that way. […] Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I
forgive myself, other times I don’t” (149). So, occasionally, he tells himself another
version that allows the young man’s life story to remain open, a version in which
O’Brien does not throw the grenade, and the Viet Cong soldier passes by safely:
“I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. I’ll watch him
walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and
he’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and
then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog” (150).
Five stories later, in “Good Form,” O’Brien insists, “[…] twenty years ago I
watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I
was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough.” O’Brien feels compelled,
however, to remind us that what we are hearing is story-truth: “[L]isten,” he com-
mands; “Even that story is made up” (203). Happening-truth is fixed and closed
while story-truth reminds the living of their responsibility to the dead: “Here is the
happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with
real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years
later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief ” (203). Because stories
can “make things present,” O’Brien explains, “I can look at things I never looked
at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make
myself feel again” (204). So, when Kathleen asks O’Brien to “tell the truth” about
whether he killed anyone, he concludes, “[…] I can say, honestly, ‘Of course not.’
Or I can say, honestly, ‘Yes’” (204). Because the “I” telling the story—the narrator,
the father, the childless veteran, the writer, the soldier—is as fluid as the process
of story-telling, O’Brien can tell contradictory truths to a daughter who does not
exist except within story-truth. Furthermore, even though happening-truth may
suggest that O’Brien was not directly responsible for the Viet Cong soldier’s (or
Kiowa’s) death, the fluidity of story-truth allows him to take responsibility for
what he feels responsible for.
Perhaps because O’Brien feels responsibility both for and to the dead, in the
closing story of TTTC, “The Lives of the Dead,” he brings them all back simul-
taneously: “I keep dreaming Linda alive,” he says. “And Ted Lavender, too, and
Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled
beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into
a truck. They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead
sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (255). “By naming the dead,”
Chen argues, “O’Brien’s narrative persona acknowledges the inanimate bodies that
animate—and, in turn, are animated by—his text(s).” Curt Lemon’s “dismembered
body evokes O’Brien’s own narrative project, which goes about the job of remem-
bering Curt Lemon as it re-members him for that brief moment before the boo-
by-trapped round explodes” (88). O’Brien’s list of remembered dead also marks
his first mention of Linda, a beloved childhood friend who died of a brain tumor.
The story implies that Linda’s death provided O’Brien his “first look at a real body”
(257). Not surprisingly, O’Brien is reminded of Linda on his fourth day in Vietnam
when he encounters the body of a dead villager, so it makes sense that in “The Lives
of the Dead,” stories about Linda are juxtaposed with stories of the men of Alpha
Company. O’Brien concludes that “[t]he human life is all one thing, like a blade
tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a mid-
dle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. And as a writer now,” he wants “to save
Linda’s life. Not her body—her life.” Later, he adds that he wants to save himself;
he is “Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (273). “[Y]ou dream it as you
tell it,” he muses, “hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this
way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head”
(259–60). The Linda that Timmy brings back in his stories tells him that being
dead is “like being inside a book that nobody’s reading. […] An old one. It’s up on a
library shelf, so you’re safe and everything, but the book hasn’t been checked out for
a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick it up and start
reading” (273). “Often,” the stories are “exaggerated, or blatant lies,” he confides
(267), but they offer a way to keep the dead “right here, in the spell of memory and
imagination” (273).
co n c lu s i o n
As can be expected, the persistent blurring of fact and fiction in O’Brien’s work
has invited equally persistent attempts to sort fact from fiction and memory from
imagination. Add to the difficulty of this task the fact that, as Herzog documents,
author Tim O’Brien occasionally likes to “[fuse] lies and facts, memory and imag-
ination, and fiction and reality” in his public life—“college classes, public read-
ings, and interviews”—as well as in his works (895). Herzog notes, “Despite the
pitfalls and O’Brien’s warnings that sorting through the facts and fictions of his
life and works is misdirected, this interest for his reading and listening audience
in replacing mystery with certainty and inconsistency with consistency is inev-
itable” (897). Also inevitable, perhaps, is a certain amount of frustration among
some readers and critics at what they interpret as game playing and deception
on O’Brien’s part (Herzog 895). However, as Maria Bonn argues, “the dizzying
interplay of truth and fiction in [The Things They Carried] is not solely aesthet-
ic postmodern gamesmanship but a form that is a thematic continuation of the
author’s concern throughout his career with the power and capability of story”
(13). Kaplan explains, “Storytelling in this book is something in which ‘the whole
world is rearranged’ (39) in an effort to get at the ‘full truth’ (49) about events that
themselves deny the possibility of arriving at something called the ‘full,’ meaning
certain and fixed, ‘truth’” (46). Furthermore, Kaplan adds, “By giving the reader
facts and then calling those facts into question, by telling stories and then saying
that those stories happened (147), and then that they did not happen (203), and
then that they might have happened (204),” O’Brien raises the question of how “a
work of fiction [can] become paradoxically more real than the events upon which
it is based […]” (46).
Even the structure of TTTC draws attention to its ambiguous nature. It is
closer to a story-cycle, a collection of interrelated stories, than it is to a novel. Its
title page simply refers to it as “a work of fiction.” Arguably, its very generic inde-
terminacy reflects the postmodern assumption that the truth of experience is frag-
mented and cannot be contained within a single unified perspective or narrative.
Thus, the desire to settle the questions “What is factual? What is imagined?” miss-
es the point that any possible “truth” in O’Brien’s world exists most fully in multiple
narratives of events. Volkmer concludes that O’Brien succeeds in “portray[ing] the
war as a cacophony of competing truths, but not one that reduces itself to chaos
or meaninglessness” (252). Indeed, because O’Brien’s refusal to grant the status of
truth to any particular narrative keeps the dead alive, settling the question of fact
versus fiction would deny the power of alternative narratives to create alternative
possibilities for either the dead or for their narrators. The dead would stay dead;
the living would stay lost.
notes
1. Hereafter, The Things They Carried will be referred to as TTTC.

2. This biographical information can be found in the blurb about the author in TTTC.
3. Many critics have felt the need to differentiate between the flesh-and-blood author Tim O’Brien
and the character/author Tim O’Brien, but, because the implied “O’Brien” in TTTC is a fluid
construct, I will not make that differentiation through the rest of this discussion.
works cited
Bawer, Bruce. “Bookshelf: Confession or Fiction? Stories from Vietnam.” Wall Street Journal 23 Mar.
1990: A13. ProQuest. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
Bonn, Maria S. “Can Stories Save Us? Tim O’Brien and the Efficacy of the Text.” Critique: Studies
in Contemporary Fiction 36.1 (1994): 2–15. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 Aug.
2012.
Calloway, Catherine. “‘How to Tell a True War Story’: Metafiction in The Things They Carried.” Cri-
tique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 36.4 (1995): 249–57. MLA International Bibliography.
Web. 15 Aug. 2012.
Carpenter, Lucas. “‘It Don’t Mean Nothin’’: Vietnam War Fiction and Postmodernism.” College Lit-
erature 30.2 (2003): 30–50. JSTOR. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.
Chen, Tina. “‘Unraveling the Deeper Meaning’: Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.” Contemporary Literature 39.1 (1998): 77–98. JSTOR.
Web. 16 Aug. 2012.
FitzPatrick, Martin. “Indeterminate Ursula and ‘Seeing How it Must Have Looked,’ or ‘The Damned
Lemming’ and Subjunctive Narrative in Pynchon, Faulkner, O’Brien, and Morrison.” Narrative
10.3 (2002): 244–61. Project Muse. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.
Herzog, Tobey C. “Tim O’Brien’s ‘True Lies’ (?).” Modern Fiction Studies 46.4 (2000): 893–916. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 23 July 2012.
Kaplan, Steven. “The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Car-
ried.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 35.1 (1993): 43–52. MLA International Bibliog-
raphy. Web. 15 Aug. 2012.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin, 1990. Print.
Pasternak, Donna. “Keeping the Dead Alive: Revising the Past in Tim O’Brien’s War Stories.” Irish
Journal of American Studies 7 (1998): 41–54. JSTOR. Web. 9 Oct. 2012.
Silbergleid, Robin. “Making Things Present: Tim O’Brien’s Autobiographical Metafiction.” Contem-
porary Literature 50.1 (2009): 129–55. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 Sept. 2012.
Smith, Jack. “The Things He Carries: For Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War Has Remained a Crucible
in His Fiction, but the Power of Imagination and Memory, and ‘Our Elusive Interior Worlds,’
Loom Large, Too.” Writer 123.7 (2010): 16–47. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
Volkmer, Jon. “Telling the ‘Truth’ about Vietnam: Episteme and Narrative Structure in The Green
Berets and The Things They Carried.” War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the
Humanities 11.1 (1999): 240–55. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
part five
Death as an Expression of
Personal Experience
chapter thirteen
Tears and the Art of Grief

james brown
We all die and feel the loss of those that go before us. This universal experience,
however, is registered in different ways. Virtually all people are capable of weeping,
but the meaning of tears varies from culture to culture. Darwin noted that once
the capacity to weep has been achieved in infancy, it becomes “the primary and
natural expression […] of suffering of any kind.” However, habit may restrain or
encourage weeping so that cultural variations in weeping may develop (Darwin
156). This essay reflects upon this combination of near universality and cultural
specificity. It considers the representation of tears and mourning in a handful of
literary works, and explores some problems relating to the public expression of
emotion and the shaping of its forms.
A standard sociological/anthropological model of mourning posits three
phases: the passivity of being bereaved; the private, but active work of grief; and
public and communal rituals of mourning (Watkin 6). One might suppose that
the last of these phases becomes problematic with the advent of modernity. As
communal social bonds weaken and certain kinds of individualism gain ground,
it might seem that we moderns are cut off from the sustaining power of ritualized
myth. If this were so, it would generate a certain kind of historical meta-narrative,
albeit one capable of running in two ways: as lament for lost meaningfulness and
community, or as a story of emancipatory progress. Neither is satisfactory.
The works discussed in this essay—Scott’s The Antiquary (1816), the Iliad,
and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1604/1623)—suggest that mourning or its represen-
tation is problematic. If one goes back to the Iliad, one can start to see certain
historical changes, especially having to do with the classical literary theory of
190 | james br own
decorum and the changing value attached to rank and action. But even in the Ili-
ad, at least one instance of mourning exemplifies the supposedly modern problem
of vitiated ritual. The genre of elegy seeks not to represent but to participate in
mourning, and is thus implicitly committed to its success. However, it is impos-
sible while dwelling upon a topic haunted by death, as this one is, not to wonder
whether there is not a way of looking at mourning that suggests it is a doomed
enterprise.
Sir Walter Scott’s third novel, The Antiquary, represents and reflects upon a
collision between different cultures, cultures that one might suppose were histor-
ically separate, but which, in the world of the novel, coexist in the same moment.
Scott’s novel has a convoluted plot, but the plot is not what readers remember. In
the “Advertisement,” he lays claim to success in a different, Wordsworthian aspect
of the novel:
I have […] sought my principal personages in the class of society who are the last to feel
the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each other the manners of different
nations. Among the same class I have placed some of the scenes in which I have endeav-
oured to illustrate the operation of the higher and more violent passions; both because the
lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and because I
agree with my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest
and most powerful language. (Scott 3)
The incident that most clearly exemplifies the Wordsworthian portrayal of funda-
mental passions concerns the Mucklebackits, a family of fisherfolk, whose oldest
son, Steenie, has been drowned. In chapter 31, Jonathan Oldbuck, the antiquary
of the title and the local laird, comes to pay his respects and assist in the funeral.
However, immediately before the grieving for Steenie, we are shown the grief
of Lord Glenallan. He is of the ancient Scottish nobility between whom and their
followers Scott had represented bonds of tribal loyalty in Waverley (1814). These
were bonds that Adam Smith (a lowland Scot and the explicator of modern eco-
nomics) had insisted belonged in the feudal past (Smith 383). We first encounter
Lord Glenallan at the elaborate funeral of his mother, seen from afar (in his jour-
nal entry for April 8, 1826 Scott recorded that he hated funerals because of their
mixture of “mummery” with “real grief,” but observed that distance could render
them genuinely affecting), where he appears to be “a man of a figure once tall and
commanding, but now bent with age or infirmity, [who] stood alone and nearest
the coffin, attired in deep mourning.” The whole scene is pointedly unreal. It is a
nocturnal funeral, so Glenallan is accompanied by torch-bearers:
The smoky light from so many flambeaus, by the red and indistinct atmosphere which it
spread around, gave a hazy, dubious, and as it were phantom-like appearance to the outlines
of this singular apparition. (Scott 253)
The rite that follows is Roman Catholic.

tears a n d t h e a r t o f g r i e f | 191
Mourning characterizes Glenallan. In chapter 28, Scott, having briefly men-

tioned the death of the Countess’s younger son, Glenallan’s brother, goes on to
describe its effect on the Countess and on the décor of Glenallan House. Finally,
he presents us again with the person of Lord Glenallan himself:
The ancient forms of mourning were observed in Glenallan House, notwithstanding the
obduracy with which the members of the family were popularly supposed to refuse to the
dead the usual tribute of lamentation. It was remarked, that when she received the fatal
letter announcing the death of her second, and, as was once believed, her favourite son, the
hand of the Countess did not shake, nor her eyelid twinkle, any more than upon perusal of
a letter of ordinary business. Heaven only knows whether the suppression of maternal sor-
row, which her pride commanded, might not have some effect in hastening her own death.
It was at least generally supposed that the apoplectic stroke, which so soon afterwards
terminated her existence, was, as it were, the vengeance of outraged Nature for the restraint
to which her feelings had been subjected. (Scott 275)
Nature has also taken her revenge upon the Countess’s heir, the present Lord
Glenallan, who is described as a man “not past the prime of life, yet so broken
down with disease and mental misery, so gaunt and ghastly, that he appeared but
a wreck of manhood” (Scott 276). The effects of grief on mother and son are pre-
sented as cautionary. One haughtily suppressed it, while the other nurtured it, but
the outcome in each case was deeply unnatural.
The unnaturalness of such corrosive emotion is an idea developed in the only
form of outward expression that the aristocratic family indulges: the art and décor
of sorrow. The Countess caused “many of the apartments […] to be hung with the
exterior trappings of woe.” Accordingly, Glenallan is seated in a room hung with
black, where a black baize screen intercepts “much of the broken light which found
its way through the stained glass […]” (Scott 275). The sunlight is broken, like the
vitality of the room’s owner. The artificial tincture it receives from the glass, along
with its blockage by the screen, suggests natural energy perverted. The symbolism
of the room’s illumination is developed in the description of “two lamps wrought
in silver, shedding that unpleasant and doubtful light which arises from the min-
gling of artificial lustre with that of general daylight” (Scott 275). The artifice of
the scene is emphasized by its containing two works of art on the theme of death
and sorrow. The stained window represents “the life and sorrows of the prophet
Jeremiah,” while “A large picture, exquisitely painted by Spagnoletto, represent[s]
the martyrdom of St. Stephen” (Scott 275). The picture’s exquisiteness is almost
pejorative. Glenallan’s grief is ritualized but seems vitiated by unnatural artifice.
To turn to the scene of mourning for Steenie is to find what looks like the ex-
act opposite. The occasion for misery is immediate, not long-nurtured. Its setting
is the natural one of a cottage, where we are conscious of what Wordsworth spoke
of as “the necessary character of rural occupations,” which contributes to the clarity
and force of the passions of those in “low and rustic life” and renders it especially
192 | james br own
suitable for representation in poetry (Wordsworth 245). The comparison with the
grieving aristocrat seems entirely to the advantage of the poor family:
The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the young fisher had
occupied while alive. At a little distance stood the father, whose rugged weather-beaten
countenance, shaded by his grizzled hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like
day. He was apparently revolving his loss in his mind, with that strong feeling of painful
grief peculiar to harsh and rough characters, which almost breaks forth into hatred against
the world, and all that remains in it, after the beloved object is withdrawn. The old man
had made the most desperate efforts to save his son, and had only been withheld by main
force from renewing them at a moment when, without the possibility of assisting the suf-
ferer, he must himself have perished. All this apparently was boiling in his recollection.
His glance was directed sidelong towards the coffin, as to an object on which he could
not steadfastly look, and yet from which he could not withdraw his eyes. His answers to
the necessary questions which were occasionally put to him, were brief, harsh, and almost
fierce. His family had not yet dared to address him a word, either of sympathy or consola-
tion. His masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress of the family as she justly
boasted herself, on all ordinary occasions, was, by this great loss, terrified into silence and
submission, and compelled to hide from her husband’s observation the bursts of her female
sorrow. As he had rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not daring herself to
approach him, she had that morning, with affectionate artifice, employed the youngest and
favourite child to present her husband with some nourishment. His first action was to put
it from him with an angry violence that frightened the child; his next, to snatch up the boy
and devour him with kisses. “Ye’ll be a bra’ fallow, an ye be spared, Patie,—but ye’ll never—
never can be—what he was to me!—He has sailed the coble wi’ me since he was ten years
auld, and there wasna the like o’ him drew a net betwixt this and Buchan-ness.—They say
folks maun submit—I will try.”
And he had been silent from that moment until compelled to answer the necessary ques-
tions we have already noticed. Such was the disconsolate state of the father.
In another corner of the cottage, her face covered by her apron, which was flung over
it, sat the mother—the nature of grief sufficiently indicated by the wringing of her hands,
and the convulsive agitation of the bosom, which the covering could not conceal. Two of
her gossips, officiously whispering into her ear the commonplace topic of resignation under
irremediable misfortune, seemed as if they were endeavouring to stun the grief which they
could not console. (Scott 298–99)
Scott’s description of the scene in the cottage represents strong feeling but does
not necessarily elicit it. He invites us to use our judgement. Masculine and femi-
nine grief are juxtaposed and then contrasted with the grief of the children. As the
scene unfolds, Scott switches his perspective from extreme youth to extreme age
to compare the children’s faulty understanding of the occasion with that of their
senile grandmother. The child’s approach to his grieving father might elicit pathos,
but, in other respects, Scott keeps the reader at a distance. He wishes us to think, to
note and interpret symptoms. The force of “apparently” in connection with Saun-
ders Mucklebackit (“[…] apparently revolving his loss in his mind […]” and “All
this apparently was boiling in his recollection […]”) ensures that our point of view
remains outside him. The scene is crafted and structured so as to keep us at arm’s
length from him, even as his family is kept back by his ferocity.
Two factors contribute to the point of view we are afforded. One has to do
with Jonathan Oldbuck. He is the novel’s center of attention, and, while some-
times an object of amusement, he contributes to our critical perspective on other
characters. He wins the hearts of Steenie’s relatives by compassionately taking the
place of his father (who refuses to move) at the head of the coffin. At the same
time, he privately reflects on the “superfluous expense” that has been lavished on
the funeral (Scott 304).
The other factor relates to the conventions Scott employs to show the pas-
sions. Wordsworth’s account of the passions in the preface to Lyrical Ballads takes
its stand on the authenticity of rustic life and on the philosophical truth of asso-
ciationist psychology, which, he claims, is exemplified in such life. Where Word-
sworth invokes philosophical truth about the passions to underpin the truth of
his representation of real life, Scott has an artistic and critical tradition of the
representation of supposedly scientifically verified passions upon which to draw.
Painting, especially historical painting since the seventeenth century, had sought
to show the general truth of the passions by following templates of emotional ex-
pression. The handbook by the painter Charles LeBrun is perhaps the best known
codification of this system (see Montagu). The theory of the passions which he
set forth was influential, not only in painting but also in acting and literature. The
currency of the ut pictura poesis conception of the nature of poetry made it com-
mon to conceive of poetry and painting as allied, as Dryden argued in “A Parallel
Betwixt Poetry and Painting” (1695). Scott, as editor of Dryden, understood well
the implications of the general truth of the passions for the theory of poetry.
What one finds in the apparently natural scene of mourning for Steenie is
emotion represented partly by painterly convention. Where Lord Glenallan’s grief
is vitiated by its association with art and artifice, the Mucklebackits’ is presented
virtually as a work of art. Scott asks us to think of the scene in terms of paintings
we might know, for he introduces the spectacle by explaining: “In the inside of the
cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted, with that exquisite
feeling of nature that characterizes his enchanting productions” (Scott 298).
The criterion of the natural turns out to be established in art. Scott appeals
to one’s knowledge of painting again a few pages later, when Lord Glenallan con-
fronts the senile grandmother and hears what secrets she has to unfold. She com-
mands that the window be opened, and, as the sunbeams pierce the gloom, Scott
thinks of Rembrandt:
Falling in a stream upon the chimney, the rays illuminated, in the way that Rembrandt
would have chosen, the features of the unfortunate nobleman, and those of the old sibyl,
194 | james br own
who now, standing upon her feet, and holding him by one hand, peered anxiously in his
features with her light-blue eyes, and holding her long and withered fore-finger within a
small distance of his face, moved it slowly as if to trace the outlines and reconcile what she
recollected with that she now beheld. (Scott 309)
The moment cries out to be transferred to a canvas. The syntax freezes the moment
in a tableau by means of a series of present participles, which create the painterly
effect Scott seeks. The names of the characters fall away, and we see them as we
might interpret figures in an unfamiliar painting as “the unfortunate nobleman”
and “the old sibyl.” The light is symbolic, as it is in the description of Glenallan’s
apartment, for this will be the scene of Glenallan’s enlightenment.
With this moment in mind, one starts to detect elements of a painterly tableau
in the earlier description of the grieving fishing family. The play of conflicting
passions within the father is rendered so as to create not a dynamic process, but a
frozen one: the two impulses are manifested in the static posture of his sidelong
glance at the coffin, and the syntax again describes a state rather than an action.
The condition of the mother is likewise rendered in a little tableau in “another
corner of the cottage,” consisting of the bereaved woman and “[t]wo of her gossips,
officiously whispering into her ear” (Scott 299). Thus, Scott encapsulates male
and female grief. As the scene unfolds, and we find the senile grandmother under
the grotesque delusion that the company is gathered for a celebration, one could
perhaps argue that Scott moves from one kind of art to another—in Hazlitt’s
terms, from the Ideal to the Picturesque. Artistic conventions shape this scene of
seemingly natural grief.
In some ways, artistic conventions compensate for lacking social or ritual ones.
Not even the fisherfolk have time-honored forms of mourning. If Glenallan’s Ro-
man Catholic tradition supplies a superfluity of ritual, if artificial, expressions of
grief, the Presbyterian religion of the fisherfolk is desperately poor in collective
expression, “because the fathers of the Scottish kirk rejected, even on this most sol-
emn occasion, the form of an address to the Divinity, lest they should be thought
to give countenance to the rituals of Rome or of England” (Scott 303). Their con-
dition is, therefore, more akin than one might suspect to that of the emotionally
inarticulate readership who stand in need of such emotional education as Scott (in
Wordsworthian mode) can offer.
The Mucklebackits are unlike the fisherfolk described by Synge in The Aran
Islands (1907), whose pagan sensibility (Synge claims) bursts the bounds of Cath-
olic consolation and causes them to wail themselves hoarse at their wakes for a loss
that is felt to be absolute. He notes of the service itself that “[t]here was an irony
in these words of atonement and Catholic belief spoken by voices that were still
hoarse with the cries of pagan desperation” (Synge 333). However, where Synge
represents the folk of the Aran Islands as retaining vital pagan rites for the dead
underneath a Roman Catholic mask (even if this view reflects Synge’s beliefs more
than theirs), Scott’s fisherfolk are bereft of adequate collective forms of expression.
They might well exclaim with Laertes “What ceremony else?” (5.1.216) and are
only rendered expressive by their creator, who substitutes artistic expressive con-
ventions for impaired social and ritual ones.
Such dependence upon convention is surprising in the light of one eighteenth-
century way of looking at this section of The Antiquary. Scott’s presentation of
the grief of the fisherfolk could be seen as a calculated violation of neo-classical
convention. Such an offense would imply that, from the point of view of tragic
pity, the sincerity and power of emotion is all that counts, so that the grief of
a peasant woman is as valid as the grief of Queen Clytemnestra. Rank, which
plays an important role in neo-classical social and artistic decorum, is irrele-
vant. Thus, as Lessing remarks of domestic tragedy, “The misfortunes of those
whose circumstances most resemble our own, must penetrate most deeply into
our hearts, and if we pity kings we pity them as human beings, not as kings” (7).
In 1763, Jean François Marmontel argued, “The sacred names of friend, father,
lover, husband, son, mother, of mankind in general, these are far more pathet-
ic than aught else and retain their claims forever. What matters the rank, the
surname, the genealogy of the unfortunate man […]?” (qtd. in Todd 2). By con-
trast, the correlation between “high” genre, the high social rank of its characters,
and an elevated style was something about which neo-classical critics built up a
dogma.
In the Poetics, Aristotle explained that tragedy deals with people who are, in
some sense, better than average, and comedy with those who are worse (Aristotle
33). It is far from clear that Aristotle means by this that tragedy deals with the
great, and comedy with the low, but Greek tragedy does generally deal with heroes
and leaders, royalty and nobility. Such people lead lives on a different scale from
the rest of us, but they may also be representative of us. This combination of dif-
ference and fellowship is clear in the Iliad.
Notwithstanding moments in the poem that insist on the distinction between
the high and low (as, for instance, in Book Two when Odysseus gives the low-
born Thersites short shrift), the Iliad also affords a vision of a common humanity
defined by shared mortality. It is most poignantly felt in the meeting between
Achilleus and Priam in Book 24. Achilleus, by this time, has heard that his friend
Patroklos, who took his place while he was sulking, has been killed in battle by
Hektor. In the savagery of his grief and remorse, Achilleus has gone into battle,
killed Hektor, and, with his feelings still unassuaged, inflicted terrible indignities
on his foe’s corpse. Then Priam ventures into his camp to request his son’s body
for burial. The two men are drawn together by their knowledge that they are both
doomed because of Hektor’s death—Priam because, without Hektor, Troy must
fall, and Achilleus because he knows that it is not his fate to return from the siege.
In hastening the fall of Troy, he has hastened his own end.
196 | james br own
Priam makes his request, and, in what follows, both men join in a communion
of tears in which their particular sorrows are recognized and then related to the
condition of all mortal men:
So [Priam] spoke, and he roused in Achilleus the desire to weep for his father. He took the
old man by the hand and gently pushed him away. And the two of them began to weep in
remembrance. Priam cried loud for murderous Hektor, huddled at the feet of Achilleus,
and Achilleus cried for his own father, and then again for Patroklos: and the house was
filled with the sound of their weeping.
Achilleus then broaches the issue of the ultimate source of their respective sorrows:
This is the fate the gods have spun for poor mortal men, that we should live in misery, but
they themselves have no sorrows. There are two jars standing on Zeus’ floor which hold
the gifts he gives: one holds evils, the other blessings. When Zeus who delights in thunder
mixes his gifts to a man, he meets now with evil, and now with good. But when Zeus gives
from the jar of misery only, he brings a man to degradation, and vile starvation drives him
over the holy earth, and he wanders without honour from gods or men. (Homer 404)
The unconcerned laughter of the gods, which is heard at crucial moments in the
Iliad in contradiction of the grief and anger of the mortals, endorses Achilleus. For
the mortals, life is serious because it is short.
The difference between the mortals and the immortals defines the commu-
nity of all humanity, friend and foe alike. However, the human community is also
founded on ritual observances that are sanctioned by the gods and recur through-
out the poem. The perceived need to observe them is precisely what is at stake
now. Priam does not seek to rebel against the gods but seeks his son’s body for
ritual mourning and cremation. This encounter between Priam and Achilleus is
not itself securely held within the embrace of ritual. It may be compared with
other moments in the poem when individuals break from the sanctioned codes
of behavior: Agamemnon’s improper seizure of Briseis from Achilleus, Achilleus’s
angry refusal to accept appropriate reparations from Agamemnon and return to
battle, and (though there are others) perhaps most relevant in this context, Achil-
leus’s excessive mourning for Patroklos, which produces elaborate ritual as well as
the grotesque treatment of Hektor’s body. The grief of Priam and Achilleus cannot
be worked through to renewed commitment to life, because their own deaths are
too clearly signified by the deaths they mourn. The plight of Achilleus, who has
been granted the choice either of enjoying a long and inglorious life at home or of
purchasing undying fame by an early death, is at once unique and universal. He
chooses death. He could say with Cuchulain “I care not though I live but one day
and one night if only my name and deeds live after me” (qtd. in Sisson 79). How-
ever exceptional his status and glory, his mortality is common.
It is in this context that the quality of the individuality shown in the Iliad
must be understood. It is less a matter of inner consciousness and reflection than
of great passions. The opening words of the poem direct one’s attention to just this
issue by informing us that it concerns the anger of Achilleus and its consequences.
Such individuality as emerges against the background of collective observance, is
outwardly directed. This is why the principal characters have to be leaders: only
they have sufficient scope for action and passion. The anger of Thersites, for ex-
ample, could not have the effect of the anger of Achilleus. Correspondingly, in
terms of Ruth Benedict’s distinction between shame and guilt cultures, it has been
suggested that the world of the Homeric poems is a shame culture in its depen-
dence on “external sanctions for good behaviour” rather than on conscience and
inner consciousness of sin (Benedict 223; Dodds, ch. 2). If this is so, then one can
see why, for Lessing and Marmontel, the correlation of genre and rank no longer
necessarily holds (even if Lessing sought to remain true to Aristotle). They are ei-
ther not interested in the effect that individual passion has on a wider community
or do not suppose it could amount to much, whatever the rank of the character.
Thus, one could conclude that the grief of a peasant woman was artistically as valid
as the grief of Clytemnestra. However, that involves ignoring the very thing that
makes the Queen’s passions compelling: not their sincerity or intensity, but their
consequences.
Likewise, in The Antiquary, the terms in which comparison is invited between
various types of grief clearly imply that passion as such is the principal object of
our contemplation, not its consequences. What Scott felt to be the inadequacy of
the plot was not merely accidental but is symptomatic of an uncertain value at-
tached to action. This is something to which the pictorial technique discussed ear-
lier might have been a response. Francis Fergusson argued that the development
of drama since the seventeenth century, starting with Racine, has tended to show
action giving way to intrigue (78). A. O. Hirschman comments on the evisceration
of the heroic in the eighteenth century (11–12). Changing attitudes to heroism
were understandable as a response to the ways modern societies circumscribed
one’s scope for transformative action. Ironically, attitudes changed shortly before
the onset of industrialization, which effected profound transformations. However,
the representation of social change in terms of the acts of individual agents seems
over-simplified when the most plausible explanations involve impersonal things
such as long-term trends, statistics, and abstractions. Individuals can, at best, be
made representative of groups or classes.
For all the intensity of Saunders Mucklebackit’s grief for Steenie, its practical
effects are limited. The following morning, Oldbuck encounters him trying to
mend his boat, and Mucklebackit explains why he is back at work so soon:
“It’s weel wi’ you gentles, that can sit in the house wi’ handkerchers at your een when ye
lose a friend; but the like o’ us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard
as my hammer.” (Scott 322)
198 | james br own
Lord Glenallan’s grief, for all its protracted indulgence, scarcely impinges upon
a wider circle than Mucklebackit’s. His sorrow affects his domestic servants, the
décor of his house, and his own health.
To the extent that Glenallan’s grief figures in an action, that action looks like a
parody of a Greek tragedy: his mother, the Countess, fearing the loss of status she
would suffer should her son marry, conceived particular hatred for Eveline Neville,
the English girl on whom he had set his heart. She therefore manages to convince
him that Eveline is really his half-sister. However, unbeknownst to her, a secret
marriage has already occurred. Eveline dies, and Glenallan is left bereaved and
under the delusion that he has committed incest. The Countess may remind one
of Medea in her readiness to sacrifice even the happiness of her own offspring to
the gratification of her hatred and desire for status, and the incest theme inevitably
reminds one of Oedipus Rex. However, even this bald summary of the plot suggests
how far it is steeped in romantic melodrama. Its dependence upon convoluted
events, misunderstanding, and coincidence indicates that it is really an intrigue
consisting merely of complications to be unraveled. Its plot is not the source of the
book’s vitality. As A. N. Wilson remarks, “It is talk which this book celebrates, and
talk which makes it live” rather than action (72).
So far, The Antiquary’s representation of grief has been presented partly in
terms of a reaction against neo-classical literary decorum. It might, therefore, seem
that the novel should be understood in historicist terms in relation to Romanti-
cism. Certainly, Scott’s pioneering historicism in fiction would be hard to find very
much earlier, and he does invoke Wordsworth. Yet, the topic of grief and mourn-
ing, with its odd combination of the universal with the culturally specific, has a
way of unsettling historicist expectations. One could try to explain the key features
of Scott’s representation of grief by reference to his cultural and historical context.
However, if one looks beyond Scott’s period, one can find a similar emphasis on
the problematic character of mourning in representations of it at other times.
Watkin, in his account of mourning in literature, provocatively splices togeth-
er texts produced millennia apart on the grounds that “several thousand years is
not a great amount of time when it comes to psychic history” (Watkin 8–9). Pos-
sibly, too, there are certain features of the literary representation of mourning that,
in a formalist sense, tend to come with the territory. Texts have a way of defying
linear history. Thus, Hamlet comes to be reinvented as a Romantic play. One prob-
lem when it comes to constructing narrative of cultural change is that as soon as
dualisms such as ritual and art or nature and art are in play, it is tempting to drift
into the kind of metanarrative that sociology and anthropology were founded on:
the opposition of the modern to the pre-modern. At that point, there is a danger
that, in seeking to construct a linear narrative, one constructs a story that actually
goes around in circles, because, having invoked a stark and seemingly teleological
opposition, all one can do is repeat it. Thus, to take an example from another field,
histories of acting tend, partly for want of primary evidence, to construct the abun-
dant secondary evidence in terms of “natural” acting always driving out artificial
acting in era after era. In this way, one gets not history, but myth masquerading as
history: history as inevitable progress. That, admittedly, could never quite happen
with the representation of mourning. Accounts of mourning as healing are now
particularly associated with psychology and psychotherapy. The literary represen-
tation of mourning, however, seems drawn to the possibility of its failure, even
when, as in Scott, it looks as if it is dualistically contrasting valid with invalid forms
of mourning. The representation of mourning tends to lure one into contradiction,
in which the ritual impulse to come to terms with death is countered by an epis-
temological insistence on death being at once unthinkable and unavoidable. One
of the most sustained, absorbing reflections on this problem is found in an earlier
work, which seems eerily to have anticipated much that followed: Hamlet.
Hamlet is preoccupied with grief. Most tragedies terminate in death, but in
Hamlet, death and one’s response to it are issues from the first. Old Hamlet is not
long dead, and there is a clear sense in the early scenes of seeing the world adjusting
or failing to adjust to his loss. The terms in which Claudius opens the second scene
draw one’s attention to this: “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death /
The memory be green […]” (1.2.1–2). As the play proceeds, we will see Hamlet’s
developing response to his father’s death and have the chance to compare it with
the responses of Ophelia and Laertes to the death of their father. On the way, we
are invited to contemplate the murder of Priam (in the Player King’s impromptu
performance, which causes the matter of Troy, as ever, to recur), the murder in the
Mousetrap, the imminent deaths of the thousands whom Fortinbras leads against
Poland, the death of Ophelia, and the deaths of the entire Danish royal house at
the end of the play.
The play is preoccupied with the form of one’s response to death, in particular
with the relation between private emotion and public ritual. It is a common point,
but worth restating, that Hamlet is preoccupied with “maimed rites” (5.1.212). The
outward ceremonial and collective expressions of grief are impaired or unauthentic.
Hamlet draws our attention in his first soliloquy to the way in which the solem-
nity of his father’s funeral has been vitiated by the “o’er-hasty marriage” (2.2.56)
of Gertrude and Claudius. She may have followed her first husband’s body “like
Niobe—all tears,” but her tears prove “most unrighteous.” Hamlet’s description of
“the salt of most unrighteous tears” causing “flushing in [Gertrude’s] galled eyes”
makes weeping sound like a merely material process, occasioning ocular irritation,
but flowing from no inner core. The allusion to Niobe reinforces this idea, in that
she was transformed into a tear-shedding fountain in order to cauterize her heart
(1.2.149, 154–55).
This touches a nerve of anxiety that Descartes would expose in his analysis of
the Passions. Having divided the human being into a material body that was just
200 | james br own
a machine and an immaterial soul, he then confronted the problem of connecting

them—and arguably failed. He envisages a case in which emotional expression is
merely a function of the body, and nothing to do with the real emotions of the soul:
For example, when a husband laments his dead wife whom (as sometimes happens) he
would be sorry to see brought to life again, it may be that his heart is oppressed by the
sadness that the appurtenances of woe and the absence of one to whose conversation he
was used excite in him; and it may be that some remnants of love or pity which present
themselves to his imagination draw sincere tears from his eyes, notwithstanding that he yet
feels a secret joy in the inmost parts of his heart, the emotion of which possesses so much
power that the sadness and the tears which accompany it can do nothing to diminish its
force. (Descartes 398)
Such disjunction is not, for Descartes, evidence of hypocrisy, though this view of
the relation between emotion and expression may be symptomatic of a feeling that
social reality is fragile and artificial.
Although Hamlet castigates the insincerity of his mother’s grief, he explains
that his own outward expressions are no better guide to his feelings, as he says:
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful river of the eye,
Nor the dejected ’havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (1.2.76–86)
Having defined the body as another disguise, Hamlet has created an epistemolog-
ical impasse, where he ends up juggling “true” and “false,” finally able only to refer
meaning to his own fiat, so ending up insisting on his own authenticity as the one
given in an unknowable world. One might compare Hamlet’s insistence that “I
have that within which passeth show” with Descartes’ single certainty, again an in-
trospective one, that “I think, therefore I am.” Both have to do with the way skep-
ticism has called into question the reality of the world outside one’s own mind, also
calling into doubt one’s capacity to act in or upon the world.
Other deaths in Hamlet are likewise imperfectly marked. The Captain in
Fortinbras’s army reveals that they are off to contest “a little patch of ground / That
hath in it no profit but the name,” which causes Hamlet to reflect that the plot they
fight over will not be “tomb enough and continent / To hide the slain” (4.4.18–19,
64–65). The body of Polonius is hidden reasonably well but never properly buried.
Laertes hastens back to Denmark set upon revenge precisely because there has
been no adequate public response to his father’s death. As Claudius concedes, “we
have done but greenly / In hugger-mugger to inter him” (4.5.83–84). Laertes soon
has to cope with the suicide of his sister as well, and with the fact that a suicide
is itself the upshot of a process of grieving both for her father and for Hamlet
(3.1.152–63) which has turned destructively upon itself. Claudius aptly speaks of
the poison of deep grief but misses the conflict of griefs.
Laertes, intent on maintaining the power to act, responds in a strained and
almost deliberate manner, first to his sister’s madness, and then her death. When
he sees her insanity, he gives himself instructions to suffer tears that will constitute
a transcendent expression of grief:
O heat, dry up my brains. Tears seven times salt
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye. (4.5.154–55)
Though this sounds emotive in a general way, it is difficult in a play where one
is invited to be so nicely critical of the expressions of emotion to accept this as
a convincing expression of felt emotion. One perhaps recalls Hamlet’s suddenly
rounding upon himself after a similar burst of impassioned rhetoric to accuse him-
self of unpacking his heart with words and of falling “a-cursing like a very drab”
(2.2.582). When Laertes then hears of his sister’s watery death, his response is
interestingly undemonstrative:
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. [Weeps.]: When these are gone,
The woman will be out. (4.7.184–88)
Although he seeks to stifle the expression of his emotions, they still disable the
capacity for action which he prizes, for he takes his leave of Claudius, saying:
Adieu, my lord,
I have speech o’fire, that fain would blaze
But that this folly douts it. (4.7.188–90)
Whatever his private feelings, Laertes finds the outward public expression of
mourning for Ophelia inadequate.
The gravediggers inform us that the proper manner of burying a suicide has
been departed from in her case, but, still, all she is afforded are what Hamlet calls
“maimed rites” (5.1.212). Laertes asks the priest “What ceremony else?” (5.1.216),
but there is no further public expression allowable. In his anguish, private feeling
forces its passage and produces the unsatisfactorily indecorous act of leaping into
the grave. Hamlet, suddenly realizing whose grave it is, follows suit. If the rites were
maimed before, they are now rendered grotesque by this attempt to invest them
202 | james br own
with private feeling, as Hamlet and Laertes scrap over an open grave. Coming as
it does after Hamlet’s reflections on the futility of human life, which amounts to
“fatting ourselves for maggots” (4.3.22–23), there is perhaps something in this
moment of the absurdist image Pozzo presents to the tramps in Waiting for Godot:
“They give birth astride of a grave; the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once
more” (Beckett 89). It is accompanied by more inflated rhetoric: “Woo’t drink up
eisel? Eat a crocodile?” etc. (5.1.271).
Finally, one has to consider the response to the death of Hamlet himself. He
is in the midst of a ceremonial occasion, the duel between Laertes and himself,
which is animated by the raw feelings we saw so unceremoniously expressed over
Ophelia’s grave. The occasion goes disastrously wrong. There is a marked sense
of the tension between outward show and ulterior motive. Suddenly, the hidden
motives are acted upon; in barely fifty lines, the Royal House of Denmark is ex-
terminated. Though Hamlet salvages some dignity from the proceedings, they are
o’er-hasty, and his dying thoughts are largely concerned with the brevity of his
time. He is obliged to leave his action imperfect and must ask Horatio to explain
what has occurred. He breaks off in mid-sentence, still desperately trying to get
a message to Fortinbras: “So tell him, with th’occurrents, more and less / Which
have solicited—the rest is silence” (5.2.362–63).
Although we know reasons for the many deaths, for everyone except Hora-
tio the situation is baffling. This is often missed in productions, especially those
that seek to make a political point by turning Fortinbras into a proto-fascist. The
situation is perhaps best described by Hamlet’s comment on Fortinbras’s Polish
campaign:
This is th’ imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies […] (4.4.27–29)
This, ironically, is also the puzzle posed by the manner of old Hamlet’s death, as
Claudius’s poison works within, corrupting all and leaving the real agent of his
death unsuspected, though it is attributed to a (symbolic) serpent. Fortinbras’s
response to this baffling implosion may be flawed, but he at least shows something
of the unquestioning decisiveness that Hamlet claimed (with whatever irony)
to admire in Fortinbras’s conduct of the Polish campaign. He does not wait for
Horatio’s explanations, but gives orders about how Hamlet is to be mourned:
Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have prov’d most royal; and in his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rite of war
Speak loudly for him. (5.2.400–05)
There are, as with the other rites for the dead in this play, some problems with this.
Patrick Crutwell has argued that, in a sense, Hamlet is “a conscript in a war,” albeit
a private war, and that, therefore, full military honors are appropriate (Crutwell
194). However, the force of the moment lies precisely in the contrast between the
private and hidden causes of the death and the public form Fortinbras proposes for
the mourning. The phrase “like a soldier” has the important effect of reminding
one that, unlike his father, Hamlet was not a warrior.
The whole play is notably claustrophobic and inward-looking. R. A. Foakes
observes that, uniquely among Shakespeare’s tragedies, it maintains “a rough unity
of place” in that the action never moves outside Elsinore (Foakes 365). This is
emphasized by Fortinbras’s comment that the spectacle of so many corpses should
not be seen indoors: “Such a sight as this / Becomes the field, but here shows
much amiss” (5.2.406–07). This outer world, the world of the field and of Ham-
let’s warrior father, is one that Hamlet never fully enters. The nearest approach is
his melodramatic encounter with the pirates, and its upshot is that he is brought
right back to Elsinore. The final moment is, perhaps, not entirely vitiated: Fortin-
bras does, after all, have the insight to grasp that it is Hamlet who should receive
full honors instead of Claudius. Yet, in the closing moments of the play, the sense
of the absurd intruding, of human life being dominated by misprision, is accentu-
ated by the grotesque humor of the arrival of the English ambassadors with news
of the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Appropriately, the main theme of
Horatio’s comments is error: he speaks of “accidental judgements” and “purposes
mistook” and “plots and errors” (5.2.387, 389, 400).
Outside Pirandello’s works, Hamlet is perhaps the dramatic character most
fascinated by the medium of the theater itself. In a world in which everyone plays
a part, the actor, perversely, can acquire a kind of authenticity. As a contemporary
of Shakespeare’s put it, “All men have been of his occupation; and indeed, what
he doth feignedly, that do others essentially” (Life in Shakespeare’s England 223).
Hamlet is aware of this. Though he dismisses his own tears as one of several “ac-
tions that a man might play” (1.2.84), he is impressed by the tears of the player
king. Polonius seems concerned at the actor’s distress: “Look, whe’r he has not
turned his colour, and has tears in’s eyes. Prithee no more” (2.2.515–16). In con-
trast with the rebuke earned a moment before from Hamlet when he complained
of the length of the speech, Hamlet seems merely to endorse Polonius with “’Tis
well” (2.2.517).
However, what has really occurred to Hamlet, as we see a moment later, is an
idea about the potential of the theater. In the soliloquy at the end of the scene, he
starts by expostulating about the player’s ability to represent emotion:
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
204 | james br own
That from her working all his visage wann’d,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to her,
That he should weep for her? (2.2.545–54)
He retains sufficient skeptical awareness to insist that what produces the outward
expressions that so impress is really just a conceit, a “dream of passion,” which is
somehow able to create suitable “forms,” although his own genuine passion ap-
parently cannot. He is now getting close to the position that one seeks in the
theater neither a representation of human life nor a moral lesson, but a lesson in
expression. He then comes up with ideas for two types of theater. The first follows
directly:
What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. (2.2.554–60)
It is a proto-modernist model of the theater, a theater that does not just represent
the truth of human feeling as we actually encounter it but remolds it to present
its spectators with a shocking, dark truth. It is comparable with the irrationality
of Artaudian Theater of Cruelty. It is a transcendent vision in which individual
identity is subordinated to a collective response (he may distinguish between the
guilty, the free, and the ignorant, but the shock-effect of this kind of theater for
these groups will be similar), even as the distinction between particular faculties is
overridden in conjuring a total response. Such a theater would aspire to transcend
its particular cultural situation.
Hamlet’s other kind of theater is the one he actually tries to put into effect,
the one he comes up with when he recovers a degree of composure and rebukes
himself for emotional self-indulgence. It is one that requires not the emotional
overload of the first model but depends precisely upon surprising accuracy in order
that the guilty creatures at the play may be surprised into recognizing their crimes
and confessing. It is an anti-theatrical theater in two ways: firstly in that, as his
instructions to the players make clear, any hint of overplaying will be fatal to the
purpose of holding the mirror up to nature; and, secondly, in that its anticipated
effect is to “detheatricalize” the audience. The idea is that those playing roles in
real life will unmask themselves.
Arguably, this never quite happens. Claudius never proclaims his “malefac-
tions,” even if Hamlet reacts as if he has. However, there is a sense of Hamlet turn-
ing to art to make good impaired public and ceremonial expression and to attempt
a healing of the collectivity (though, ironically, his play, like many other actions in
Hamlet, is never concluded because it is interrupted). This recourse to art points to
something that occurred between his day and Scott’s. As Janet Todd explains, “In
all forms of sentimental literature, there is an assumption that life and literature
are directly linked, not through any notion of a mimetic experience of reality but
through the belief that the literary experience can intimately affect the living one.
So literary conventions become a way of life” (4). Wordsworth and Scott take up
the same kind of challenge in showing authentic passion to an emotionally un-
dernourished readership. However, at this point, when emotions, per se, become
the focus of one’s attention, one risks disconnecting feeling from social form. One
may have managed to connect one’s art with life, but it also works the other way
around. Life becomes connected with art. Instead of a vital and lifelike art, one
risks getting forms of life that may seem conventional and inauthentic, and which
may even render people inexpressive (Sennett 36–38). Even when Scott seems to
be showing natural passions, they become objects of aesthetic (in his case, painter-
ly) contemplation. As the dualism of art vs. nature collapses, one finds oneself on
treacherous terrain. However, Hamlet had been there before, not least in anticipat-
ing aspects of the kind of literary historicism that Scott was known for, for Hamlet
communicates a sense of paradigmatic historical change in which Hamlet’s father
seems to have belonged to an archaic world of warrior-kings, while his son is a
modern Renaissance man. It is almost as if it has gone from being a shame culture
to a guilt culture in a single generation. In the process, it shows how problematic
action, as such, can become, including, in particular, the actions of mourning and
of grief, and even (if it is an action) shedding tears.
works cited
Aristotle et al. Classical Literary Criticism. Trans. T. S. Dorsch. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. Print.
Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot. 2nd ed. London: Faber, 1965. Print.
Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton,
1946. Print.
Crutwell, Patrick. “The Morality of Hamlet—‘Sweet Prince’ or ‘Arrant Knave’?” 1963. Hamlet: A Case-
book. Ed. John Jump. London: Macmillan, 1968. 174–95. Print.
Darwin, C. R. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murrary, 1872. Print.
[Facsimile available at http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq= 1&itemID=
F1142&viewtype=text]
Descartes, René. “The Passions of the Soul.” The Philosophical Works of Descartes. Trans. Elizabeth S.
Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. Rev. ed. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1931. 329–427. Print.
206 | james br own
Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: U of California P, 1951. Print.
Dryden, John. “A Parallel Betwixt Painting and Poetry.” 1695. Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical
Essays. Ed. George Watson. Vol. 2. London: Everyman, 1962. 181–208. Print.
Fergusson, Francis. The Idea of a Theater. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949. Print.
Foakes, R. A. “Hamlet and the Court of Elsinore.” 1956. Rpt. in The Cambridge Shakespeare Library.
Ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. 363–69. Print.
Hazlitt, William. “On the Picturesque and Ideal.” Table Talk or Original Essays. 1821–24. London:
Dent, 1908. 317–21. Print.
Hirschman, A. O. The Passions and the Interests. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977. Print.
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Martin Hammond. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987. Print.
Lessing, Gottfried. “From The Hamburg Dramaturgy.” Lessing et al., Essays on German Theater. Ed.
Margaret Herzfeld-Sander. Foreword Martin Esslin. New York: Continuum, 2002. 3–19. Print.
Life in Shakespeare’s England. Ed. John Dover Wilson. 1911. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1944. Print.
Montagu, Jennifer. The Expression of the Passions: The Origin and Influence of Charles Le Brun’s “Con-
férence sur l’expression générale et particulière.” New Haven: Yale UP, 1994. Print.
Scott, Sir Walter. The Antiquary. 1816. Ed. Nicola J. Watson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
———. The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. 1826. Ed. W. E. K. Anderson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Print.
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. London: Faber, 1977. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London: Methuen, 1982. Print.
Sisson, Elaine. St Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood. Cork: Cork UP, 2005. Print.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. 1776. Ed. I. R. H. Camp-
bell & A. S. Skinner. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1976. Print.
Synge, J. M. The Complete Works. Ed. Aidan Arrowsmith. Ware: Wordsworth, 2008. Print.
Todd, Janet. Sensibility: An Introduction. London: Methuen, 1986. Print.
Watkin, William. On Mourning: Theories of Loss in Modern Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP,
2004. Print.
Wilson, A. N. A Life of Walter Scott: The Laird of Abbotsford. 1980. London: Mandarin, 1996. Print.
Wordsworth, William, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. 1798–1802. Ed. R. L. Brett and
A. R. Jones. London: Methuen, 1963. Print.
chapter fourteen
Quick and Long-Lasting

Death and Dying in John
Steinbeck’s Fiction1
john j . han
introduction
For decades, studies of John Steinbeck’s (1902–68) fiction have tended to center
on sociological or moral issues. The name Steinbeck is popularly linked to two
of his novels that reflect the politico-economic milieu of the 1930s: Of Mice and
Men and The Grapes of Wrath, which have earned him various labels such as “a
proletarian novelist,” “a social novelist,” and “a radical novelist.” The 2013 publi-
cation of the volume A Political Companion to John Steinbeck evidences that many
scholars still view him as an ideological writer. An increasing number of scholars
are also paying attention to him as a moralist. The Moral Philosophy of John Stein-
beck (2005), edited by Stephen K. George, is a case in point. The volume collects
essays on Steinbeck’s ideas on various issues, such as business ethics, utilitarianism,
and multiculturalism. Approaching Steinbeck’s work as a moral text has been en-
couraged by the author himself, who openly advocates morality and ethics in his
fiction. His didactic novella The Pearl (1947) is an allegory whose teachings, he
says, are open to diverse interpretations. One of his later novels, The Winter of Our
Discontent (1961), also contains the author’s criticism of the decline of morality in
American society.
However, the heavy emphasis on Steinbeck’s political, economic, and moral
ideas has sometimes slighted an important aspect of his works: his acute interest
in thanatology, the study of death and dying. Many of his letters, fiction, and non-
fiction contain his reflections on death and his keen observations of the dying.
208 | john j . han
Thanatology arose as a modern academic discipline in America in the 1950s–70s

through the efforts of psychiatrists such as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, after most of
Steinbeck’s important works had appeared. Still, many of Steinbeck’s texts reflect
the insights into death and dying thanatological studies would later provide. In his
works, Steinbeck discusses end-of-life issues, and his discussions are corroborated
with his remarks on death and dying in his letters and other personal writings.
In light of the fact that the problem of death in his fiction has received little
critical attention, this essay aims to examine the ways in which Steinbeck envisions
death and dying in his fiction and nonfiction. We will first discuss the passages
from his work that reveal his interest in and knowledge of death and dying. We
will then discuss his idea of a painless and quick death, his idea of mercy killing,
and his humanistic approach to the afterlife. Texts for consideration will include
Cup of Gold (1929), The Pastures of Heaven (1932), To a God Unknown (1933), Of
Mice and Men (1937), Tortilla Flat (1935), The Red Pony (1937), “Flight” (1938),
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952), and Travels with Charley in Search
of America (1962).
s t e i n b e c k ’ s i n t e r e s t i n a n d i n s i g h t i n t o d e at h
A careful observer of the phenomenon of death, Steinbeck portrays what goes

through a dying person’s mind and how death affects the survivors in various ways.
His fiction illustrates various concerns people have on their deathbed. In chapter 11
of The Pastures of Heaven, for instance, John Whitehead’s now-deceased father
desired to have as many descendants as possible so that he could continue to live
through them. John’s bedridden mother delivers his father’s deathbed wish for him:
“He told me to tell you one thing. Make John realize that he must keep us going. I
want to survive in the generations. […] Your father was delirious for two days. In all
that time he talked of children—nothing but children” (182).
Steinbeck’s first novel, Gold Cup, also illustrates his insight into the dying
process. In this novel, the Welsh-born pirate Henry Morgan lies on his deathbed
after an adventurous life in the Caribbean. The novel’s ending realistically portrays
a person who is near death. Here, Henry lies in bed tiredly and in a state of stupor:
Sir Henry was staring at the ceiling. For an hour he had been puzzled with this mysterious
ceiling. Nothing supported it in the middle. Why did it not fall? It was late. Every one
about him was silent; they went sneaking about pretending to be ghosts, he thought. They
were trying to convince him that he was dead already. He closed his eyes. He was too tired
or too indifferent to keep them open. He heard the doctor come in, and felt him reading
the pulse. (Cup 223)
In this passage, Henry lies half-awake, slipping in and out of consciousness. He

seems acutely aware of his surroundings, yet his clouded eyes begin to lose a sense
qu i c k a n d lo n g - l a s ti n g | 209
of distance and space. His wife’s sobs pain him, but death approaches him like a
brother: “So he was to die. It was rather pleasant if death was like this. He was
warm and very tired. Presently he would fall asleep, and that would be death—
Brother Death” (Cup 225). A vicar urges him to repent of his sins. Henry believes
he converses with the clergyman, but his tongue does not move at all. Soon Henry
learns that his ability to speak has gone: “He realized, then, that he had not been
talking at all. It was difficult to talk. His tongue had become lazy and sluggish”
(Cup 226). He also sees hallucinations of “the crouched, faceless beings” (Cup 230).
As his breathing stops, his vision fails, too: “The fire went out of the ember with a
dry, hard snap. There was no light anywhere” (Cup 230).2
The ending of the epic novel East of Eden also exemplifies Steinbeck’s in-
terest in and knowledge of the dying process. In this scene, Adam Trask lies on
his deathbed. Lee, the Chinese servant and Steinbeck’s philosophical mouthpiece,
urges him to bless his estranged son Caleb as a final act of grace. Lee speaks to
Adam as he approaches his last moment:
Lee said, “Adam, I don’t know what you can hear or understand. When you had the numb-
ness in your hand and your eyes refused to read, I found out everything I could. But some
things no one but you can know. You may, behind your eyes, be alert and keen, or you may
be living in a confused gray dream. You may, like a newborn child, perceive only light and
movement.
“There’s damage in your brain, and it may be that you are a new thing in the world. Your
kindness may be meanness now, and your bleak honesty fretful and conniving. No one
knows these things except you. Adam! Can you hear me? […]
The blue eyes wavered, closed slowly, then opened. […]
The pale eyes looked until they found Cal. […]
A terrible brightness shone in Adam’s eyes and he closed them and kept them closed. A
wrinkle formed between his brows. […]
Adam’s breath came quick with his effort and then, slowly, his right hand lifted—lifted
an inch and then fell back. […]
Adam looked up with sick weariness. His lips parted and failed and tried again. Then his
lungs filled. He expelled the air and his lips combed the rushing sigh. His whispered word
seemed to hang in the air:
“Timshel!”
His eyes closed and he slept. (East 689–91)
Steinbeck’s description above shows what happens moments before people die:
they suffer physical pain and are confused psychologically, yet their brains function
until the last moment.
In the same novel, Steinbeck describes how people cope with a loved one’s
death differently. Some pine away, whereas others accept it and move on with
their lives. Deeply shaken by his daughter Una’s passing, Samuel Hamilton lives a
quiet life but constantly blames himself for her death. In contrast, Samuel’s wife,
a woman with a firm faith in a better life after death, accepts Una’s death as God’s
210 | john j . han
will: “Una’s death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and
reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself. He felt that it was his
neglect had done it. […] Liza with her acceptance could take care of tragedy; she
had no real hope this side of Heaven” (318–19).
Finally, chapter 17 of Tortilla Flat portrays how the bereaved view death and
how they elevate the event of death as a meaningful ritual:
Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy.
Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first
polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark
suit and your best black shows, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral
with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is
the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the
minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if,
at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with
the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he
becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.
Danny was dead, two days dead; and already he had ceased to be Danny. […]
(199–200)
This passage indicates that, while the funeral is for the deceased on the surface,
it is for the living as well—perhaps even more so. Little dignity can be found in
a dead body, yet by beautifying it and solemnizing the funeral, the bereaved offer
meaning to death and find solace in the dignified ceremony.
i n t e n s e l i f e a n d q u i c k d e at h
Many critics classify Steinbeck as a realist or naturalist, but his work shows a sig-
nificant amount of romanticism as well.3 Similar to the nineteenth-century British
romantics, such as Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley,4 he displays a desire for a
short but meaningful life alongside a stoic attitude toward death. As a writer more
interested in present-day issues than the afterlife, Steinbeck expresses his romantic
view of death in many texts. For instance, at the beginning of Travels with Charlie
in Search of America, he explains why he was launching a cross-continental journey
in his early sixties. He does not understand the men who are satisfied with merely
existing in their advanced years. Instead of living with a purpose, they renounce
their “manhood” and “violence” so that they can extend their lifespan by a few
years. Such a lifestyle, to Steinbeck, was “a kind of spiritual and physical semi-in-
validism” (Travels 19). He adds:
I always have lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the
clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or sobbed
for a time in utter laziness. […] I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in
yardage. […] And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. If this pro-
jected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men
delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. (20)
Steinbeck’s idea of a painless, quick death is also illustrated in his 1933 letter
to Robert Ballou. At that time, Steinbeck’s father was losing health rapidly, and
Steinbeck recorded the agony of seeing his father struggle to live:
He is like an engine that isn’t moored tightly and that just shakes itself to pieces. His nerves
are gone and that has brought on numbness and loss of eyesight and he worries [about] his
condition all the time. Let it go. We’re going on the rocks rapidly now. If mother lives six
months more she will survive him. If she dies soon, he might recover but every week makes
it less likely. Death I can stand but not this slow torture wherein a good and a strong man
fears off little shreds of himself and throws them away. (Steinbeck and Wallsten 83)
In his letter to Edith Wagner, sent in the same year, Steinbeck also expresses his
abhorrence of death-related pain. Wishing her a swift recovery from illness, he
states, “The pain is another thing. I don’t like pain. I hope you will be well soon”
(83). The next year, Steinbeck wrote George Albee about the pain of seeing his
own mother lying sick in bed for a year “with a frightful question in her eyes” (87).
Steinbeck’s fiction frequently reflects his belief that a quick death is more
desirable than a long, painful death.5 A case in point is his short story “Flight”
(1938). This thriller deals with the life and death of a young Mexican-American
man, Pepé, who accidentally commits murder, flees his pursuers, and then dies like
a man. As time passes, he loses his horse and his rifle, suffers from hunger and
thirst, and then is shot to death on a mountain range. He asserts his manhood by
determining “the manner of his death” and then putting it into practice (Schultz
and Li 85). As Dan Vogel points out, Pepé’s death is both tragic and heroic (225–
26). Steinbeck portrays the main character moments before death as follows:
Pepé bowed his head quickly. He tried to speak rapid words but only a thick hiss came
from his lips. He drew a shaky cross on his breast with his left hand. It was a long struggle
to get to his feet. He crawled slowly and mechanically to the top of a big rock on the ridge
peak. Once there, he arose slowly, swaying to his feet, and stood erect. Far below he could
see the dark brush where he had slept. He braced his feet and stood there, black against the
morning sky. (“Flight” 48)
Pepé knows that his flight has ended and that the only honorable thing left for
him is to meet death like a man. His heroism is displayed when he fully exposes
his body to his enemy. “Flight” includes both naturalistic and romantic views of
life—the deterministic view that humans are under the influence of circumstances
and the romantic view that humans can at least determine their own destiny and
accept it without regrets.
Steinbeck’s preference for a quick, painless death is also evidenced by chapter 9
of The Pastures of Heaven. Bert Munroe decides not to attend an execution at San
212 | john j . han
Quentin prison after recalling a slow, excruciating death of a rooster he observed

in his boyhood; the rooster died a painful death at the hands of a disabled old
man who was poor at using the knife. Influenced by Munroe’s decision, Raymond
Banks also decides not to witness the upcoming hanging in prison. Raymond, who
detests a slow death, has mastered the art of killing a chicken quickly: “With sure,
quick hands, Raymond grasped the chicken’s head and forced the beak open. The
knife slipped like a flash of light along the roof of the beak and into the brain and
out again” (Pastures 133). The chicken dies instantly, and Raymond is proud of the
speed with which he ended the fowl’s life.
Steinbeck typically uses few words when he describes a character’s death. Ac-
cording to him, death is a human condition that cannot be changed and thus
cannot be sugarcoated. In his novel Oliver Twist (1838), Charles Dickens uses only
eight words when he describes the death of Oliver’s birth mother: “[she] gazed
wildly round; shuddered; fell back—and died” (Dickens 46). A similar case can be
found in chapter 21 of Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown, in which Elizabeth, Joseph
Wayne’s wife, falls from a slippery rock and dies at the scene. Steinbeck notes the
moment of her death briefly in a single paragraph:
Her heel dug for a third step. And then the moss stripped off a little. Her hands gripped
the moss and tore it out. Joseph saw her head describe a little arc and strike the ground. As
he ran toward her, she turned slowly on her side. Her whole body shuddered violently for
a second, and then relaxed … He felt for her pulse and found none there … “It was too
simple, too easy, too quick,” he said aloud. “It was too quick.” (To a God 132)
It was a tragic death, yet it happened so quickly that Elizabeth must have died
without fully realizing that she was dying. Later, Joseph informs his older brother
Thomas of her death in a wooden voice: “She slipped and fell. It was only a little
fall. I guess her neck is broken” (134).
euthanasia as a merciful ac t
Related to Steinbeck’s idea of a quick, painless death is his attitude toward eu-
thanasia, also called “mercy killing” or “death with dignity.” Euthanasia was an
important ethical issue in America in the 1930s, when Steinbeck’s major novels
appeared. The first organization that advocated the legalization of euthanasia was
established in the United Kingdom in 1935; a similar organization appeared in
the United States in 1938. Although Steinbeck did not indicate an official posi-
tion on euthanasia, he must have known about the issue and may have supported
euthanasia personally. In many passages of his stories, characters and animals are
put to death without their desire, and their deaths are portrayed either positively
or neutrally. One example of this is To a God Unknown. In chapter 24, the Wayne
family loses many cattle in a California drought. The eldest son, Thomas, plans
to move the surviving cattle to the greener pastures. As Romas, a lumber wagon
driver, takes the cows over the mountains, many of them collapse because of ex-
haustion. Determining that they do not have the possibility of survival, Romas
shoots them to death: “[T]he cows dropped, one by one, and did not get up under
the goad, but only looked tiredly at the sky. Romas could tell their condition to an
ounce of strength. He looked at their eyes, and then he shot the tired beasts, and
the weary eyes set and glazed, but did not change” (To a God 165). Thus, the cows
that are certain to perish are put to an expedient death, and the remaining 100
cows continue the journey, settling in the new pasture.
Meanwhile, in chapter 8 of The Pastures of Heaven, Molly Morgan reminisces
about a gruesome event from her childhood. One day, her puppy, named George,
fell from a willow tree, sustained a serious injury, and “screamed long, horrible
screams, with sobs between breaths” (118). At this moment, Tom, Molly’s brother,
takes extreme action to lessen the dog’s pain. Unfortunately, the action is too swift
for Molly to avoid watching:
“We cannot let him,” Tom cried. “We can’t let him.” He ran to the woodpile and brought
back a hatchet. Molly was too stupefied to look away, but Tom closed his eyes and struck.
The screams stopped suddenly. Tom threw the hatchet from him and leaped over the back
fence. Molly saw him running away as though he were being chased. (118)
It was painful for Tom to kill the puppy, but he wanted to shorten the poor crea-
ture’s pain by saving it from an agonizing death. At least for Tom (and likely for
Steinbeck as well), his action resulted from his love for the dog, not from his
cruelty.
A similar case is found in chapter 2, “The Great Mountains,” of Steinbeck’s
novella The Red Pony. In this story, Gitano returns as an old man to his former
workplace and insists on living the rest of his life on the ranch which is now owned
by Carl Tiflin. In the middle of the story, Gitano, Carl, and his son Jody talk about
the thirty-year-old horse named Easter on the ranch. Unhappy about the strang-
er’s request to retire to his ranch, Carl provokes him by saying that a living thing
that has outrun its usefulness deserves mercy killing:
“It’s a shame not to shoot Easter,” he said. “It’d save him a lot of pains and rheumatism.” He
looked secretly at Gitano, to see whether he noticed the parallel, but the big bony hands did
not move, nor did the dark eyes turn from the horse. “Old things ought to be out of their
misery,” Jody’s father went on. “One shot, a big noise, one big pain in the head maybe, and
that’s all. That’s better than stiffness and sore teeth.” (The Red Pony 131)
As an author, Steinbeck cannot be identified with Carl in this third-person narra-

tive. Nevertheless, Carl’s statement on the need for euthanasia is fundamentally in
line with what Steinbeck himself seems to have believed.
214 | john j . han
While euthanasia is mentioned in passing in “The Great Mountains,” it serves

as a major theme in the novella Of Mice and Men: If mercy killing liberates a person
from a prolonged, crueler death, it can be an act of compassion. Lennie, a mentally
handicapped migrant farm laborer, is subject to mercy killing at the end of the
story. This event is foreshadowed by the euthanasia of Candy’s old, disease-ridden
dog. Carlson tells Candy that it is cruel to allow the dog to continue to exist. Slim
concurs, saying that there is no reason to outlive one’s usefulness: “Carl’s right,
Candy. That dog ain’t no good to himself. I wisht somebody’d shoot me if I got
old an’ a cripple” (Of Mice and Men 45). Carlson volunteers to end the dog’s misery
for Candy with the promise that it would kill him instantly, leaving no lingering
pain: “Carlson said, ‘The way I’d shoot him, he wouldn’t feel nothing. I’d put the
gun right there.’ He pointed with his toe. ‘Right back of the head. He wouldn’t
even quiver’” (45). Reluctantly, Candy allows Carlson to carry out the execution,
but afterwards he regrets not having killed his beloved dog with his own hands.
Unlike Candy’s dog, which is killed by a stranger, Lennie has the “fortune” of
being killed by his best friend, George. By executing Lennie, George prevents him
from dying at the hands of a lynch mob. With a trembling hand, George pulls the
trigger, and Lennie dies without knowing who shot him. Steinbeck portrays the
scene of execution this way:
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the
back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He
pilled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie
jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering. (103–04)
Curley’s mob would have killed Lennie out of hatred. In contrast, George prac-
tices euthanasia out of compassion for his dear friend. Although not a pleasant
task, George kills Lennie after deliberating the best possible way for his mentally
handicapped friend to die.
Apparently, Steinbeck was not a euthanasia activist. However, in many of his
writings, we can easily surmise what kind of lifestyle he valued and what decisions
he would have made for himself in case he was in a semi-vegetative state—he was
open to the possibility of euthanasia. A lifelong smoker, Steinbeck died of heart
disease and congestive heart failure at sixty-six. Had he lived longer but in pro-
longed pain, he might have refused to live a life marked by what he calls “semi-in-
validism” (Travels 19).
h u m a n i s t i c at t i t u d e t o wa r d t h e a f t e r l i f e
Although Steinbeck came from a Christian home, he renounced Christianity as

a young man, replacing it with liberal humanism and humanitarianism. He held
respect for Christianity as a cultural institution, but for him, the Christian faith
was little more than a rich source of his literary devices, including biblical symbols,
images, and structure. As a writer rooted in Western civilization, he embraced
Christian terminology such as “good” and “evil,” yet his idea of evil was more in
line with badness rather than with sin or inequity.
During his visit to Japan in 1957, the Mainichi Daily News interviewed
him. The reporter asked Steinbeck, “What’s your religious position?” The answer
was, “If I’m pressed to say, maybe it’s ‘humanism.’ I don’t consider Christianity a
religion. So, if I am asked about my religion, I have no choice but to say, ‘I don’t
embrace any religion.’ But maybe, I mean I believe in man” (qtd. in Kami 24).6
His answer suggests that as a humanist, Steinbeck valued the present life over the
afterlife. According to Steinbeck, a good life consists of living a full life and dying
painlessly, and the intensity of life is more important than the mere span of life.
Because he emphasizes life on this earth and disregards what lies beyond
death, Steinbeck considers moral, ethical living of prime importance. According to
him, a good person is someone whose name people will remember fondly; an evil
person is someone whose name people will curse. In chapter 34 of East of Eden,
Steinbeck expresses his view of a good death this way: “And in our time, when a
man dies […] the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?—which
is another way of putting Croessus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring
stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind
of joy come of it” (476). Therefore, Steinbeck maintains, we should live a life that
brings joy to other people, always remembering our final moments.
In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck also expresses his view of religion several
times through Jim Casy, an ex-preacher. Accompanying the Joad family on their
journey from Oklahoma to California, Jim serves as Tom Joad’s spiritual mentor,
defends the rights of the poor, and dies a kind of martyr’s death. Along the way,
the Joad family sometimes asks him to pray or deliver a sermon for them, despite
his admission that he has lost his Christian faith. According to Jim, he underwent
a spiritual transformation during his days alone in the wilderness: he realized that
holiness does not exist in a world beyond the clouds, but on the earth where hu-
mans live and breathe. Pressed by Tom’s family to say a few words for Grampa
Joad’s funeral, Jim Casy reluctantly delivers the following message, which is not
really a Christian sermon:
This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life and’ jus’ died out of it. I don’ know whether he was good
or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’ that’s what matters. An’ now he’s dead,
an’ that don’ matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an’ he says “All that lives is holy.”
Got to thinkin’, and purty soon it means more than the words says. An’ I wouldn’ pray for
a fella that’s dead. He’s awright. He got a job to do, but it’s all laid out for ’im an’ there’s
on’y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousand ways, an’ we don’
know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray, it’d be for the folks that don’ know which way
to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An’ now cover ’im up and let ’im get to his
work. (Grapes 148)
216 | john j . han
The family members who needed some words of consolation respond to this mes-
sage with an amen, not knowing what they really mean. Though Jim is no longer
a Christian, his message ironically sounds like what Jesus says in Matthew 8:22
(“But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.”).7 Jim’s
message also reflects what Steinbeck must have believed about life and death: life
is meaningful only when a person is alive; upon death, a person’s mission has end-
ed, and thus those left behind should stop being sentimental about the dead and
live their own lives fully.
Other Steinbeck novels also reflect his humanistic view of life and death. The
last chapter of Cup of Gold is an example. Similar to Richard Wright’s Native Son
(1940) and Albert Camus’ L’Étranger (1942), the main character is visited on his
deathbed by a clergyman, who urges him to repent of his sins so that he can enter
heaven. As the vicar enters the room, Henry’s wife pleads with the dying man:
“‘The Vicar, dear,’ his wife said. ‘Do be nice to him. Oh, do listen to him!’ She
was going to see that some compact was made with the Almighty if she could.
Her affection was an efficient thing, but her love—that which glittered in her wet
eyes—was frightful” (Cup 225). The ensuing conversation between Henry and the
vicar reflects the main character’s cynical view of religion:
“God is Love,” the voice was saying. “You must put your faith in God.”
“God is Love,” Henry repeated mechanically.
“Let us pray,” said the voice …
Henry felt the warm fingers of the Vicar creep to his wrist and begin a stroking
movement.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want,” Henry droned sleepily. “He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures—” The stroking continues, but more harshly. The Vicar’s
voice became more loud and authoritative. It was as though, after years of patient waiting,
the Church had at last got Henry Morgan within its power. There was something almost
gloating about the voice. (Cup 225–26)
The clergyman urges Henry to repent, yet Henry does not want to repent of pleas-
ant sins, such as the sin of visiting prostitutes. (Because Henry has lost his ability
to verbalize his thoughts, he responds only in his mind.) In a solemn voice, the
clergyman repeatedly urges Henry to repent to no avail (Cup 226–67).
The above passage does not simply show Steinbeck’s mischievous sense of
humor. More importantly, the tragicomic scene deals with an important issue
in thanatology: the efficacy and ethicality of deathbed conversion or deathbed
repentance. Those who urge the dying to repent may do so because of their gen-
uine concern for the patient’s spiritual wellbeing. On the other hand, it is ques-
tionable whether it is ethical to force a physically and psychologically weakened
person to accept a belief system that he or she has little time to consider and
make sensible decisions about. In his famous apologetic argument called Pascal’s
Wager, Blaise Pascal explains that although it is not entirely possible to prove
God’s existence after death, it is safer to believe in him just in case there is God
in the afterlife. Based on the possibility of eternal punishments after death, some
patients embrace religion either willingly or half-heartedly. For them, it does not
hurt to believe in God, although they did not have enough time to think through
the matter.
In his book Facing Death (1972), Robert E. Kavanaugh, a Catholic priest-
turned-psychologist, addresses the issue of deathbed conversion. Based on his
ministerial experience, the author claims that pressing the dying for conversion
or repentance can be cruel and does not help the dying person. As a young priest
attending to many patients on their deathbed, he exerted supreme authority
over them. Following the instructions from his seminary education, he recited
Latin prayers, absolved sins, and anointed the dying. For those who died without
receiving the last rites, he anointed their bodies based on the Catholic doctrine
that souls might not leave the bodies for three hours after clinical death. After
performing his priestly duties for a while, it dawned on him that the dying,
who suffer from lonesomeness, fears, and terrors, appreciated his mere presence,
his words of comfort, and his listening ears more than mechanical ritual: “Soon
I believed the dying were often more in need of present comfort than of forgive-
ness for the future. Slowly and painfully, my needs to stay near the deathbed won
out” (35). While not renouncing his belief in the afterlife, Kavanaugh reached
the conclusion that the afterlife, which is outside the realm of “easy explana-
tions” is less important than “life here” (37).8 Facing Death was published four
years after Steinbeck’s death. Had he read Kavanaugh’s book before his death,
Steinbeck might have agreed with its basic arguments, including the importance
of present life.
co n c lu s i o n
As a keen observer of the dying process, Steinbeck accurately portrays how a

person dies physically, what happens to the dying person’s psyche, and what
happens to caregivers emotionally. Steinbeck’s thanatological knowledge must
have come from his personal experience caring for his parents, who died slow,
painful deaths. As discussed earlier, some of his letters detail the pain with which
he endured during their process of dying. His thanatological insight must also
have come from his observations of the migrant farm laborers and soldiers in
World War II and the Vietnam War. In his 1937 interview with The New York
Times, for instance, he mentions an incident from his days as a bindlestiff. A
fellow farm hand killed a ranch supervisor for firing his friend. He “stuck a
pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw
him do it. We couldn’t stop him until it was too late” (Of Mice and Men). As a
218 | john j . han
war correspondent during the wars, he dealt with death and dying firsthand; for
him, they were not a matter of philosophical speculation but a matter of real-life
issues.
As someone familiar with thanatology, Steinbeck portrays death and dying
realistically. As happens in real life, his characters sometimes die peacefully (as in
the case of Adam Trask) and other times violently (as in the case of Pepé). This is
contrasted with the way his contemporary, American novelist Flannery O’Connor,
portrays death. A devout Roman Catholic, she uses violent deaths as occasions
for an irresistible intrusion of divine grace for those who die. Characters such as
the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the young boy in “River,”
and General George Poker Sash in “The Late Encounter with the Enemy” meet
violent deaths. For O’Connor, salvation is so important that it sometimes requires
deadly means—for the characters and for her reader. Steinbeck recognizes that
death can be violent, yet he also appreciates life on this earth much more than the
afterlife.
In his emphasis on ethical and moral living (in contrast to holy living), and
his preference of “earthly life” over “life hereafter,” Steinbeck is allied with many
twentieth-century writers who reject the supernatural realm of human existence.
Similar to his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Steinbeck upholds the virtues
of living a full life and of meeting death in a stoic manner. As a nineteen-year-
old man recovering from his war wounds in Italy, Hemingway included the fol-
lowing lines in a letter to his parents: “Dying is a very simple thing. I’ve looked
at death and really I know. If I should have died, it would have been […] quite
the easiest thing I ever did […]” (Baker 72). As Mark Sheel points out, Hem-
ingway wrote many death-related stories in which he upholds a clean kill as “the
crucial counterpart to the phenomenon of dying.” According to Hemingway,
killing can be called proper and dignified if it is done in a clean manner, as in
bullfighting (9). Steinbeck criticized Hemingway by commenting that bullfight-
ing is cowardly because human fighters use a weapon. Nevertheless, Hemingway
and Steinbeck are akin in their belief in living a full life and meeting death as
no big deal.
As examined above, Steinbeck’s view of death and dying is typically hu-
manistic and humanitarian. Instead of the next world that remains mysterious,
he pursues a full life in this world. He holds respect for the clergy, but, as il-
lustrated by Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, he is more interested in making
society better—helping the poor, protecting the downtrodden, and saving the
earth. According to Steinbeck, a good person leaves an honorable name behind,
and an honorable name is earned through helping the defenseless and promot-
ing social justice. In that sense, Steinbeck’s works create a window into post-
Christian fiction that approaches death and dying from a more humanistic, and
less religious, angle.
notes
1. This essay was originally presented, under the title “Taking Leave: Death and Dying in Stein-
beck’s Fiction,” at the 38th annual meeting of the Arkansas Philological Association, University
of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, 6–8 Oct. 2011.
2. As people approach death, they tend to develop some common symptoms: They sleep more,
become drowsy, and sometimes experience hallucinations (“The Dying Process—A Guide for
Family Caregivers”). In Cup of Gold, Henry lies on his deathbed in a state of drowsy confusion,
seeing objects that are invisible to the other characters. A common myth about dying is that
patients suffer pain; indeed, many people die without pain (“The Dying Process: A Guide for
Caregivers” 13). It is no surprise that Henry feels brotherly toward death.
3. For more information on Steinbeck as a romanticist, see my essay in Steinbeck Studies, “Stein-
beck’s Romantic Vision of Life in Travels with Charley in Search of America” (No. 32, May 2009,
pp. 21–37).
4. Two examples are Lord Byron’s epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
poem “On Death.”
5. According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004), a psychiatrist who was perhaps the most
instrumental in publicizing thanatology in the United States, sudden death can devastate the
bereaved emotionally, yet can be a blessing in disguise in that the pain is short-lived for the
dying. She uses an example of a widow who lost her husband with whom she had had a happy
life. After his accidental death, she blames God for what she considers his injustice, saying that
if God truly existed, her husband would not have died. Kübler-Ross explains:
She became increasingly angry with me, and I asked her to repeat once more what
kind of a man her husband was, and her face lit up and she described him as an
active sportsman, outgoing, always outdoors, and I just mentioned briefly, “Can you
imagine what it would have been like if he had not been killed instantly? Maybe he
would have been paralyzed or unable to move or in a wheel chair?” She left without
talking any further with me, and in the next session she came to me as if with a big
revelation and she said, “You know, Dr. Ross, God must be a good God. Could you
imagine what would have happened to my husband if he had not been killed but if
he had stayed in a wheelchair, unable to move or talk to my children?” (171)
The widow stopped being angry at God and regained her peace of mind through counseling.
This episode illustrates what Kübler-Ross considers the benefits of living a full life and dying a
painless, quick death.
6. Professor Yuji Kami of Soka University translated this quotation from Japanese to English.
7. As scholars have pointed out, Jim Casy is a fictional transfiguration of Jesus, and his life ironical-
ly recalls Jesus’ ministry and words, regardless of Jim’s religious views. For more information on
select fictional characters modeled after Jesus, see Theodore Ziolkowski’s Fictional Transfigura-
tions of Jesus (1972; rev. 2002).
8. Similar to Robert E. Kavanaugh, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross states that showing compassion and
understanding is more important than insisting on conversion for the dying. A case she uses is a
13-year-old girl who was terminally ill. One day, the girl shared her agony with the author: The
priest and nuns who visited her told her that those who love anyone more than God cannot go
to heaven and she loves her parents more than anyone in this world (6). Kübler-Ross told her
that what she had been told is false teaching, and the girl passed away with a peace of mind (7).
220 | john j . han
works cited
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Bantam Books, 1970. Print.
Barney, Marilyn. “Ministry at the End of Life.” Living with Grief: At Work, At School, At Worship. Ed.
Joyce D. Davidson and Kenneth J. Doka. Levittown, PA: Hospice Foundation of America, 1999.
149–55. Print.
Bloom, Harold, and Blake Hobby, eds. Death and Dying. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009.
Print.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. 1838. Ed. Peter Fairclough. New York: Penguin, 1985. Print.
“Euthanasia: What Are Christian Perspectives on Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide?”
ProCon.org. Web. 2 Aug. 2013.
“The Dying Process—A Guide for Family Caregivers.” Caring Connections. Web. 30 Aug. 2013.
<http://www.caringinfo.org/files/public/brochures/UnderstandingtheDyingProces.pdf>
Jones, Claude E. “Proletarian Writing and John Steinbeck.” The Sewanee Review 48.4 (Oct–Dec
1940): 445–56. JSTOR. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.
Kami, Yuji. “Steinbeck’s Literary Legacy Has Taken Root in Japanese Cultural Soil.” Steinbeck Stud-
ies 34 (2011): 22–30. Print.
Kavanaugh, Robert E. Facing Death. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1972. Print.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. Living with Death and Dying. New York: Collier Books, 1981. Print.
Schultz, Jeffrey, and Luchen Li. Critical Companion to John Steinbeck: A Literary Reference to His Life
and Work. New York: Checkmark Books, 2005. Print.
Sheel, Mark. “Death and Dying: Hemingway’s Predominant Theme.” The Emporia State Studies 28.1
(Summer 1979): 5–12. Print.
Skelton, John. “Death and Dying in Literature.” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 9 (2003): 211–17.
Print.
Steinbeck, John. Cup of Gold. 1929. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print.
———. “Flight.” A Long Valley. 1938. New York: Penguin, 1995. 28–48. Print.
———. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1939. Print.
———. Of Mice and Men. 1937. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.
———. To a God Unknown. 1933. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print.
———. Tortilla Flat. 1935. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.
———. Travels with Charley in Search of America. New York: Penguin, 1962. Print.
Steinbeck, Elaine, and Robert Wallsten, eds. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. New York: Viking, 1975. Print.
Vogel, Dan. “Steinbeck’s ‘Flight’: The Myth of Manhood.” College English 23 (Dec. 1961): 225–26.
Print.
chapter fifteen
Death-Defying Women
Art and Transcendence in Cather
debra l . cumberland
A quick glance through Willa Cather’s oeuvre indicates that there is no shortage
of death throughout her novels and short stories. People die in myriad ways in
her fiction, many of deaths quick, messy, and violent. In My Ántonia, a tramp
gets sliced up in the thresher; Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia’s father, commits suicide by
blowing his brains out all over the barn. In The Song of the Lark, a tramp throws
himself into the community’s water supply; in the process, he contaminates the
community’s water and kills many others, while Ray Kennedy gets smashed by
a train. Paul in “Paul’s Case” commits suicide by throwing himself in front of a
train. Emil and Marie in O Pioneers! are shot and killed by Marie’s jealous and
controlling husband Frank; Claude in One of Ours is killed in France during World
War I. Rosicky in “Neighbour Rosicky” dies of a heart attack. Bartley Alexander
of Alexander’s Bridge drowns. In Cather’s fiction, death is an ever-present reality;
Cather makes no attempt to sugarcoat it. Reading Cather, then, can give us a good
idea of her attitudes towards life’s final, inevitable journey.
The characters listed here offer a few distinctions in their attitudes towards
death. What they share is an acceptance of the inevitability of death. Where they
differ is in how their approach to this inevitability is played out. For instance, some
characters in Cather approach death as a type of revenge; the tramps in Cather
enact a type of performance, seeking a heightened drama toward death, where
their suicide is enacted as revenge against a perceived wrong. Other characters
approach death by vowing to live life more fully through what they see as reward-
ing projects such as art, which enables them to provide inspiration and meaning
not only to themselves, but to others as well. The majority of characters in Cather
222 | debr a l . cumberland
understand the hardships of life, and build up a stoic will to endure and transcend
suffering through the backdrop of life on the prairie, in the wilderness, and on the
battlefield. What distinguishes these characters’ attitude toward death is their atti-
tude toward life, as well as their understanding of the ties that bind people to one
another. For many characters in Cather, a glorious striving after art—however that
may be expressed—becomes a means to provide continuity and purpose beyond
the grave.
We can see this artist’s quest, this mystical striving, in many of Cather’s he-
roes and heroines: Ántonia in My Ántonia, who expresses her love and her art
through her well-stocked root cellar and her family; through Alexandra Bergson,
in her relationship with the land in O Pioneers!; and through the famous diva, Thea
Kronborg, in The Song of the Lark. Thea is, indeed, one of the most vibrant char-
acters in Cather; she outshines many others through the brilliance of her perfor-
mances, both on stage and off. The Song of the Lark features several characters who
seem fated to die, and others fated to live. By focusing on what differentiates those
characters, we can emerge with a sense of how death operates in Cather’s fiction.
We will also examine how this template may differ in other Cather novels and
stories, such as O Pioneers! and “Paul’s Case.”
fated to live , fated to die : life and death in

the song of the lark
The Song of the Lark, first published in 1915, tells the tale of a small-town soprano,
Thea Kronborg, and her rise to fame as a Metropolitan Opera star. Cather based
this story on the life of the Swedish soprano Olive Fremstad. Thea grows up in
Moonstone, Colorado, conscious that she has a gift. Thea studies piano with the
alcoholic but gifted pianist, Herr Wunsch. When Thea’s beau, Ray Kennedy, dies,
his life insurance policy enables her to study voice in Chicago. During a summer
spent in the Cliff-Dweller ruins in Arizona, she becomes fully in touch with her
gift and emerges as a brilliant Wagnerian singer.
Throughout both The Song of the Lark and other novels, Cather gives us a
sense of the “inevitable hardness of human life” (Cather, Song 554). When Thea
speaks of her experience in the Cliff-Dweller ruins of Panther Canyon, where she
learned a great deal about herself as an artist, she claims she learned it “out of the
rocks, out of the dead people” (554). Death is inevitable, and it is something to be
learned from, not shied away from. Confronting the reality of death, indeed, and
transforming it—through the imagination—into art, is for many Cather charac-
ters a way to transcend it. Thea confronts death through essential practices that are
spiritual as well as artistic: she meditates on the life and art of the Cliff-Dwellers,
communes with their thoughts, and feels that a spiritual bond, a rite of passage,
d e at h - d e f yi n g w o m e n | 223
has been given to her from them. As Cather writes, “On the first day that she had
climbed that water-trail, she began to have intuitions about the women who had
worn the path, and who had spent so great a part of their lives going up and down
it” (376). She starts to feel physical connections to the people “with a feeling in
her feet and knees and loins that she had never known before. […] She could feel
the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed” (376). As Thea
takes her morning bath, flashes of insight occur to her as she meditates on the
women, and the pottery that they had created. Cather notes that the bath “takes
on a ceremonial gravity” and Thea finally intuits the connection between her quest
for breath as an opera singer and the strivings of the Ancient People: “The stream
and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould
in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life it-
self—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?
The Indian women held it in their jars. […] In singing, one made a vessel of one’s
throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natu-
ral intervals” (378). For both Thea and the Ancient People, confronting the reality
of death, understanding it, and transforming it through art enable characters to
live more fully and deeply.
The reality of death, in short, makes characters confront the reality of life.
When the tramp in The Song of the Lark throws himself into the town’s water
supply, killing many of the town members in the process, Thea ponders her own
possible complicity in the tramp’s suicide. She runs to Dr. Archie’s office, remem-
bering that she had put the handkerchief to her nose when the tramp walked by,
looking for a kind word and possibly a meal, and that the tramp had seen it. She
wants to understand this event, and to find some meaning in it. Dr. Archie tries
to explain it to her. Dr. Archie, like many Cather characters, is pragmatic: death is
inevitable. Life is hard. Live your life: “Ugly accidents happen, Thea; always have
and always will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. […]
The things that last are the good things” (176).
Dr. Archie’s advice to Thea is to get all she can out of life while she is living;
pursuing her art is the way to do that. As he explains to her, her devotion to her art
is not a self-centered pursuit, but a way to enrich everyone’s life: “Take Mary An-
derson, now; even the tramps are proud of her,” he explains to Thea. “There isn’t a
tramp along the ‘Q’ system who hasn’t heard of her” (176). Thea is a character who
seems fated to achieve the “good things” of which Archie speaks, and is convinced
she is destined to achieve something great. In many respects in Cather, fate plays
an intrinsic role in whether characters live or die within the pages of the novel.
Some are fated to drive, to succeed; others realize that the meaning in their life is
being a vehicle for the success of others. In much of Cather’s fiction, death is seen
in a somewhat naturalist strain, where the character’s biological, genetic make-up
creates the early markers for success and longevity.
Early on in The Song of the Lark, we are introduced to a life-and-death struggle

that serves as a foreshadowing to the idea of breath in the novel as a metaphor
for the artistic life-force that powers Thea’s art. Thea’s father, Mr. Kronborg,
the small-town pastor, heads out in the night to bring the doctor to his home.
Mrs. Kronborg is about to give birth to their seventh child. After Dr. Archie de-
livers the baby, he hears strained breathing from the parlor, and discovers Thea
struggling to breathe. He quickly diagnoses her with pneumonia, and chastises the
pastor. Thea easily might have died. In fact, the doctor notes that the patient al-
most slips through his fingers. Readers are given the distinct impression, however,
that it is Thea’s remarkable constitution, rather than the doctor’s skill, that ensures
her survival. Thea seems destined for something remarkable; Dr. Archie “looked at
her hard little Scandinavian face, as if some fairy godmother had kissed her there
and left a cryptic promise” (12). Dr. Archie is constantly feeling Thea’s head, as if
he senses something remarkable about it, but is not sure what it is. What he senses,
but cannot articulate, is that the shape of her skull indicates her powerful breath-
ing apparatus, how the breath resonates throughout her body. What he senses,
therefore, is her powerful drive to breathe, to live: to defy the inevitability of death
through her powerful artistic performances.
Other characters sense Thea’s inner drive and feel that she is destined for great
things. In a vein similar to Dr. Archie, the brakeman Ray Kennedy, who is in love
with Thea, explains to her, “There are a lot of half-way people in the world who
help the winners win, and the failers fail. […] It’s a natural law, like what keeps
that big clock up there going, little wheels and big, and no mix-up” (156). Ray,
after his attempt to explain this philosophy to Thea, unfortunately realizes his des-
tiny as one of those people. Ray is smashed by a train while he is working. When
Ray is dying, and requests that Thea be brought to him so he can say goodby; he
looks into Thea’s eyes and realizes that he was not, and could not, be a part of her
dream. His life was not destined for the good things of the world. Ray, too, is a ve-
hicle towards Thea’s success. He, in many ways, is the voice of determinism in the
novel. His weakness is a vehicle to Thea’s dramatic, artistic career. Ray’s untimely
end, as many other critics have pointed out, enables Thea to continue pursuing her
musical studies as a single woman and focus on her own health, talent, and vitality
(Ahern 151).
One of Thea’s hallmarks is her will and her “remarkable constitution”—the
will to succeed, the will to live. Thea continuously differentiates herself from oth-
ers by a comparison of her strength versus others’ perceived weakness. Not only
does she not truly need the doctor (neither, in fact, does her mother), but it is her
will, her biological makeup, that enables her to work harder and live more deeply
than others in her community. Much of that appears to be a matter of destiny.
Mrs. Kronborg, for instance, notes that Thea’s body “had the elasticity that comes
of being highly charged with the desire to live. […] She still remembered that, as a
baby, Thea had been the ‘best-formed’ of all her children” (Cather, Song 282). Thea
will survive, will succeed in part because her genetic makeup, her biology, destines
her to do so. The fates have come together to endow this power and drive in her.
Because of her strength and her will to live, Thea is repulsed early on in the nov-
el by weakness, a feeling that is triggered by her intrinsic fear of death. While Thea
befriends the outcasts in Moonstone who share her vision, she nonetheless scorns
the physically weak, emotionally and intellectually fragile women in her father’s
prayer group. She regards the prayer group and the women there who exude a feeling
of “resignation” as a form of spiritual discipline; “Thea accepted the mournfulness of
the prayer-meetings as a kind of spiritual discipline, like funerals. She always read
late after she went home and felt a stronger wish than usual to live and be happy”
(160). Thea cannot help but feel a certain repulsion for the physical weakness and
fragility, the resignation to fate, that she sees in the prayer group; her own life force—
her will to strive after the ineffable—is inevitably set against such resignation.
When Thea returns to Moonstone after her first winter spent studying music
in Chicago, she feels pity for the tubercular woman sitting behind her on the train.
She contrasts her own vitality with the woman’s physical weakness, and reads the
signs of an early grave in the woman’s countenance:
How horrible to waste away like that, in the time when one ought to be growing fuller and
stronger and rounder every day. Suppose there was a dark hole open for her, between to-
night and that place where she was to meet herself? Her eyes narrowed. She put her hand
on her breast and felt how warm it was; and within it there was a full, powerful pulsation.
She smiled—though she was ashamed of it—with the natural contempt of strength for
weakness, with the sense of physical security which makes the savage merciless. Nobody
could die while he felt like that inside. The springs there were wound so tight that it would
be a long while before there was any slack in them. (273–74)
Thea defines her own artistry in opposition to the fear of death and an early grave.
Thea can hold off the inevitability of death by her drive to be an artist.
Cather sees the pursuit of art as being as much a part of biological determin-
ism as anything else. What makes Thea a successful artist is the very life force that
enables her to be a powerful physical specimen. Being a physically strong woman
is a part of her being a powerful artist. Art is a vital force that Cather describes
in the biological terms one might associate with a medical manual: “[V]oice was,
first of all, vitality; a lightness in the body and a driving power in the blood. If she
had that, she could sing” (381). Thea is not a starry-eyed romantic in the novel.
Art, for her, is about power: being a powerful physical and intellectual specimen.
The comments Thea gets most are about her “indifference” and her “hardness.”
Even her own family would describe her this way. As Mr. Kronborg notes, “he
was thinking that hard-headedness was a reassuring quality in a daughter who was
going to Chicago alone” (196).
We can see this admiration for power in art in Cather’s review “Three Sing-
ers.” As mentioned, Cather modeled Thea Kronborg on the Swedish soprano,
Olive Fremstad. When she describes Fremstad, Geraldine Ferrar, and Louise
Homer, she focuses on them as powerful physical specimens. As Cather says of
Homer, Homer’s “physical equipment is magnificent. Large, handsome, generous,
she has reservoirs of strength and calmness to draw from. […]” (Cather, “Three”
34). Cather’s women, as Janis Stout notes, are modeled on the New Woman, a
model that emphasized independence and athleticism—certainly not weak-
ness. Cather herself, in early reviews of artists when she was a college student in
Lincoln, Nebraska, earned the nickname of “Meat-Ax” for her cutting, incisive re-
views—and what she most admired about the artists she critiqued was intellectual
and physical power. That sense of vitality, as Amy Ahern notes, was a part of the
school of naturalism, whose influence we have already noted in the depictions of
her female artists and the deterministic impulse governing their life and the deaths
of other characters within the novel.
b e r e av e m e n t i n t h e s o n g o f t h e l a r k
Bereavement, of course, is another part of the cycle of life and death. How char-
acters respond to it also becomes a significant marker for how they choose to live
their life. Cather’s characters, by and large, do not have time to grieve; life is too
hard. Mrs. Kronborg works out the practicalities of an approach to death in a
tough time. As Mrs. Kronborg explains to Dr. Archie, as she herself wills her own
death after her husband dies, “She told him, indeed, that she could not very well
get along without Mr. Kronborg” (Cather, Song 489). The doctor reminds her that
she has children, but Mrs. Kronborg has settled the matter: “Yes,” she replied, “the
children are all very well, but they are not father” (490).
Thea, who is studying voice in Germany during this time, is notified that her
mother has, essentially, chosen to die after her husband dies. Mrs. Kronborg has
lost her will to live. Many readers condemn Thea for not returning home to her
mother. Indeed, Cather does deliberately portray a hard-nosed woman in Thea
Kronborg. However, it is notable that Mrs. Kronborg does not view Thea’s deci-
sion not to return home to care for her in that light. Thea frantically writes back
from Germany that, if her mother can hang on for six months, Thea will bring
her back to Germany and care for her there. She cannot leave at the moment to
care for her because, if she does, she will lose everything. Thea has the opportunity
to portray Elizabeth in Tannhäuser; if she gives that up now, she will be put five
years behind, and might as well quit. Mrs. Kronborg takes the news pragmatically
and notes that the children “that you don’t especially need, you have always with
you, like the poor. But the bright ones get away from you” (492). Mrs. Kronborg
is clearly cut from the same cloth as her daughter; she views life and death from a
pragmatic, deterministic perspective, and views her own death from such a light. It
is clear that she has thought this out. As Mrs. Kronborg explains to Dr. Archie, her
death will be easier for Thea since it will happen when Thea is far away. Mrs. Kro-
nborg owns her own death; she wills it, and feels that she has fulfilled her purpose,
done what she can, and that it is time for her to go. Up until the end, she continues
doing her knitting and needlework, as a pragmatic, practical woman would. She
does not respond with undue sentiment.
Thea’s response to her mother’s death is in keeping with Cather’s most am-
bitious, successful characters: she uses her grief to create something beautiful and
meaningful. Cather’s characters, by and large, do not tend to indulge their feelings
in other ways. As Margaret Doane points out, what marks almost all characters
in Cather who are bereaved is their inability to discuss their grief with others.
“The bereaved survivors of violence,” writes Doane, “are doubly wronged: first
by the loss of a loved one through particularly gruesome violence, and second by
the reactions of the community” (55). That reaction is one of silence. Charac-
ters must fall on their own resources; for many, those resources become work and
art as a means to transform pain. While Alexandra Bergson creates a successful,
flourishing farm in testimony to her father’s life and death, as well as Emil and
Marie’s, Thea Kronborg creates dynamic, flourishing characters on the stage. As
her accompanist, Landry, says, “You’ve heard her Elizabeth? Wonderful, isn’t it?
She was working on that part years ago, when her mother was ill. I could see her
anxiety and grief getting more and more into the part. […] It’s full of the thing
every plain creature finds out for himself, but that never gets written down” (540).
Cather’s depictions of death here, both in terms of how the individual character
him/herself approaches his/her life, as well as in individual characters’ responses
to that character’s death—their own coping mechanisms—express Cather’s con-
stant preoccupation with people’s ability to create meaning. Death, for many of the
characters in the novel, becomes that vehicle to create meaning.
l i f e a n d d e at h i n o p i o n e e r s !
Alexandra Bergson, as noted above, responds to death in a similar manner as Thea

Kronborg. The novel opens on a despairing note, focusing on the failure of her fa-
ther John Bergson’s attempts to conquer the rough Nebraska frontier. While some
readers may view this focus on Bergson’s failure as a despairing tone for Cather to
introduce the story and characters, his failure and eventual death spur Alexandra’s
journey towards success on the frontier. The narrator explains Bergson’s belief that
“land, in itself, is desirable”; however, “this land was an enigma” to him (Cather,
O Pioneers 21–22). Bergson discussed his worries about cultivating the land with
his daughter Alexandra, but surprisingly, not with his sons, saying that “Lou and
Oscar were industrious, but he could never teach them to use their heads about
their work” (23). While Bergson wishes his sons would have the intelligence to
carry on his back-breaking labor towards conquering the land, he believes it will
be Alexandra’s destiny to carry on his legacy on the new frontier: “He was ready to
give up, he felt […] he was quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where
the plow could not find him. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to
leave the tangle to other hands; he thought of his Alexandra’s strong ones” (25).
After Bergson’s death, Alexandra takes over as the head of the family, con-
vincing her brothers to stay and work the land despite their desire to move and
begin anew somewhere else. Alexandra’s determination to develop her father’s land
can be seen as a reaction to his death. While Bergson’s confidence in Alexandra
encourages her to believe in the land, it is his despairing death that also spurs her
to take action in achieving success as a landowner.
While Thea expresses her art through her body and her voice, as a Wagne-
rian soprano, Alexandra’s artistry is expressed through the land and through her
vision to give that land what she senses it desires. As many critics have noted, the
relationship between Alexandra and the land is written as a betrothal: As Alex-
andra drinks in the beauty of the country, “[t]hen the Genius of the Divide, the
great, free spirit which breaths across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to
a human will before” (65). Alexandra does not approach the land as a conqueror;
instead, she approaches it as a lover.
In addition to the profound love Alexandra feels for the land, Cather also
emphasizes Alexandra’s great strength, her “Amazonian fierceness” (8). Both her
physical and intellectual strength set Alexandra apart and destine her for success.
Determinism acts as a balancing act that influences the prosperity of Alexandra’s
success where her father had failed. After Bergson’s death, the family experiences
both affluence and hardships on the Nebraska frontier. While Bergson had doubts
and uncertainties about cultivating the land until his death, Alexandra looks to-
wards her future in Nebraska with hope and ambition: “It fortified her to reflect
upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay
behind them, she felt a sense of personal security. That night she had a new con-
sciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it. […] Under the long
shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring” (70–71). Whereas many farmers looked
upon the frontier as “a horse no one knows how to break or harness” (22), it is
Alexandra, a woman, who feels the connection to nature and security in its bounty.
Death ironically serves as a catalyst to the desire to live in O Pioneers! with
the violent deaths of Emil and Marie. After the funeral of his friend Amedee,
Emil feels propelled to flee the church and consummate his love with Marie. As
Thea was destined to fulfill the drive that pushed her towards artistry, the passion-
ate nature of Emil propels him towards Marie. Both characters have impulsive,
expressive natures, and that passion propels them to make choices that, when acted
upon, prove their downfall.
Marie’s husband Frank displays a propensity towards impulsiveness and vio-
lence that was often construed as the hallmark of Czech people at the time Cather
was writing (Prchal 10). In prison, Frank talks about this along with his tendency
to just go crazy: “Two, t’ree years I know dat woman don’ care no more ‘bout me,
Alexandra Bergson. I know she after some other man. […] An’ I ain’t never hurt
her. I never would-a done dat, if I ain’t had dat gun along. I don’t know what in hell
make me take dat gun” (295). As Prchal notes, after Alexandra leaves the prison,
she starts thinking about Marie’s warm, impulsive nature in another light. Perhaps
it was an undesirable quality? As Prchal explains, “In other words, Czechs are an
impulsive people, which might make them especially friendly or, possibly, espe-
cially violent” (14). Mr. Shimerda in My Ántonia, who is also Czech, contributes
to the popular perception of Czech people at that time as impulsive and prone to
violence by blowing his own brains out in the barn. However, as Prchal also notes,
Cather softens that impression by portraying many other Czech characters in the
novel as nonviolent; she also provides motivation for many such actions, such as
despair and helplessness.
In later years, Cather identified the suicide of the character that Mr. Shimerda
was based on as a catalyst for her own creativity. As she wrote to Carrie Miner
Sherwood, in discussing the novel, “The first thing I heard of when I got to
Nebraska at the age of eight years old was old Mr. Sadalaak’s [Francis Sadilek]
suicide, which had happened some years before. It made a great impression on
me. People never stopped telling the details. I suppose from that time I was de-
termined to write Ántonia, if I ever wrote anything at all” (Cather, Letters 493).
For Alexandra, the violent deaths of Emil and Marie also provide a catalyst,
but hers is more towards forgiveness and greater sensitivity: a self-transforma-
tion. Throughout the novel, Alexandra is described as a successful landowner, but
also as an introvert who is detached from the life around her: “Her personal life,
her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious existence. […]” (203).
While this introversion makes Alexandra a successful businesswoman, it has left
her oblivious to the happenings between Emile and Marie. When Alexandra hears
of their deaths, she surprisingly sides with Frank and blames Emile and Marie for
their actions.
What enables Alexandra to transform and understand and forgive is her re-
lationship with Carl; through talking about Marie and Emil’s murder, he is able
to help her heal. Alexandra explains to Carl how much she has needed him, and
Carl is able to explain to Alexandra that it was not Marie’s fault; Alexandra is
able to move on to a new phase in her life, through the opening of her emotions,
and an expression of her vulnerability and grief that she has previously been un-
able to communicate. She also comes to an understanding that, again, the land is
the reality—the land is what remains, just as Thea understands that it is the art
that persists long after the individual life is gone. This thought brings Alexandra
comfort. As she says to Carl, “We come and go, but the land is always here. And
the people who love it are the people who own it—for a little while” (Cather, O
Pioneers 308). Alexandra articulates a profound truth in Cather: art is a gift, which
must be given freely. It is about giving of something larger than oneself, to provide
meaning in a transient world.
d e at h a s p e r f o r m a n c e a r t
Cather’s most vibrant characters respond to death by creating a meaningful tribute

to life: creating art, be it farms, opera, or other forms of self-expression. Oth-
er characters, however, have a significantly different experience in relationship to
their art, and in their death we can see a world where death simply marks the end.
There is no sense of higher striving for something larger than oneself. If there is
striving, we have the idea that it is warped.
One of Cather’s early stories about death would be the famous story “Paul’s
Case,” where the young high school dandy, Paul, who loves theater more than
life, winds up stealing money and running off for a few glory-filled days at the
Waldorf before his father finds out where he is and sends the police after him.
Rather than be captured, Paul flings himself in front of an oncoming train
and dies. Cather concludes the story by writing, “Then, because the picture-
making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and
Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.” Paul’s performance is
over. Significantly, in The Song of the Lark, we have the distinct impression that
the performance continues, for characters who die in The Song of the Lark are
described, as Thea’s Elsa is, as “just beginning” (Cather, Song 510). Paul’s pic-
ture-making mechanism—his imagination, the source of his art—is crushed,
while, for others, the picture-making mechanism lives on through the legacy of
their art.
On some level, Paul’s story almost seems cruel. Why kill off the boy? Howev-
er, this question takes us back to Thea’s original question—why did the tramp have
to die? Dr. Archie’s answer, in some respects, also seems to be cruel. Some people
succeed, some fail, the tramp is a failure, go and live your life, and live it glorious-
ly, the tramp doesn’t matter. On the other hand, we could view his response in
another way: the only meaningful life is one that is lived to give something back.
Dr. Archie concludes his talk with Thea by noting that all the tramps along the
railroad line know Mary Anderson. They can sing her songs. By living her life, and
being the woman she was meant to be, she is providing meaning to others. She is
giving back, and fulfilling her individual destiny.
Paul’s life, and subsequent death, seems in a sense a cruel, meaningless end-
ing, because, on one level, people did indeed respond to Paul cruelly—they failed
to understand his artistic nature. But Cather also indicts Paul in both his living
and dying: he pursued his art for selfish ends. He refused to try to understand
the natures of others, as well. Paul wished to be a dandy, to wear a red carnation,
and to drink expensive wine. While Cather also liked the finer things in life, the
difference between Thea and Paul in terms of their artistic expression—and hence
their life, and Paul’s ultimate demise—was the sense of obligation in the pursuit
of a higher calling. Thea is infused with her sense of life, ironically, through the
lives of the dead. The presence of death in Cather comes not only through the
act of dying, but also by the art that the dead have left behind. Thea understands
her obligations through the weeks she spends in Panther Canyon, admiring the
objects crafted by the native women. She understands more about her voice, and
about the nature of art, by admiring these artifacts; as she notes, it does not matter
how the people around her respond to her pursuit of art, for “she had older and
higher obligations.”
Paul does not have the constitution, the drive, or the vision to survive. Readers
know that he will not succeed simply by Cather’s physical description of him. He
is the weak member of the herd, destined to be taken down. He has no driving
force in the blood, as does Thea. He also does not have the intellectual framework
to understand how to negotiate the world and its cruel disappointments. He lives
purely in the world of the imagination. Thea also sees the world as greedy and
grasping, but she understands the nature of that world, and understands how to
defend herself. Paul meets his demise in the city; being in the city gets Thea’s
gumption up. After she leaves a symphony performance, she notes the indiffer-
ence of the world around her, the threats from the strangers, and she responds by
becoming fiercer than ever:
There was some power abroad in the world that was bent upon taking away from her that
feeling with which she had come out of the concert hall. Everything seemed to sweep down
on her to tear it out from under her cape. […] Thea glared around her at the crowds, the
ugly sprawling streets, the long lines of lights, and she was not crying now. […] They might
trample her to death, but they should never have it. (254)
The description of the city, as Richard Pressman and Amy Ahearn note, is straight
out of a naturalist novel—the cruelty and indifference, the mechanistic, avaricious
and preying nature of the world (Pressman 222).
Another distinction between Thea and Paul is that Thea has a driving sense
of what she wishes to accomplish with her art. Paul wants to be art; Thea wishes
to be an artist. Both aspire to some transcendent vision, as do so many of Cather’s
characters. Only Thea survives to lead a fruitful life, a life filled with meaning
and purpose. A key difference between the two is that Thea managed to create
meaningful relationships along the way. Paul’s artistry left him in a perpetu-
al world of make-believe, while Thea took the realities of her everyday life and
transformed them into art. Paul lacked the ability to do that, and thus “the pic-
ture-making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black,
and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things” (Cather, Early 131).
Death in Cather’s fiction is also explored through biological, scientific terms.
The description of Emil and Marie’s deaths is written from a purely scientific per-
spective. The death of Paul is, as well. The actual cruel fact of death can be stated
no other way. However, where the romance, the transcendence, comes into play in
regard to death is how the artist can transform that cruel reality into something
that enables us to continue, and to honor and transcend the grave through what
we make of death through art. Thea’s ability to work through her grief and give
new life to her mother by transforming her into Elsa, and Fricka, is a way to tran-
scend death. Alexandra in O Pioneers! creates a thriving, vital farm; both Thea and
Alexandra use their chosen vocation as a means to respond to death in transfor-
mative, powerful ways that allow characters to enable their loved ones, as well as
themselves, to live on by creating relics, art, and stories that give, in Cather’s words,
to “blah, blah, and to the young, dreams.” Frances Zauhar notes that, particularly
in The Song of the Lark, The Professor’s House, and Lucy Gayheart, these novels il-
lustrate the principle that “art is the supreme means by which to understand life
as both immediate and transcendent, and that the purpose of art is to enable both
artist and audience to understand and experience life” (248). In this regard, “Paul’s
Case” can, perhaps, be viewed as a transcendent death; not for Paul, but for the
readers, who can make meaning of the tragedy of his death, and understand not
only the dangers in the cruelty of others in failing to understand and reach out to
Paul, but also the dangers of living in a world of purely make-believe.
In her later novels, as Cather’s vision darkens, these transcendent impulses are
not as strong—characters are not transcendent over death. If Thea represents the
triumphant, ascendant artist, Lucy Gayheart represents just the opposite. While
Thea lives, and lives triumphantly, Lucy Gayheart dies. She falls in love with her
accompanist and dies in a skating accident. As Marilee Lindemann notes, “Lucy
Gayheart dies in part because she is too impulsive to realize that she is skating on
bad ice, but also because she was foolish enough to fall in love with her boss, an
aging artist looking to recover his lost youth and fill the void of middle age” (200).
Lucy’s artistic impulses, like Paul’s, are directed toward the wrong ends. The pro-
fessor in The Professor’s House looks to recover his lost youth through the memories
of his work with his student, Tom Outland; he concludes the book by attempting
to commit suicide. His housekeeper saves him. The professor has lost a great deal,
and also realizes his supreme ignorance of theology (a subject he ironically studies
and lectures on). Cather’s later artists and characters are, by and large, ineffectual;
they have, by and large, lost the ability to create meaning out of suffering and
death. While earlier characters sought this meaning in art, and were successfully
able to communicate that to their audiences, later characters like St. Peter and
Lucy Gayheart are not as successful, and we are left with the distinct impression
of both their, and others’, isolation, both in life and in death.
For some characters, a religious journey replaces the artistic quest that defined
earlier ones. As John J. Murphy notes, we will never know what Willa Cather
herself believed. While she converted to Episcopalianism later in life, the reasons
behind that conversion remain somewhat of a mystery. What does remain clear is
that for characters in Cather, the struggles in death, dying, and bereavement are
basically individual struggles (197). Margaret Doane notes that few of Cather’s
characters find community in suffering (49). Few characters communicate about
their losses and bereavement. Alexandra is noted for her inability to discuss emo-
tional matters with her friend Marie; those who suffer loss must deal with that
struggle inwardly or find a way to create something out of the emptiness. Those
are the characters who prevail, rather than simply endure.
Thus, death and dying in Cather’s fiction ultimately teach us more about how
to live than how to die. Characters with a sense of vocation and purpose imbue
their lives with meaning and provide meaning and purpose for others as well. They
give of themselves. That gift can take many forms; art is not only expressed through
Wagnerian opera, but also through a relationship with the land and with each oth-
er. All these types of expression become a means to provide a legacy, meaning, and
purpose, and a way to provide a sense of striving after the inimitable. Without that
sense of striving, we become Paul, who understood beauty but lacked a sense of
purpose other than his own great drama. We become the tramp, who merely puts
on a show to get back at perceived wrongs. The only art that lasts, and the life that
yields the most meaning, is given as a gift of love to others no matter how the show
ends for the artist. In the end, it is not about the end, but about the desire and the
longing that drove us.
works cited
Ahern, Amy. “Full-Blooded Writing and Journalistic Fictions: Naturalism, the Female Artist and
Willa Cather’s ‘The Song of the Lark.’” American Literary Realism 33.2 (2001): 143–56. JSTOR.
Web. 4 Mar. 2012.
Cather, Willa. Early Novels and Short Stories. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1937.
Print.
———. O Pioneers! 1913. New York: Viking Press, 1989. Print.
———. The Professor’s House. 1925. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.
———. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf,
2013. Print.
———. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Boston: Houghton, 1965. Print.
———. “Three American Singers.” McClure’s Magazine 42 (Dec. 1913). The Willa Cather Archive. Ed.
Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska-Lincoln. Web. 27 Jan. 2015.
Doane, Margaret. “Do Talk to Me: Violent Deaths and Isolated Survivors in Cather.” Violence, the
Arts, and Willa Cather. Ed. Joseph R. Urgo and Merrill Maguire Skaggs. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson UP, 2007. 49–56. Print.
Lindemann, Marilee. “Cather’s Elastigirls”: Reckoning with Sex/Gender Violence in Woman Artist
Stories.” Violence, the Arts, and Willa Cather. Ed. Joseph R. Urgo and Merrill Maguire Skaggs.
Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2007. 190–203. Print.
Murphy, John J. “Willa Cather’s Sheltering Art: Cather’s Cathedral and the Adams Factor.” Willa
Cather and Aestheticism: From Romanticism to Modernism. Ed. Sarah Cheney Watson and Ann
Moseley. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2012. 197–222. Print.
Prchal, Tim. “The Bohemian Paradox: My Ántonia and Popular Images of Czech Immigrants.”
MELUS 29.2 (Summer 2004): 3–25. Print.
Pressman, Richard S. “‘The Inevitable Hardness of Human Life’: The Song of the Lark as Natural-
ism.” Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark. Ed. Debra L. Cumberland. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010.
205–23. Print.
Zauhar, Frances. “Violent Art, Sacred Art: Artists and Sacrifice in Willa Cather.” Violence, the Arts,
and Willa Cather. Ed. Joseph R. Urgo and Merrill Maguire Skaggs. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson UP, 2007. 248–60. Print.
About the Editors
John J. Han is Professor of English & Creative Writing and Chair of the Human-
ities Division at Missouri Baptist University. He is editor of Wise Blood: A Re-
Consideration (Rodopi, 2011), Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal, and Cantos:
A Literary and Arts Journal. His articles have appeared in many journals and es-
say collections, such as Journal of Transnational American Studies, Kansas English,
Mark Twain Studies, Literature and Belief, The Moral Philosophy of John Steinbeck,
Steinbeck Studies, The Steinbeck Review, and Ethics, Literature, & Theory. In ad-
dition to four haiku collections, he has published numerous poems in periodi-
cals and anthologies worldwide, including Frogpond, The Laurel Review, Modern
Haiku, Valley Voices, and World Haiku Review. A native of South Korea, he earned
his M.A. and his Ph.D. from Kansas State University and the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, respectively. In addition to MBU, he has taught at KSU,
UNL, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Review and Professor of Psychology/Sociology at Missouri Baptist University.
He earned an A.A. from Hannibal-LaGrange College, a B.A. from South-
west Baptist University, an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, an
M.S.Ed. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. from
Saint Louis University. He also studied at Concordia Seminary, the University
of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and the Harvard Institutes. A licensed coun-
selor, he has published academic articles and book reviews in Intégrité: A Faith
and Learning Journal.
About the Contributors
James Brown is an associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He

taught film and literature at Middlesex University, and politics and sociology at
Birkbeck. He currently teaches for IES Abroad. He has published on science
fiction, romanticism, and literature on film. With Sam Ashenden, he co-edited
a 2014 special issue of Economy and Society on guilt. They also convene the Birk-
beck Guilt Group: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bisr/research/guilt-working-group.
Daniela Chana, born in 1985 in Vienna, Austria, holds a doctoral degree in
Comparative Literature from the University of Vienna. She is an author of
fiction and art curator. As an independent scholar, she presented the out-
come of her research at academic conferences in Oxford, London, Stockholm,
Prague, and Salzburg. Her paper “Perversion, Madness and Crime in Young
Italian Literature” has recently been published in the volume Madness, Women,
and the Power of Art, edited by Laura Gonzalez and Frances Davies (Oxford:
Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013). Her short stories and poems have been pub-
lished in various international literary journals and anthologies.
Debra L. Cumberland is a professor of English at Winona State University in
Winona, Minnesota. She is the co-editor of Siblings and Autism: Stories Span-
ning Generations and Cultures ( Jessica Kingsley Press) and the editor of Willa
Cather’s The Song of the Lark (Rodopi). Her articles, stories, and essays have
appeared in many journals and essay collections, such as American Literary
Realism, The Laurel Review, and Natural Bridge. Cumberland received her
238 | about the contributors
B.A. from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and her M.A. and
Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Claudia Desblaches is assistant professor at the University of Rennes 2, France.
She is a specialist in modern and contemporary American literature. Her lat-
est book deals with the real in the poetry of E. E. Cummings and that of
W. C. Williams (Dire le Réel en poésie: E. E. Cummings et W. C. Williams, Mi-
chel Houdiard éditeur, Paris, 2010). Among the varied articles she published
on literature are the following: “Listening to the voices of prose in contempo-
rary American short stories” (Dirk Van Hulle and An Laffut, John Benjamins
Publishing Company, English Text Construction 1:1), « Le silence pictural
dans les poèmes de Barbara Guest » (LOXIAS 33, Université de Nice), « Dis-
grace de JM Coetzee (1999) ou les tentatives beckettiennes du style » (Samuel
Beckett Today, Rodopi), and « Le Cri du Paon dans la gueule du dragon : les
autres voix dans les nouvelles de Flannery O’ Connor » (Cahiers de Littérature
orale, N°76, LLACAN [INALCO-CNRS], expected in 2015).
Hannah Farrell is an independent scholar whose current research interests in-
clude gender in the post-war era, Scottish fiction, the influence of the Gothic
on modern fiction, and friendships and communities in literature. Her current
research looks particularly at the work of Muriel Spark through all of these
lenses and at the 1960s in popular culture. Her most recent publication is a
study of gender conflict in the TV show Mad Men, and previous works have
looked at post-war British horror and gender in the Gothic novel.
Rebekah M. Fowler, a specialist in medieval literature, is assistant professor of
English at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Her research interests in-
clude emotions, affect, virtue ethics, and gendered identity in medieval chivalric
romances and writings of and about medieval mystics. She has recently presented
conference papers on the subject of knightly masculine identity and virtue ethics
in chivalric romances in preparation for a series of journal articles on that subject.
She also has a book chapter published in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and
Fire and the Medieval Literary Tradition (Warsaw University Press, 2014).
Kelly Leavitt is an instructor of English at Missouri Baptist University. Her
professional and academic background encompasses composition and rhet-
oric (she is a former writing lab coordinator at MBU), comparative litera-
ture (M.A. from University College London), and linguistics (the Cambridge
Certificate of Teaching English as a Second Language to Adults). In addition
to teaching, her current research interests include Christianity and literature,
translation, migrant/immigrant literature, and comparative and international
education. She has published works in Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal,
Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
ab o u t t h e co n t r ib u to r s | 239
Carol Leff received her undergraduate degree from the University of the Witwa-
tersrand, and in 2014 obtained her Master’s in English Literature cum laude at
Rhodes University, South Africa. She works at the Institute for the Study of
English in Africa, where she occasionally teaches creative writing. Her poetry
and fiction have appeared in anthologies such as Like a House on Fire, Glass Jars
Among Trees, and Poems for Haiti, as well as journals including A Hudson View,
Botsotso, Tyume Journal of Creative Writing, New Coin Poetry, New Contrast
Literary Journal, Scrutiny2, and Sharp!. Leff ’s first collection of poetry, flashes,
was published in 2009 by Aerial Publishing, and somewhere between work
and home, dusk and dawn, she is working on a second collection of poetry.
Marwan A. Nader is a medievalist who specializes in the Crusades. He holds a
Ph.D. from Cambridge University and teaches in the History Department
at Queen Mary, London University. He is the author of Burgesses and Bur-
gess Law in the Latin Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, 1099–1325, and has
published on the legal institutions of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Mus-
lims under Latin Christian jurisdiction in the journal Medieval Encounters.
Nader’s current research focuses mainly on law and society in fourteenth-
century Cyprus.
Myrna A. Nader obtained a Ph.D. from Brunel University (London). She taught
modern literature at the American University of Beirut and Notre Dame
(Lebanon) before taking up a position at Brunel. She currently teaches at Re-
gent’s University London. Her most recent publications include “Orientalism
Now: The Shaping of Lebanese History and Identity” (Altre Modernità n. 8,
2012; with Marwan A. Nader), and “Elizabeth Bishop and the Ontology of
Aesthetic Space” (X Conference on Women’s Studies: Negotiating Gendered Spac-
es / Topografias Domésticas y Género, Fundamentos, 2013). Nader also reviews
books on theology, history, and contemporary politics for the Catholic Library
World and Warscapes.
Carolyn Ownbey is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English at McGill
University in Montréal. She received her B.A. in English Literature from the
University of California, Davis (summa cum laude, 2008) and an M.A. in
English Literature from Boston College (2011). Her current work focuses
primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century post-conflict, post-traumatic
texts, as well as poststructuralist theory and human rights studies. Her
dissertation project at McGill will explore the concept of statelessness in a
transnational context, in both fiction and nonfiction literature from World
War II to the present.
John Pennington is a professor of English at St. Norbert College, where he also
directs the St. Norbert Collaborative: Center for Undergraduate Research. He
240 | about the contributors
specializes in Victorian fairy tales and focuses much of his work on George
MacDonald (1824–1905), Scottish fairy-tale and fantasy writer and a key in-
fluence on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle. As part of
his work on MacDonald, he edits North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald
Studies. He has published widely on MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, John Ruskin,
J. M. Barrie, Richard Adams, Ursula K. Le Guin, J. K. Rowling, and Philip
Pullman. His most recent publications include the following volumes edited
with Roderick McGillis: a critical edition of George MacDonald’s At the Back
of the North Wind (Broadview, 2011) and Behind the Back of the North Wind:
Critical Essays on George MacDonald’s Classic Children’s Book (Winged Lion
Press, 2011). He is also the co-author, with Ryan Cordell, of Writing about
Literature through Theory (Flat World Knowledge, 2013).
Lori F. Smurthwaite received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Brigham Young
University and her Ph.D. in the Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature program
at the University of Southern California. She is currently the Director of the
Writer’s Resource Lab at California State University, Long Beach, where she
also teaches American literature, children’s literature, and composition courses.
Her teaching and research interests include the short story and the short-story
cycle as genres, metafiction, children’s literature, and writing center theory.
Her most recent publications and conference presentations have explored the
interplay of narrative memory and imagined reality in Tim O’Brien’s July, July
and drunkenness in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited.”
Colin Yeo is a doctoral candidate from the discipline of English and Cultural
Studies at the University of Western Australia. His doctoral research looks at
the connections between the concept of the Gothic and the literature of the
early modern period. His scholarly interests include Gothic literature, literary
works of the English Renaissance, horror film, and anime.
Heather H. Yeung graduated with a Ph.D. in contemporary poetry and poetics
from Durham University, where she held an Arts and Humanities Research
Council doctoral award, and where she has taught modern and contemporary
literature. She is currently convenor of the WALK research group at the Uni-
versity of Sunderland and a core member of The Memory Network (Roehamp-
ton). She has published various articles and book chapters on contemporary
literature, poetics, and cultural theory, and is currently completing a monograph
on contemporary lyric poetry and voice, as well as co-editing collections of es-
says on contemporary world poetry (Cosmopoetics, with Marc Botha, Palgrave
Macmillan) and Haruki Murakami (Haruki Murakami: Contemporary Critical
Perspectives, with Sebsatian Groes, Bloomsbury-Continuum).
Index
Acceptance, 1, 5, 26, 35, 58, 61, 64, 91–92, 96, Brite, Poppy Z., 4, 155–157, 159–161,
102–103, 105–106, 110–112, 135, 156–157, 163–164, 166, 168–170
209–211, 216, 221, 225 Brolli, Daniele, 77, 79, 84–85
Afterlife, 1, 5, 25, 27–28, 39–40, 45, 47–48, 51, Brontë, Charlotte, 89, 92, 140
91, 98, 158–159, 169, 208, 210, 214–215, Brontë, Emily, 36, 89, 140
217–218 Burial, 3, 9, 11, 13–15, 17–19, 23–32, 35–37,
Anger, Angry, 1, 31, 76, 87, 102–106, 134, 149, 115, 117–120, 122, 124, 141, 195
157, 176–177, 192, 196–197, 219 Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 3, 87–98
Anxiety, 39–40, 105–106, 124–125, 127, 199,
227 Campo, Rossana, 75–77, 84
Appelfeld, Aharon, 4, 127–129, 132–136 Caruth, Cathy, 120, 122, 125
Arendt, Hannah, 78, 84 Cather, Willa, 5, 221–234, 237
Austen, Jane, 142, 153 Closure, 115–117, 121–122, 124, 127–132,
135–136
Ballard, J. G., 159 Conventions, 113, 141, 154, 173, 193–195, 205
Bargaining, 1, 102–104, 110, 133, 157 Corpses, 4, 14, 27, 32, 41, 62, 64–65, 68–69,
Barthes, Roland, 164, 170 73, 83, 116–118, 143, 155–170, 195, 203
Baudelaire, Charles, 163–164, 170 Curtoni, Matteo, 83–84
Bed, 25–26, 28–30, 36, 59, 61, 87, 93, 104, 159,
192, 208–209, 211, 216–217, 219 Dante, 3, 40, 45–46, 48, 52
Bereavement, 1, 113, 226, 233 Decapitation, 64–69, 165
Bernini, Franco, 80, 82, 84 Defoe, Daniel, 3, 42–43
Bishop, Elizabeth, 3, 39–53 De Man, Paul, 121
Bosman, Herman Charles, 3, 9–17, 19–22 Denial, 1, 102–105, 125, 134–135, 157–158,
Bowlby, John, 4, 101–103, 105–109, 111–113 165–167, 170, 183–184
242 | index
Depression, 1, 101–103, 106–107, 110–111, Haunt, Haunting, 10, 12, 90, 94, 107, 115–125,
113, 157 135–136, 147, 149, 151, 190
Derrida, Jacques, 4, 123–125, 163, 169–170 Hauntology, 123
Detective novel, 58, 63–64, 67 Heaney, Seamus, 4, 115–125
Determinism, Deterministic, 211, 224–228 Heaven, 1, 27–28, 40–41, 46–49, 51, 95, 191,
Dialectics, 39, 41, 45–46 208, 210–211, 213, 216, 219
Disorganization and despair, 102–103, 106 Hemingway, Ernest, 218, 220
Donne, John, 24–25, 27–29, 35–38 Herbert, George, 24, 29–30, 37, 53
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 61, 63–64, 69–70 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 74, 84
Drayton, Michael, 24, 28, 35–37 Herrick, Robert, 25–27, 32, 37–38
Hogg, James, 140, 153
Enemy, 80, 153, 181, 211, 218 Holocaust, 127–136, 150
Eternal life, Eternity, 2, 35, 48, 51, 108, Homer, 4, 196–197, 206, 226
161 Horror, 2, 14, 24, 61, 65–67, 82, 94, 127–128,
Euthanasia, 5, 208, 212–214, 220 130, 140, 155, 157, 164, 174, 179
Exegesis, 39, 41–42, 46 Humanism, 214–215
Humanitarianism, 214
Faith, Faithful, 44, 45, 51–52, 93, 123, 128, Humor, Humorous, 17–20, 107, 113, 155, 161,
209, 214–216 164–166, 169, 203, 216
Fantasy, 3, 57, 89–90, 92–96, 158, 174, 240
Fear, Fearful, 3, 5, 14–15, 40, 43, 47, 54, 73, Ibn Tufayl, 3, 40–43, 53
75–76, 94, 96, 102, 104, 106, 127, 133–134, Intertextuality, 89, 91, 97
142, 144–145, 151, 166, 175, 179, 181, 198, Isolation, 102, 104, 108, 135, 139, 144,
211, 217, 225 147–148, 152–153, 233–234
Ferrier, Bertrand, 160, 170
Fiotti, Milena, 81–82, 84 Kavanaugh, Robert E., 217, 219–220
Forgiveness, 69, 118, 156, 167, 169, 176, 181, Kitāb al-Mirāj (“Book of the Ascension”),
217, 229 3, 40, 45, 54
Freud, Sigmund, 10–11, 14–16, 21–22, 64, 69, Konigsberg, Ruth Davis, 1
108–109, 113, 121–124, 127 Kristeva, Julia, 3, 57–58, 61–67, 69–70, 113,
Friendship, 139, 142–144, 146–147, 151, 167, 170
238 Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, 1, 4, 58, 96, 98,
Fromaget, Michel, 169–170 101–104, 112–113, 127, 135–136, 156–157,
170, 208, 219–220
Gascoigne, George, 24, 29, 37
Ghost, 4, 16, 94, 115–116, 118–121, 123–124, Landscape, 9–11, 15, 18–21, 60–61, 92, 104,
143, 147, 151 159, 208 108, 132, 141, 168
Giovani Cannibali, 71, 85 Levinas, Emmanuel, 120, 124
Gothic fiction, 141, 145, 148, 151 Levi, Primo, 4, 127–133, 135–136
Grave, Graveyard, 3, 9–20, 23–37, 43, 47, 57, Lewis, Mathew, 142–143, 148, 153
118, 121, 143, 146, 160, 168, 201–202, 210, Liber Scale Machometi, 42, 52–54
222, 225, 232 Liminal space, 92–94
Graveyard poetry, 24, 37 Loss, 1–2, 4, 9–10, 64, 67–68, 80, 91, 101–103,
Grief, 1, 3–4, 23, 31, 93, 101–113, 157, 160, 105–106, 110–113, 115, 160, 167–168, 172,
182, 189–206, 220, 227, 229, 232 189, 192, 194, 198–199, 206, 211, 215, 227,
Guiomar, Michel, 164, 170 233
i n d e x | 243
MacDonald, George, 3, 87–98 Quick death, 208, 210–212, 219

MacKenzie, Craig, 11, 13, 16, 21–22
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 159, 170 Radcliffe, Ann, 36, 143, 152–153
Marcandier-Colard, Christine, 156, 160, 165, Rape, 75, 79, 82, 113, 141, 145, 148
170 Reconciliation, 112, 152, 194
Middle Ages, Medieval, 25, 27, 37, 40, 42, 46, Reeve, Clara, 142
52–54, 101, 104, 106–107, 111–113 Renaissance, 3, 23–28, 30, 35–38, 53, 150, 205
Melancholy, Melancholia, 3–4, 10, 21–22, 24, Resurrection, 24, 40–41, 43, 49, 51–52, 54, 57,
60, 107–109, 113, 115–116, 122–125 59, 66, 95
Memory, 2, 4, 9, 12, 23, 30, 32, 93, 107–112, Romance, 4, 101, 106, 113, 232
117, 121–122, 127–128, 130, 135, 136, Romanticism, Romanticist, 198, 210, 219, 234,
144, 150, 171–172, 174, 177, 183, 185, 237
199, 240
Mental illness, 151, 153 Santacroce, Isabella, 74–75, 78, 85
Messenger of God, 46 Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 189–195, 197–199,
Metafiction, 171–172, 184, 185 205–206
Metaphor, 5–6, 25, 28–30, 32–33, 50, 59–62, Shakespeare, William, 2, 4, 24–27, 33–38, 189,
64, 70, 102, 133, 161, 168–169, 224 203, 206
Modernity, 5, 52, 152–153, 172, 189 Shelley, Mary, 140, 142–144, 154
Monster, 88, 142–145, 158 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 36, 210, 219
Mourning, 2, 4–5, 9–11, 19, 21–22, 58–59, Sir Orfeo, 4, 101, 103, 112–113
67–68, 91, 93, 98, 102, 115–124, 135–136, Sontag, Susan, 3, 57–63, 69–70
155, 189–191, 193–194, 196, 198–199, South Africa, 9–22
201–203, 205–206 Spark, Muriel, 4, 139–154
Stages of grief, 1, 4, 58, 101–104, 157
Naturalism, Naturalist, 53, 210–211, 223, 226, Steinbeck, John, 5, 207–220
231, 233–234 Suicide, 58–59, 61, 63, 68, 77–78, 84, 129, 136,
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 74, 78, 84–85 162, 201, 220–221, 223, 229, 232
Non-endings, 4, 127 Survival, Survivor, 4, 12, 43, 54, 80, 82, 88,
Nove, Aldo, 77–79, 85 93, 103, 120–136, 147, 159, 208, 211, 213,
224–225, 227, 231, 234
O’Brien, Tim, 4, 171–185 Swift, Jonathan, 158
Old Transvaal Stories, 11, 21–22
Oleander, 11–12, 16, 21 Teodorani, Alda, 78, 84–85
Otherworld, Otherworldly, 45, 92, 94, 96, 102, Thanatopsis, 25, 36
104, 108–111, 113 Thomas, Louis-Vincent, 155, 161, 164, 166,
170
Palahniuk, Chuck, 4, 155–157, 161, 167, 169, Torture, 155–168, 210–211
170 Trauma, Traumatic, 4, 58, 76–77, 106, 108,
Pascal, Blaise, 41, 46, 48–49, 53, 54, 216 110, 113, 115–116, 121–122, 124–125,
Poetic immortality, 23, 25, 28, 30, 35–36 127–129, 132, 134–136, 151, 239
Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernist,
2–4, 39, 52–53, 98, 137, 139, 149, 155, 172, Uncanny, 14–16, 20–21, 142
174, 183–184 Underworld, 109
Post-traumatic, 116, 122, 124
Prayer, 13–14, 217, 225 Vampire, 2, 159
Victorian, 90, 92, 94, 97, 142, 147
244 | index
Violence, 4, 21, 65, 72–73, 75, 84, 115–118,

121, 130, 134, 152, 155, 164, 168, 170, 190,
192, 210, 212, 214, 218, 221, 227–229, 234
Vision, 43, 48, 51, 58–67, 91, 118, 121–122,
147, 153, 159–160, 163–164, 170, 195, 204,
209, 219, 225, 228, 231–232
War, 9, 16–18, 20–21, 34, 80–82, 121,

129–130, 132, 134, 139, 146–147, 149–154,
172–174, 176–179, 181, 184–185, 202–203,
217–218, 221
Yearning and Searching, 102–103, 108

Studies on Themes
and Motifs in Literature
The series is designed to advance the publication of research

pertaining to themes and motifs in literature. The studies cover
cross-cultural patterns as well as the entire range of national
literatures. They trace the development and use of themes and
motifs over extended periods, elucidate the significance of
specific themes or motifs for the formation of period styles, and
analyze the unique structural function of themes and motifs. By
examining themes or motifs in the work of an author or period,
the studies point to the impulses authors received from literary
tradition, the choices made, and the creative transformation of
the cultural heritage. The series will include publications of
colloquia and theoretical studies that contribute to a greater
understanding of literature.
For additional information about this series or for the submission

of manuscripts, please contact:
Peter Lang Publishing

Acquisitions Department
29 Broadway, 18th floor
New York, NY 10006
To order other books in this series, please contact our Customer

Service Department:
800-770-LANG (within the U.S.)

212-647-7706 (outside the U.S.)
212-647-7707 FAX
Or browse online by series at:
www.peterlang.com

The Final Crossing Death and Dying in Literature

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Final Crossing Death and Dying in Literature

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Han&Triplett_cpi_cb_DAEMRCH-DD.

QXD 8/3/2015 11:08 AM Page 1

The Final Crossing

Death and Dying in Literature

The Final Crossing

Death and Dying in Literature

Virginia L. Lewis, Edward T. Larkin, and Hugo Walter

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series.

Death and Dying in Literature

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

© 2015 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

All rights reserved.

Part One: Death as a Reflection of Cultural Meaning and Symbolism

Part Two: Death as a Literary Device

Chapter Five: Death as an Instrument for Social Criticism in

About the Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Death and dying is an important area of study in a variety of disciplines, including

Part Three, “Those Left Behind,” investigates the experiences of individu-

or British authors; the only three non-Anglo-Saxon authors are Aeschylus,

Gravesites in the Stories of

Why might gravesites be important in Bosman’s work? Bosman’s oeuvre displays

Clayton’s summary is a harsh rendering of Bosman’s life, although it makes for

In the introduction to the collection Old Transvaal Stories, Craig MacKenzie

It is interesting that Bosman presents the cemeteries here as part of a pastoral

In her biography on Bosman, Rosenberg mentions the writer’s early impressions

This passage highlights Hendrik’s fear, a fear that he is unable to comprehend, a

“Funeral Earth” was published in 1950, in Vista, a magazine of the University

This interpretation can be extended to include the idea of woman representing

Four of Bosman’s short stories—“Veld Story,” “Brown Mamba,” “Funeral Earth,”

south afric an english terms quoted or used

• veld: The South African countryside, landscape, etc.

“Mouthed Graves Will

A person’s tomb or grave serves as a marker of the individual’s existence on earth.

individual subjectivity. As final resting places of the living, graves in Renaissance

Ralph Houlbrooke writes that Shakespeare’s commitment to self-realization pre-

“ to sleep , to die ”: beds as graves in renaissance verse

attention to the poet’s preoccupation with individual subjectivity. His mentions of

When my grave is broke up again

And of my bed eche sundrye part in shaddowes doth resemble,

perpetuating the poet : burial sites and poetic immortality

For Plato, being remembered preserves a person’s consciousness, allowing a person

Horace writes of himself as a person who “pioneered Greek rhythms,” and he

Cannot demolish, nor the innumerable

The poet places emphasis on these lines by implementing extraordinary longevity

These lines are a response to the poet’s contemplation of mortality. Shakespeare’s

These lines begin with a contemplation of mortality that is rooted in an acknowl-

“The Fall of Hyperion” (1856–57) are some examples of nineteenth-century verses

From Horace to Shakespeare to the Romantics, contemporary 21st-century read-

Christian and Muslim

a philosophical work in which knowledge may be attained without “instruction,”

A new volcano has erupted,

the “ man - moth ,” al - mirāj , and dante ’ s divine comedy

In the dialectics of death, Christ is the embodiment of ascension and immortality,

Each night he must

At six o’clock we were waiting for coffee,

the incongruity—whether in art or life generally—between the physical forms of

Death as a Literary Device

The End of Language?

encounter the fullest exploration of moving toward death in Sontag’s fictional

Sontag extends these metaphors of habitation and topography throughout the

Hester’s blindness, figured here with Ariadne-like appropriateness in the context

Julia Kristeva’s third novel, Possessions, bears a prefatory quotation from

represented through the decapitation investigated in Possessions. In the preface to

The resonances of Pauline’s name make up a psychoanalytic speech therapy ses-