We must all cope with life and whatever comes after it. In Gabrielle Zevin’s novel, Elsewhere, the characters must accept death and move on with their lives. A fifteen year old girl named Liz is hit by a car, on her way to the mall and dies. Liz’s loved ones; Liz’s brother Alvy and Liz’s best friend Zooey try to deal with Liz’s death. Alvy uses prop jokes to cheer himself and his parents, while Zooey can’t forget about the fact that, if she hadn’t called Liz to the mall, Liz would still be alive. Meanwhile, Liz finds herself in Elsewhere, a place where the dead go and age backwards until they are a baby, then are sent back to Earth. Liz regrets the fact that she died young and never go to do adult things, such as getting her driver’s licence and going to college. Liz try to get her old life back, by watch her family, then attempts to make contact by going to the Well, a place that allows the dead to talk to the living, but is stopped by Owen Welles. Owen is the chief of police, and like Liz he has attempt numerous trips to the Well, to make contact with his wife, Emily. In the book, Elsewhere, the characters must cope with life and move on, Owen must accept that he is dead and cannot go back to his wife, Liz’s loved ones must realize that Liz is dead and there is nothing that will change this fact, while Liz must cope with her young death and move on with life in Elsewhere.
For a start Owen must accept the fact that he is dead and can’t ever reunite with his wife, Emily, but tries anyways. Specifically, Owen has attempted to “dive to the Well a record 117 times” (Zevin 330) and when he makes contact with Emily, he “mainly [drives] her insane…Eventually, Owen [realizes] what he was doing to her and her knew he had to stop” (Zevin ...
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... that no matter what she does, she can never get her old life back, and in the end accept this fact and moves on with her new life in Elsewhere.
In summary, the characters in Gabrielle Zevin’s novel, Elsewhere must cope with death and move on with their lives by letting go of the past. In the end Owen finds that clinging to the past cause harm no only to him but also the ones he loves. Liz’s family and friends accept the fact that Liz is dead and she will never come back, they eventually move on with their lives, but still love and remember Liz as a wonderful daughter, and friend. Liz stops regretting her death after realizing that her inferences with the living is only making matters worse. All in all, Gabrielle Zevin’s book, Elsewhere, shows that humans must stop living in the past, and accept death as its true from, a new life, to truly move on with their lives.
...ts to go back to her childhood days, but she continues to ruin her life with situations that she shouldn’t be involved in.
For example, he saw his name on Scrooge’s grave during the church’s Christmas pageant, which showed him the date when will die. Also, he spent many hours playing basketball, even though he was so small. While he didn’t know why basketball was so important to him, he worked hard with John to dunk the basketball. During the Vietnam War, Owen’s responsibility was to escort the bodies of dead servicemen back to their families. At the end of the novel, Owen had asked John to visit him in Arizona; when he knew that his death date was approaching. While escorting a group of Vietnamese children to the restroom, Dick Jarvis, who lost his brother in the war, tossed a grenade into the group. In order to save the children, John and Owen use the shot that they practiced so long on the basketball court to deflect the grenade. While Owen saves the children’s lives, he loses his arms in the explosion, which causes him to die: “Owen Meany’s arms were missing… Nowhere else was injured” (625). What was remarkable about his death was that only his arms were damaged. Instead of running away from his destiny and trying to change it, he accepted what was supposed to happen to him, even if it meant dying to save
As in the stages of change, pre-contemplation or denial is followed by the slow understanding that a profound alteration in our lives is occurring. In this early stage, Deits encourages the reader to focus on the immediate personal needs of the grief stricken. Early in this pr...
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
People has times that they are looking forward to. The times such as childhood, schooling help lead us through our life. While this way of thinking has many positive side, we forget the appreciation of all details of the moments. We see the moments in Thornton Wilder's play “Our Town”. This play takes us to a small town in New England and we see how simple it is, to the point where we may get bored to our lives. After looking through the events in the play we might have see as big and important described as relatively simple and straightforward, we begin to question how important that these events are in our life. Not like Emily realize how much of life was ignored until death. But after death, she can see how much everyone goes through life without noticing the events that are occurring all the time.
...latively normal and happy life with her family in their new home in Vermont by adjusting to her new mental environment.
... loss of loved ones like Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Andi in Revolution or faced your own inevitable passing like Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars, you are not alone. In confronting and facing death, these characters learn that death is merely a small part of living. It is an element of the human experience. To return to the wise words of the late Steve Jobs, “Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important…There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Living is the adventure. In facing their fears and sadness, these characters learn how to be courageous, how to hope, how to love, and how to live. Join them on their journeys by checking out one of the spotlighted books at your local library.
Owen convinced himself that the reason he was used to kill John’s mom is because he is an “instrument of God” and that God had taken away Owen’s hands because he is helplessly under the control of destiny. Tabitha Wheelwright died for a reason, and through God, it was predestined to happen by Ow...
It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.
Through an intimate maternal bond, Michaels mother experiences the consequences of Michaels decisions, weakening her to a debilitating state of grief. “Once he belonged to me”; “He was ours,” the repetition of these inclusive statements indicates her fulfilment from protecting her son and inability to find value in life without him. Through the cyclical narrative structure, it is evident that the loss and grief felt by the mother is continual and indeterminable. Dawson reveals death can bring out weakness and anger in self and with others. The use of words with negative connotations towards the end of the story, “Lonely,” “cold,” “dead,” enforce the mother’s grief and regressing nature. Thus, people who find contentment through others, cannot find fulfilment without the presence of that individual.
In Amy Hempel’s Short Story “Going,” we take part in a journey with the narrator through loss, coping, memory, experience, and the duality of life. Throughout the story we see the narrator’s struggle through coping with the loss of his mother, and how he moves from a mixture of depression, denial, and anger, to a form of acceptance and revelation. The narrator has lost his mother to a fire three states away, and goes on a reckless journey through the desert, when he crashes his car and ends up hospitalized. Only his thoughts and the occasional nurse to keep him company. He then reaches a point of discovery and realizations that lead to a higher understanding of mortality, and all of the experiences that come with being alive.
...s that her family will come to her and beg her to return home. When she realizes that they are not going to do this, she will run back to them, and life will go on as she has always known it.
Is there such a thing as free will, what is the relationship between mind and body, and the true difference between right and wrong are a few questions about human existence that have plagued philosophers and average men alike since the days of Socrates and Aristotle. While not everyone may pay these questions much attention, there is one philosophical thought that has probably crossed the mind of every human at some point in time, and that is the concept of death and what happens after. There are widespread thoughts about what happens postmortem which range from the idea of immortality during the days of the ancient Greeks to the belief in reincarnation that is associated with many Eastern religions. These beliefs, along with others similar to them, provide some with a sort of safety net because they know that their essence (soul, spirit, etc.) will continue to exist after they pass. That being said, not everyone shares these opinions and for some the idea of death can be frightening. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise examines this fear through Jack Gladney and several other characters. While the novel does not offer any answers, it does stimulate thought regarding death in modern society and how it should be handled. Although many of the characters try to do things such as ignore or embrace their fear in order to get it off their minds, Jack cannot shake his angst, all of which mirroring the various reactions people in today’s society have regarding death.
...s the rest of her life to herself. She may once again weep for him, but ultimately her freedom overshadows this.
Throughout time, death has been viewed in a negative light. In general, it is an event to be mourned and is seen by some as the end to existence. People do not usually seek death as an answer to their problems. In various pieces of literature, however, suicide is contemplated by the characters as the only solution to the pain and grief that they experience.