Emperor Hadrian in Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian and E.L. Doctorow's Everyman figure of Coalhouse Walker, Jr. in Ragtime As Marguerite Yourcenar states in Memoirs of Hadrian, “. . . there is always a day where Atlas ceases to support the weight of the heavens, and his revolt shakes the earth.” (114) When Coalhouse Walker strides knowingly, even willingly, into his death, he is more powerful at that moment than he has been at any other point in his crusade. Because he has no regard for death or for the effect of his decision upon the rest of the world, his chosen fate sends a resounding reaction through all who witness his end. And what might drive a man to abandon his life so freely? Love and death. Inextricably meshed in both Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar and E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, these timeless states profoundly change the outlooks of Emperor Hadrian and Coalhouse Walker Jr. Despite being separated by centuries, both men go to extreme lengths for their perception of love, but when death intervenes they have curiously opposite reactions. Hadrian is Emperor of the vast Roman Empire, and when he first comes into power he is afire with new ideas of beautification and improvements for all the provinces of the Empire, whether the people of said provinces wanted to be improved or not. He is secure enough in himself to consider himself, while not a god, something like a lieutenant, “seconding the deity in his effort to give form and order to a world, to develop and multiply its convolutions, extensions, and complexities.” (Yourcenar, 144) After many personal triumphs, he still refuses the accolades that previous Emperor’s have felt were rightfully theirs, preferring to let his people and his ... ... middle of paper ... ...ife. This concept is totally foreign to Coalhouse Walker Jr. who, only after achieving the love that he sought and then losing it so quickly and so inhumanely, gains almost godlike power over the people of the city, inspiring fear and no little awe for the man who would go to such lengths over an automobile and some inconsequential (to them) black woman who wasn’t even his wife. Death and love: inseparable through the course of time, transcending the ages– both Emperor Hadrian and Coalhouse Walker Jr. face them, and while one gains conviction and a purpose, even if that purpose is ultimately his own death, the other declines, never seeing that the death of his love could possibly serve a purpose other than simple grief and mourning, never understanding that, with time and action, “the future [could] once more [hold] the hope of the past.” (Yourcenar, 176)
It is inevitable that we will all die it is a fact that everyone must come to terms with. There comes a time in everyone’s life that they must face death; a friend’s tragic accident, a family member’s passing or their own battles with diseases. When faced with the idea of death people will act in different ways some may find it therapeutic to apologize for the negative they have done, some may want to spend time with loved ones to ease the future pain, and others may decide that their life was not what they believed. The story Death Constant Beyond Love tells us about a man named Senator Sanchez who is living a happy life with his wife and five kids. That is until he is told by doctors that he only has a short time to live. Death is unknown much like love, we do not know or understand when love will find us, and it is the same with death. In Death Constant Beyond Love is not your typical love or death story. After told about his pending doom Senator Sanchez wants to keep his life as constant as normal, until his desires for a young woman change his plans, and then he dies.
One of the main characters is a black man who goes by the name of Coalhouse Walker. He is treated unfairly by the fire chief, the police, father, lawyers, and the rest of the town after an innocedent that was ultimately out of his control in chapter 22. When he went to the police for help, "He took Coalhouse aside. Listen, he said, we'll push your tin lizzie back on the road and you be on your way. There's no real damage. Scrape off the shit and forget the whole thing." After this Coalhouse was arrested when he became angry about the situation. Because Coalhouse is black, the attitude of the policeman is that Coalhouse should just be thankful he's getting his car back. This is the attitude that so many of the people of the town have. Fighting
Throughout the lives of most people on the planet, there comes a time when there may be a loss of love, hope or remembrance in our lives. These troublesome times in our lives can be the hardest things we go through. Without love or hope, what is there to live for? Some see that the loss of hope and love means the end, these people being pessimistic, while others can see that even though they feel at a loss of love and hope that one day again they will feel love and have that sense of hope, these people are optimistic. These feelings that all of us had, have been around since the dawn of many. Throughout the centuries, the expression of these feelings has made their ways into literature, novels, plays, poems, and recently movies. The qualities of love, hope, and remembrance can be seen in Emily Bronte’s and Thomas Hardy’s poems of “Remembrance” “Darkling Thrush” and “Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave?”
As one of the most well known authors of the Elizabethan Era, Shakespeare had written numerous sonnets and plays reflecting the values of people of the time period. Shakespeare often display themes of love and death, fate and free will, and power and weaknesses throughout his works of literature. The play "The Tragedy of Julius” truly highlight the impact of fate and free will in the development of the plot, of the assassination of Caesar’s death. Some may argue that fate is actually the one responsible for the act, but they fail to recognize that it is the acts of men leading to the death. It is the free will at fault for this occurrence, that the Roman senators consciously killed Caesar and Caesar himself facing his mortality.
Julius Caesar is the leader of Rome and is seeking to become king in a matter of time. Though he is a good military strategist, he lacks knowledge in running government and is too greedy to have any concern for the peasants when he is alive. Caesar is all about conquering and power and he is afraid of nothing. Before he is murdered, he says “The things that threatened me ne’er looked but on my back. When they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished” (II, ii, 575). Th...
In Antigone, death is a central theme that is consistently present throughout the entire play. In this particular passage, the chorus proclaims that man’s access to resources will allow him to continue to exist; however, as long as man exists, so will death – a fate that no amount of resources can help anyone escape. In this essay, I will explore the correlation and significance of this passage, and more specifically, the correlation and relation to death, with particular characters of the play. These particular characters each have a different relation and perspective of death, however, as the story progresses, I will discuss why their relation, perspective and the way that which they acknowledge death itself evolves and changes so drastically.
Being that death is a universally explored topic, William Shakespeare, a master of English literature, opted to thoroughly investigate this complex notion in his play Hamlet. Shakespeare cleverly and sometimes subtly brings the reader/viewer through a physical and spiritual journey of death via the several controversial characters of Hamlet. The chief element of this expedition is undoubtedly the funerals. Every funeral depicts, and marks, the conclusion of different perceptions of death. Shakespeare uses the funerals of the several controversial characters to gradually transform the simple, spiritual, naïve, and somewhat light view of death into a much more factual, physical, serious, and down to earth outlook.
Death and mourning are closely associated with one another as when someone dies, they cause sorrow to their family and friends as they mourn the lost life of a loved one. After Mercutio’s death, Romeo becomes vengeful with ‘fire-ey’d fury’ (A3, S1, L120) and seeks to kill Tybalt for the ‘cold death’ (A3, S1, L158) he caused to Romeo’s dear friend. Later on in the play, when Romeo and Juliet are found dead and the Prince informs their parents, Lord Montague briefly states that his wife (Lady Montague) passed away after hearing her son’s exile ‘hath stopp’d her breath’ and (A5, S3, L211) and he also describes his ‘woe’ towards the recent events. Both scenes illustrate the extremities one can go to when mourning the death of a loved one. It also depicts how grief can impact someone and how ‘all are punish’d’ (A5S3L295) for it. All the characters lose as they are all related to someone who has died in the play regardless of what ‘side’ they are on the
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
Romantic love stories are often ended with a tragedy, because of loss of passion or a loved one. These tragedies are often the result of one person’s actions that ended someone’s life or love. In the Romeo and Juliet play written by William Shakespeare, two citizens of Verona come together and fall deeply in love. Unfortunately their love comes to an end, along with their lives, because of a misunderstanding and a persistent feud between their families. Although there are many characters in this play that have contributed to Romeo and Juliet’s death, Friar Laurence is the person most to blame.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is arguably the most well known and well-read play in history. With its passionate and realistic treatment of universal themes of love, fate, war, and death, it’s not difficult to see why. However, most people don’t realize that there are several versions of the play, each with their own unique additions and/or changes to the plot, dialogue, and characters. After thumbing through the texts located here on this website, you can see even at a glance the distinct differences between the versions of Romeo and Juliet. This essay will explore how people dealt with death during the Renaissance in context to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Lamentable Tragedie.) More specifically, I will show that the added monologue in act 4, scene 5, regarding the convention of death, is consistent to the social and religious beliefs of the time period.
In the famed author William Shakespeare’s playwright Julius Caesar, we are introduced to an extraordinary plot of a powerful ruler, Julius Caesar, who gained power through astonishing victories and remarkable strategies but fell victim to betrayal. The betrayal that led to his demise was led by some of the very people that surrounded him the most, even some people that he considered as friends. The theme of betrayal and the notion of friendship and its validity are both topics that are worth examining but perhaps the most prevalent topic that drives this plot is the image of Caesar. Caesar ascended into power after a long period in Rome where the rise of tyranny had been fought systematically and physically. He had to not only be a powerful leader but also a wise politician when it came to his decisions. His image tarnishes more and more as his power increases and he too chases after it. He becomes so ambitious over power that he begins to feel immortal and free from danger. His conspirators do not just want him out of power for the simple sake of it but because some of them, either persuaded or not, earnestly believed that Julius Caesar’s death would save Rome not hurt it. What makes this playwright’s so extraordinary is not the dynamic drama alone, but also the depiction of Julius Caesar and how even in the monstrosity of his murder, his image was still arguable causing division amongst men. Although William Shakespeare has, for a very long time now, been known for his great writings it is clear that he himself depicted a ruler that would win favor in the eyes of the great Italian political philosopher and writer Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli but not the profound Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione. Both writers wrote ab...
...e Roman world alone for almost 45 years, or over half a century, was accorded a magnificent funeral, buried in the mausoleum he had built in Rome, and entered the Roman pantheon as Divus Augustus. In his will, he left 1,000 sesterces a piece to the men of the Praetorian Guard, 500 to the urban cohorts, and 300 to each of the legionaries. In death, as in life, Augustus acknowledged the true source of his power. Augustus's ultimate legacy, however, was the peace and prosperity the empire was to enjoy for the next two centuries under the system he initiated. His memory was enshrined in the political ethos of the Imperial age as a blue print of what a good emperor is all about. Although every emperor to follow would adopt his name, there truly would never again be another Caesar Augustus, and only a handful of those that followed would earn genuine comparison with him.
Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods each reject him in turn with unflinching cruelty. Cousin, for instance, offers the excuse of having a cramp in her toe. Everyman’s overwhelming desire to have others accompany him to the grave only accentuates his isolation; he finds that his friendships with Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods have limits that were not apparent before Death’s presence. Correspondingly, in the presence of Death, the concepts that those characters manifest take on new meanings. Here, Everyman assumes that everyone will meet the grave alone. The day you face death will be a lonesome day – you cannot bring anything or anyone with you – death is an isolating journey, a spiritual one that we must journey ourselves. But does that mean that our mortality, our mortal lives as a whole are to be spent alone? No, this is not the case. Rather, we must consider our friends and family even more important during our earthly life, because we must help each other prepare for that lonely end. As his friends refuse him, Everyman’s understanding of his relationship to the members of his community is brutally altered; he can no longer take them for granted but must relearn his relationship to them. In this play, to recognize death fully is to recognize that one is both a part of one’s community and
When Augustus died, everyone, his family and friends, were devastated, most notably Hazel. Though Hazel didn’t know Augustus as much as his family did, she was probably most affected by his death because he was the love of his life. At his practice funeral, Hazel expressed how much she loved Augustus, because “[he, Augustus] gave me a forever within a number of days, and I’m grateful” (260). Even though Hazel’s time with Augustus was short, they did all they could to spend time with each other and express how much they loved each other. Additionally, at Augustus’ practice funeral Isaac, Augustus’ best friend, wished Augustus “got eighteen years when he should have gotten more [time]” (258). Clearly, Augustus meant so much to Isaac because he had supported him when his girlfriend dumped him and had always been there for him when times were tough, it is most obvious when he stated “ I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters” (281) because a world without Augustus to Isaac was even worse than when his “true love”, Monica, had left him for dead. Augustus’ deaths’ effect on Hazel and Isaac goes to show that it’s best to spend time with the ones we love, before they are