It is early morning and he walks alone. The iron gates, crusted with rust, clang in his wake. Fog washes over the tombstones in waves. His feet crunch upon the ground. The fog obscures his vision, but he could walk here blindfolded. This journey to the cemetery has become a routine, anticipated but not enjoyed. The call of a loon sails through the milky air; the sound ripples along his spine. He walks onward, head forced down, eyes riveted to the ground.
When he finds himself before the tombstone, something is different. A fresh spray of roses has been laid upon the grave. Kneeling down, he runs a finger along one rose, the blossom still curling with life. Pale petals drenched in dew, leaves like wax, thorns jagged and defiant. His eyes search the grave for a trace of this new intruder. He is curious but miffed; he had believed himself to be the only visitor here. He felt a sense of belonging with the grave, as though his own name should be scrawled beneath that of the deceased. He wishes that he had felt closer with the fleshless creature now sheltered within the grave. They had been friends and almost lovers, nearly united as one, all the fragments fitting together--but then the passing of time tore them in half. Where life has failed them, death is infinitely more skilled; it brings them unbearably close.
He brushes a hand across the tombstone, his fingertips tingling upon the engraved lettering. The name. The epitaph, banal and meaningless. The dates of birth and death--dates too close together for comfort, dates that stir murmurs in passersby. How tragic. Poor boy, to die so young. Those who had cared to know him never said so, only the strangers.
Dawn light peeks through the sky’s gray latticework. The sun awakens ...
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...ecause of her, he can try.
This boy, dead at nineteen, that he both loves and despises… he is a shard of bone embedded in his eye. The pain is nearly unbearable, and it is permanent. But it is his pain. That shard of bone is his bone. It is a part of him, and it always will be. The bone obstructs his vision now, and he can never extract it. But he can learn to see alongside it, to accept it for what it is. Eventually it will lessen to a dull throb, but it shall never cease. He will always feel it, remember it.
Tears fall from his already moist cheeks. They will be the last tears. He stumbles from the cemetery in a daze, as though walking through the gates is like emerging from the womb: a blind, raw being thrust into a strange new world. Now he stands like a soldier on the front line--faintly trembling, unsure of what lies ahead, but prepared to face it.
The deep complexity of its message is furthered by Olds’ use of metaphor. In describing the unburied corpses strewn about the cemetery, she notes a “hand reaching out / with no sign of peace, wanting to come back.” Through indirect metaphor, she is able to not only bring emotion to the stiffness of a frozen hand, but ponder a greater question—whether the “eternal rest” of death is peace at all. Despite the war, despite “the bread made of glue and sawdust,” and despite “the icy winter and the siege,” those passed still long for life. Human cruelty and the horrors of existence permeate even the sanctity of death. In war, nothing is
An epitaph is a poem or short story that is dedicated to someone who is deceased. Edgar Lee Masters’ collection of poems located in the book Spoon River Anthology contains over a hundred epitaphs. Each of these poems is named after a person, but only five poems are named after actual people. Masters would take some names from the constitutions and state papers of Illinois and for other names, he would choose a first name from one person and a surname from another. Each story is unique, but many intertwine with one another; one example of this is the epitaph for Fletcher McGee. The poem, “Fletcher McGee” described a man’s relationship with his wife and how it had changed over time.
“I still recall… going into the large, darkened parlor to see my brother and finding the casket, mirrors and pictures all draped in white, and my father seated by his side, pale and immovable. As he took no notice of me, after standing a long while, I climbed upon his knee, when he mechanically put his arm about me and with my head resting against his beating heart we both sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of a dear son, and I wondered what could be said or done to fill the void in his breast. At length, he heaved a deep sign and said: “Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a
...pproaching footsteps of him? The novel revolves around the premise of Death's contemplation of the worth of humanity and his inability to reconcile the remarkable cruelty and compassion humans are simultaneously capable of. This fact, this paradoxical, beautiful scenario, follows him always.
Death is painfully unpleasant for anyone who is approached with it. It can be difficult to comprehend and scary to live through, but just because death isn’t very well liked does not mean it doesn’t happen. In fact it happens every day through every hour; no rich, poor, healthy, or sick can escape it. The contemporary writer Amy Hempel gracefully writes about death between a friendship in her piece titled “In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” showing a relatable situation everyone will undergo at some point in their life. Hempel’s relatability to the subject of death and reactions, unique style of characterization, and rhythmic balance display the great qualities that make her work so rare; making it belong to the 21st century literary
Everyone at some time in their lives must come to the realization that they or others around them will not live forever. After they come to that moment of realization, they will either accept death when it comes and live life to the fullest or deny and live a more sheltered life. James Dickey shows this moment of realization in his poem “The Hospital Window” where a son who has just finished his terminally ill father starts to realize the frail thing called life is compared the great aspect of enjoying life. Dickey’s purpose for this poem is to the reader to realize that life is a feeble thing and one needs to have that revelation for one to truly be able to cherish life and others around oneself. Through Dickey’s use of similes, metaphors, and imagery he is able to fully convey his purpose for this poem and allow for his readers to have a new view of life from the hospital window.
"The boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial (Bartlett, 642). To venture into the world of Edgar Allan Poe is to embark on a journey to a land filled with perversities of the mind, soul, and body. The joyless existence carved out by his writings is one of lost love, mental anguish, and the premature withering of his subjects. Poe wrote in a style that characterized the sufferings he endured throughout in his pitiful life. From the death of his parents while he was still a child, to the repeated frailty of his love life, to the neuroses of his later years, his life was a ceaseless continuum of one mind-warping tragedy after another.
Throughout his villanelle, “Saturday at the Border,” Hayden Carruth continuously mentions the “death-knell” (Carruth 3) to reveal his aged narrator’s anticipation of his upcoming death. The poem written in conversation with Carruth’s villanelle, “Monday at the River,” assures the narrator that despite his age, he still possesses the expertise to write a well structured poem. Additionally, the poem offers Carruth’s narrator a different attitude with which to approach his writing, as well as his death, to alleviate his feelings of distress and encourage him to write with confidence.
...ome the dream of attainment slowly became a nightmare. His house has been abandoned, it is empty and dark, the entryway or doors are locked. The sign of age, rust comes off in his hands. His body is cold, and he has deteriorated physically & emotionally. He is weathered just like his house and life. He is damaged poor, homeless, and the abandoned one.
Some words that were included in this inscription was “In the midst of life we are in death.” Not only in this part, but the whole tombstone creates suspense because it’s rare for a stranger to come up with a random name and not only that but to also sense or feel someone’s death.
His clothes were often dirty. His buttons or zipper left open. He stopped brushing his teeth and grew increasingly forgetful. Once he arrived to work at 2:30 in the morning, unaware that it was the middle of the night. His edging along the border of the lawn was not long, straight and tight. Once I found him asleep, sitting against a tree. And then one day he too suffered a stroke. When we visited him in the hospital, I told Arthur that while he was sick I would keep the land in shape. As I worked, I convinced myself that Arthur would be back and how proud he would be to see what I’d done. But, he never did return. The day he died I worked outside all day long and into the evening, my mind
...tmosphere and the solitude of a funeral where instead of alter boy’s candles, ‘there will be glimmering tears of good byes.’
A chill shivered down Hannah’s spine as she proceeded through the rusty old withered gates of the cemetery and walked towards Anthony’s grave. With the sun was tucked away behind the grey clouds and black sky that over hung over, it seemed to be that days like this were always darker than the rest. As the overgrown weeds brushed past her legs, Hannah shuffled up to Anthony’s grave and placed a bunch of red magnolias beneath his moss and lichen grown tombstone. While placing the flowers down, she stood with the look as though a terrible weight was piled onto her shoulders. Whispering “Happy Birthday Anthony” into the grey sky, a single drop of pain welled up from the corner of Hannah’s eyes before the lump in her though began to engulf her words. Before she knew it, she had broken into a torrent of sobs that rushed down her face; forcing her to collapse to her knees. With her head buried in her hands, her sobs became louder with each rake of her body.
“Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him (Bierce 1-2).” Death was ultimately present throughout much of both short stories, his sudden and striking hand took the life of many during the Civil War. Each moment of battle was soiled with sweat, blood, and tears of the soldiers. The bodies of fathers, brothers, and friends littered the battlefield, and often the death passed over members closer to home. Not only were those whose lives were lost affected, but the families of the brave men were affected devastatingly as well. The author Mark Twain approached the suddenness of death in his story “A Private History of a Campaign that Failed”. Ambrose Bierce also captured the sharp essence of death in his tale of Peyton Farquhar in “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”.
The mausoleum at Halicarnassus was the very great mausoleum tombstone of one Maussollos, the ruler of Caria, one of the provinces of the vast Persian Empire, who also served as a Governor or Satrap of the King of the Persian Empire between 377 and 353 BC (Peter and Mark, 1988). This great tomb monument was so gigantic in size going by the ancient building standards and extremely lavish were the various sculptured adornments or decorations that in next to no time the building was being recognised in the Ancient World as one of the Seven Wonders of these Ancient times (Peter and Mark, 1988). Ever since the Roman times the word mausoleum, has always been a generic term used in reference to any vast or gigantic tomb monument (Juan, 2005). In today’s world this is what most people would consider as a large-scale house built of marble meant to house a deceased person’s remains (Juan, 2005).