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Essays about Death
Essay on experiencing death
Narrative essay concerning death
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Often when a person suffers through a tragic loss of a loved one in his or her life they never fully recover to move on. Death is one of hardest experiences a person in life ever goes through. Only the strong minded people are the ones that are able to move on from it whereas the weak ones never recover from the loss of a loved one. In the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks, character Billy Ansel – having lost his family serves as the best example of brokenness after experiencing death. Whether it is turning to substance abuse, using his memory to escape reality or using Risa Walker as a sexual escape, Billy Ansel never fully recovers from the death of his twins and his wife. This close analysis of Billy’s struggle with death becomes an important lesson for all readers. When dealing with tragedies humans believe they have the moral strength to handle them and move on by themselves but, what they do not realize is that they need someone by their side to help them overcome death. Using unhealthy coping mechanism only leads to life full of grief and depression.
One of the ways Billy shows his ineffective ways of dealing with death is by using Risa Walker as sexual escape from his daily life. For example he shows himself using Risa Walker for pleasure when he admits, “So, instead, we said, “I love you,”, and let it go at that” (Banks 40). Spending time with Risa is daily escape for Billy. It is the one time of the day where he completely forgets about the bad things that have happened in his life and focusses on Risa. Billy does not really like her but is using her for his sexual pleasure after his wife is dead. It is not like they love each other it is more like they need each other because they are both burdened with stron...
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...ho never recovered after experiencing the death of his entire family. Through substance abuse, affairs with Risa Walker, and his use of memory to escape the reality that his family is no more, he proves to be the least successful character in the novel at coping with death. The new questions then become whether or not one ever has such access in order to pull through grief, or, does someone even want to? Reading about Billy he shows us how we should not cope with death, we learn that what is needed at times like this is someone by your side, someone you can lean on, and someone to love you, all of which Billy really does not have. Most human beings do not have that someone to help them cope with death so the responsibility of moving on then falls on them. It is up to them to decide if they want to move on or live the rest of their lives replaying that tragic event.
He points out that the people in the novel "are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces" (164). Billy knows that he is going to die anyway, regardless of what he does or does not do, and he plainly wants to remain unscathed during his journey. Vonnegut used this publication as a vehicle to show that it is not enough to live a life to its end, the approach that Billy employed.
death, and Captain Vere feels sorry for Billy and does not want Billy to suffer
...erson & by not doing everything that his parents said he was able to find out the truth which I think, in the end would have made his relationship with his parents much stronger. Billy was very restricted & confined by the expectations placed on him by his family & as well as society & because of this was not able to express himself or find his own personal happiness but through dance he was able to discover who he really is & what he loves & by pursuing it he became a much stronger person, it even enabled him to stand up to his father in showing him how much he loves dance & in doing so also stood up to society & gender stereotypes, this made Billy a much stronger person, throughout the movie it also shows how Billy is able to make a better personal relationship with his father & his brother Tony who he grows closer to as he becomes his own person through dance.
Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet.
In Amy Hempels’ Short Story “Going,” our journey with the narrator travels through loss, coping, memory, experience, and the duality of life. Throughout the story is the narrator’s struggle to cope with the passing of his mother, and how he transitions from a mixture of depression, denial, and anger, into a kind of acceptance and revelation. The narrator has lost his mother in a fire three states away, and proceeds on a reckless journey through the desert, when he crashes his car and finds himself hospitalized. Only his thoughts and the occasional nurse to keep him company. The narrator soon gains a level of discovery and realizations that lead to a higher understanding of the duality of life and death, and all of the experiences that come with being alive.
In this story Billy is faced with a wide range of undeserved punishments, but shows good through all of them with his strong will and determination. He accepts the things that happen to him in a levelheaded manner, which works to keep the story from becoming a tragedy. The first instance of undeserved punishment is the death of Billy’s family. Not only was he unable to help them in any way, there was no good reason for it to happen. While Billy could lose all hope, become depressed, and angry at the world or at God for this injustice, he instead sets out to right the wrong.
The main event that leads Billy to all his confusion is the time he spent in Dresden and witnessed the fire-bombings that constantly pop in his head along with pictures of all the innocent people Billy saw that fled to Dresden the "safe spot" from the war before the bombing. When Billy sees the faces of the innocent children it represents his fear of the situation. Billy can't acknowledge the fact that they were innocent and they were killed by Americans, Americans soldiers just like himself. The biggest issue Billy cannot come to grasp with is why the bombings took place. That question has no answer; it's just something that happened that Billy couldn't get over. During all Billy's travels back to Dresden he couldn't change what had really happened there although that was the closure he was looking for. Dresden purely represents Bill's past and fears of the truth about what happened.
Both his time travels and the aliens’ view of time are related because they define time as a collection of moments. If time is a collection of moments, his life appears less upsetting because he can cherish the happy memories and simply accept the difficult ones as a mere moment in time. If his life is viewed in a linear progress, it appears more tragic, as it becomes a story filled with heartbreaking moments that directly lead to painful resolutions. This explains how both his time travels and the Tralfamadorian understanding of time help Billy deal with the traumatic incidents in his
When he is returned to earth, Billy initially says nothing. However, after he suffers a head injury in a plane crash and after his wife dies on her way to see him in the hospital, Billy tells the world what he has learned. He goes on a radio talk show and writes a letter to the newspaper. His daughter is at her wit's end and doesn't know what to do with him. Billy makes a tape recording of his account of his death, which will occur in 1976 after Chicago has been hydrogen bombed by the Chinese. He knows exactly how it will happen: a man he knew in the war will hire someone to shoot him. Billy will experience the violet hum of death, then will skip back to some other point in his life. He's see...
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.
“The Sweet Hereafter” portrays the grief stricken citizens of a remote Canadian town traumatized by a terrible accident, and the impact of an ambulance-chasing lawyer who is attempting to deal with the grief in his own life. The film also depicts the grieving subjects susceptibility to convert grief and guilt into both blame and monetary gain and the transformation this small community faces after such a devastating event.
The first of the themes illustrated in this passage is fatalism, the idea that all events are inevitable and cannot be changed. The passage begins with Billy urinating on the ground outside the compound and then pondering the question, "Where had he come from, and where should he go now?" (Vonnegut 124). This problem
...o potentially change the outcome, Billy does nothing. His impending death is something that he faces with little resignation. He spends a large portion of his life knowing that Paul Lazzaro will be the ultimate cause of his death, but maintains the “so it goes” attitude that is so prevalent throughout the novel.
... a fatherly connection toward Billy. He had no remorse toward his decision to execute Billy because he believed that that was the only decision he could make. Where his remorse lied was in the fact that the young boy that he care so deeply for, in a fatherly way, received no justice. It was that the same boy whom he groomed to be like himself, so young, so full of innocence and youthfulness was hung, out of precedent.
Billy picked his own path to his death. He should have foreseen that this bed and breakfast was not a good idea because it doesn't matter how comfortable and warm the place is, it shouldn't feel like home because home will always be home and it cannot be duplicated. For example, when Billy and the landlady were talking about Mr. Temple and Mr. Mulholland is dead, she mentions “‘But my dear boy, he never left. He's still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They're on the third floor, both of them together.’” this shows that she has both of the guys and they are dead because she has killed and stuffed them to be kept forever. Obsession has completely controlled her mind into not seeing that these beautiful creatures are humans too, just like her and she does not have the right to take their lives for her infatuated obsession over beauty. In the story the landlady indicated that Billy looked familiar to Mr. Temple and Mr. Mulholland. When Billy said his age was seventeen, the landlady said, “‘Oh, it's a perfect age! Mr. Mulholland was also seventeen. But I think he was a trifle shorter than you are, in fact, I'm sure he was, and his teeth weren't quite so white, you have the most beautiful teeth, did you know that?’” in this, she finds Billy looking similar and same age as Mr. Mulholland but she found Billy's teeth better from Mr. Mulholland. There was more and more