Death - A Bitter Truth

Hello Readers !

Have you ever thought about death ? Ever thought that how the experience it would be to face that moment ? Well these questions should be raised in our mind and one can be more positive about death. One should accept that the death is the bitter truth and one must accept it. Both, birth as well as death are such opposite ends that they sometimes seem very close to each other. As a student of English literature I see some reflection of the concept of death in some poems like John Keats's Ode to Nightingale, John Donne's Death Be Not Proud and so on.

For this thinking activity I've searched some death poets and their poems. Here's what I've found.

* According to Poemhunter.com there are 100 poems on death. Click here to visit the website. To name a few, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Browning, Kahlil Gibran, John Donne are some poets who wrote death poems.

* In the poem Death Be Not Proud, John Donne challenges death and denies the fear of death by writing the lines:

'For thou shall die'

Another poem on Death is Death is Nothing at All by Henry Scott Holand, and here are few lines of the poem.

Death is Nothing at All

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Here we can see that poet has denied the fear of death. The poet says through the lines that death is nothing but like changing the room. The attempt has been made to generalize the idea of death.

This is not the only example in which death is seen as normal thing. Some writers celebrate death and some mourn for it. To highlight the importance of death, pain or sorrow, there are certain images and metaphors for it. Such as winter and snowfall, darkness of the night, thorns with flowers, silence etc.

We all have many different experiences, both good and bad. But those who have produced literature about death, may have faced very crucial, more painful experience than the other people. This may be the reason for them to write on this topic. Though it can't be denied that when one sits down to read about death one becomes too judgmental about death. an individual thinks of death from the authors perspectives only. Such is the influence of the words on reader's mind. Philosophically thinking, death is the ultimate reality. Everyone wants to die without pain but and after observing that it's not happening so, writers have made an attempt to do catharsis through thinking of easy death.

Thank You!