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 progression of thought changes dramatically from beginning to end. In the beginning the narrator is focusing on a typo on the hospital menu saying “…They mean, I think, that the pot roast tonight
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Exploring the duality of memory; how we perceive the past, learning about the duality of the present; how we are constantly between the expectation of the future and past experience, as well as coming to the realization of the duality of life and death; how we are always living and dying at the same time. We are constantly in a state of suspension between dual experiences, whether they be life and death, love and loss, hot and cold, fast and slow, close and far, or past and future. There is no differentiating between them as they are all interconnected and depend on each other for their own existence. There would not be one without the other and we cannot appreciate the good without the bad. Life comes with infinite possibilities and even more ways to experience them, so we must take it all in with acceptance and appreciate the suspension act of life while we
In her article, Quindlen delivers her position to the massive mixed audience of the New York Times, drawing in readers with an emotional and humanizing lure; opening up about her family life and the deaths she endured. Later presenting the loss of her brother's wife and motherless children, Quindlen use this moment to start the engine of her position. Quindlen uses her experiences coupled with other authority figures, such as, the poet Emily Dickenson, Sherwin Nuland, doctor and professor from Yale, author Hope Edelman, and the President. These testimonies all connect to the lasting effects of death on the living, grief. She comes full circle, returning to her recently deceased sister-in-law; begging t...
... loss of loved ones like Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Andi in Revolution or faced your own inevitable passing like Hazel Grace in The Fault in Our Stars, you are not alone. In confronting and facing death, these characters learn that death is merely a small part of living. It is an element of the human experience. To return to the wise words of the late Steve Jobs, “Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important…There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Living is the adventure. In facing their fears and sadness, these characters learn how to be courageous, how to hope, how to love, and how to live. Join them on their journeys by checking out one of the spotlighted books at your local library.
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?”
Metaphor is an underlying element used in this memoir to depict the relationship between family and nature, and the profound understanding of oneself, through the sequence of life and death, and the rebirth that proceeds. Using metaphoric references, Williams explores the continual unpredictab...
In “Out of the Dust,” a story told by 14-year-old Billie Jo, she describes her grief and feelings of lost hope including guilt from the accidental death of her mother and her mother’s unborn child. The accident crushed Billie Jo’s hope and her spirit, as well her father’s. It is a story of remarkable struggle where Billie Jo tries to find inner strength. She seeks the light through the Oklahoma “dust”. The “dust” is symbolic as it signifies a lack of life, dreams, and hope. Billie Jo takes the reader through her emotional of the journey that evokes compassion and empathy. The reader becomes part of the story and part of Billie Jo’s persona. Her journey embraces whom we are in the most profound sense of sadness and loss of her beloved mother. The story also guides us through the powerful enlightenment that defines the clearest explanation of the human spirit. In “Out of the Dust” Billie Jo demonstrates the power of forgiveness in herself and her father. These acts of forgiveness allowed her to move past the darkness and into the light. Her story gives the reader details on how the human spirit is philanthropic by nature and a lifelong process. “Out of the Dust” captures the essence of forgiveness including the transformations that occur during the process.
Ross, Elisabeth. Questions and Answers on Death and Dying. New York : Macmillan Publishing Company, 1974. Print.
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.
• AW has had some problems of her own; she was very depressed after an abortion in senior year at college. She slept with a razor under her pillow for three nights as she wanted to commit suicide. Instead she turned to writing and in a week she wrote the story “To Hell with Dying”. She only stopped writing to eat and sleep.
Saying Goodbye To Someone You Love : Your Emotional Journey Through End Of Life And Grief. New York: DemosHealth, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 25 Feb. 2014
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her
There are several themes that are brought up in this book. However, I will focus on one, the relationship between pain and pleasure. In our world it is often said you must have one to fully appreciate the other. One cannot enjoy the pleasures in life if one does not have a memory bank of the despair life can throw at you. The community has realized the importance of memory in one aspect that it knows memory is important in order to not make the same mistakes twice. And in order to fulfill that it made one person responsible for keeping the communities collective memories whether they were pleasurable or painful.
In life, everyone experiences a time of hardship, and for the most part, those affected find methods of overcoming the adversity. The idea of getting through hardship is best reflected in; Sherman J. Alexie’s story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” (274). In the story, victor whose father had recently died from a heart attack has to travel to phoenix Arizona to reclaim his father’s ashes and his truck. Victor is joined by his former childhood friend “Thomas Builds-the-fire”, who finances the trip to phoenix since Victor did not have the means. They drove back truck from phoenix to the reservation. Throughout the trip, Thomas is always telling stories mostly reminiscing about their childhood. It is through Thomas stories that we learn much about Victor’s father. Through the use of symbolism, and character development, Alexie conveys the idea that, when someone is experiencing an adversity, reconnecting and embracing the past may lead to a discovery of a brighter future.
..., a loss that everyone can either sympathize or empathize. However, instead of focusing on the pain and heartbreak of not having a mother, the narrator instead takes strength in the fact that her mother is connected to nature. Although her mother is not physically in her life, her body has, instead, been buried in the ground like a seed. This brings the narrator solace because at least her mother’s essence will always be present as long as there are trees, grass, and animals.
Her second husband’s depression had a massive impact on her later years. They both loved traveling but had to stop since he was so sick. “The Journey,” tells a similar story to Wharton 's by showing a woman care for her ill husband. The story starts with a woman and her husband sitting in a train car. The woman is looks outside and beings to reflect on the times with her husband. She remembers when the doctor first diagnosed him with depression. The doctor said “Six weeks of mild air will set him right” (The Greater Inclination 67) so they moved to Colorado. Now they are on a train back from Colorado to New York. Her husband’s condition has worsened since they first arrived in Colorado. The husband is visually ill and there is nothing that the women can do to assist him. As they travel passengers ask if he is ok and if the wife needs help caring for him. She refuses and says she can do it by herself. As they near New York, the husband becomes severely ill and the wife sees the husband has finally died. She became sick to her stomach thinking that she will be at the train station with her dead husband 's body. “Feeling dizzy, she sank down on the edge of the berth, keeping away from his outstretched body, and pulling the curtains close, so that he and she were shut into a kind of sepulchral twilight” (The Greater Inclination 70). The story ends in confusion as they come to a
Death can be very scary for the elder and young. One never really knows how they will react to the event of death. Even though inevitable, death can be shocking for some or troubling for others. A shocking and a troubling reality of death are depicted in two short stories, Used to Live Here Once by Jean Rhys and A Father’s Story by Andre Dubus. How characters in a story react to death are often different from one another.