Personal Narrative- Witnessing Death
I witnessed the death of a man, today. His name was Daniel. He was painting the house next to us. He was on the top couple rungs of the ladder when it folded under him. It was a cheap ladder. Corroded aluminum.
I am right in the line of sight on the back porch of our house; I hear the ladder starting to collapse, and see him hit the ground. At first I call out to him. He doesn't respond. I guess I should have called 911 then. I don't. I run over to him.
He's barely conscious. I ask him if he is ok, and he can't form any words. He's moving around his left arm, as if searching for something on the ground. I remember that he has glasses, and then see them laying 5 feet away on the grass. I put them on him. One of the legs of the glasses had snapped off, so they don't go on straight.
I get my mom. When she gets there, she asks him what is his name. "Daniel," he wheezes out. She asks him what day it is, but his eyes glaze over, and he loses consciousness. She goes in and calls 911. When she comes back out, she tells us that they're on their way. Then she just stands there waiting next to him, and I sit next to him with my hand on his shoulder. He's convulsing, and he gasps. I can feel his body tensing up under my fingers. I let go. He is foaming at the mouth. We talk to him, saying stuff like, "It'll be ok, the ambulance is on its way." and, "Just hold on, Mr. Daniel, hold on, till the ambulance gets here." He's still for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, not even breathing, it seems like. Then he convulses gently. Each time he convulses, I feel myself sighing in relief, that he hasn't gone yet. It is more serious than I had thought at first.
He was still alive when the paramedics finally got there. But (the fireman said later) he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating as they stood over him, checking his pulse. They did CPR on him, right there on Ms. Lucy's lawn, and a few minutes later, they loaded him onto the ambulance.
I say to the fireman, "How is he? Is he alive?
Later, friends found him on the floor in a pool of blood. They called the ambulance and
My grandfather was asleep one night on a Coast Guard cutter when another ship, a destroyer, appeared in the distance. The destroyer hit my grandfather's ship in the exact spot where he was sleeping. When he awoke, he found himself in the freezing water, watching his friends swim ashore to safety. They were leaving my grandfather there to die.
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
Doreski, C. K. "Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896—1940." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Retrospective Supplement 1. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 97-120. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
For some, coping with death is the end of a journey, but to others, it is the beginning of change. The novel, The Hero's Walk, explores the meaning of this statement through the death of Maya. Because of her death, the people who are close to her, such as her father, Sripathi, begin to suffer. However, he eventually experiences a positive change after coping with her death. In Anita Rau Badami's novel, The Hero's Walk, Maya's death is a major turning point which affects the life of Sripathi; ultimately, this loss contributes to his major character development.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's life has been described as a “Tragic example of both sides of the American dream the joys of young love , wealth and success and the tragedies associated with excess and failure. ”(Willet, “The Sensible Things”). The Dominant influences on Fitzgerald and his work were aspiration,literature, Princeton, his wife and alcohol. With the constant fear of death and failure plaguing him his entire life, his literary works and his life accomplishments always seemed to be never good enough and through his life Fitzgerald constantly suffered a constant thought that he had failed to do anything with his life and that his literary works would never go on to be anything that people ever took the time to care about.
In her paper entitled "Euthanasia," Phillipa Foot notes that euthanasia should be thought of as "inducing or otherwise opting for death for the sake of the one who is to die" (MI, 8). In Moral Matters, Jan Narveson argues, successfully I think, that given moral grounds for suicide, voluntary euthanasia is morally acceptable (at least, in principle). Daniel Callahan, on the other hand, in his "When Self-Determination Runs Amok," counters that the traditional pro-(active) euthanasia arguments concerning self-determination, the distinction between killing and allowing to die, and the skepticism about harmful consequences for society, are flawed. I do not think Callahan's reasoning establishes that euthanasia is indeed morally wrong and legally impossible, and I will attempt to show that.
Tate, Mary Jo. “F. Scott Fitzgerald A to Z”. New York: Facts on File INC. 1998
didn't know what to do at first. After a while, he finally manages to rescue
The first word of F. Scott Fitzgerald was up, which was identical to the direction he wanted his life to go, in terms of wealth, social class, and experience. Born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896, Fitzgerald was destined to a life abounding with extreme promise, potential, and possibilities. He grew up watching his father, Edward business failure and saw how he drank his emotions through alcohol (Donaldson 5), and was destined to not follow in his father’s footsteps. Additionally he was humiliated that his family didn’t rank in the elite class and wanted to prove himself because he believed “the rich, the powerful, and the chic were the people to identify with and become one with” (Donaldson 15). Scott F. Fitzgerald was a talented writer; however, the parallelism of his own personality, experiences, and struggles to those of the characters featured in his writing paved the way for his success in the literary world.
The objective of this paper is to explore the relation between death anxiety and individual’s self-esteem. “Death Anxiety” and “Self-Esteem” will be the main variables of the research. Death anxiety can be defined as the realization of inescapability of death, which leads many people to experiencing deep sense of terror (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). Humans are unique due to their ability to learn and adapt to live with an understanding of their mortality. It is a task for the cultural systems to symbolize death and provide a meaning for its occurrence, furthermore to interpret its superiority over human life (Becker, 1973). Death anxiety is a multidimensional concept, which revolves around fear and anxiety related to the reality of dying and expecting it to happen. This fear might be based on various emotional, cognitive and motivational components that depend on the development stage and sociocultural life events (Letho, 2009). Second concept in this research - “Self-Esteem” is defined as confidence and satisfaction in oneself, self-respect” (Merriam-Webster). In this research self-esteem will be viewed from two sides: Intrinsic and Extrinsic, since individual’s self-esteem consistency depends on both – internal and external factors as it is specified in Contingencies of Self–Worth Scale. In this case, measurements were conveyed through an analysis of internal and external sources of self-esteem, which are: approval of others, physical appearance, dominating over others in competition, academic competence, family love and support, being a virtuous or moral person, and God’s love (Crocker et al., 2003).
With the mention of death, three words come to mind, e.g., grief, mourning, and bereavement. Although, Touhy and Jett (2016) cited that these three words are used interchangeably, the authors differentiated the three, e.g., bereavement indicates the occurrence of a loss; grief referred to the emotional response to the loss, and mourning as the “outward expression of loss” (p. 482). It should be noted, that all three implied a loss. In addition, they are applied not only in times of death, but also in all kinds of loss. A loss brings along with it a trail of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. One such thought is the consideration of what it would be when one is gone forever. As discussed
The purpose of this limited descriptive review is to develop an understanding of how women cope when diagnosed with breast cancer. The review includes 13 single studies in total, represented by seven quantitative studies and six qualitative studies from 1996-2008. In addition, one mixed-method study will be reviewed. The chosen articles will be defined according to paradigm, method, samples, and key findings. Also, it will be described in a synthesized manner according to qualitative and...
Suicide, it's not pretty. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's the
Death occurs when living stops. From the event of death, we have created religious and cultural traditions. It has become the core of literature and entertainment. As a society we are somewhat fascinated by it. Healthcare practitioners fight everyday to prevent it from happening. Can this event, which is absolute, change its meaning over time?