The Optimist's Daughter Summary

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Death is an inevitable part of life. Though losing a loved one may seem earth shattering, life goes on. When burdened with this overpowering misery, mourners will experience the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In Eudora Welty’s, The Optimist’s Daughter, readers follow Laurel McKelva Hand as she addresses each of these stages after losing the ones closest to her.
In mourning, sufferers spend different amounts of time in each stage. Stages do not have to occur in a specific order, it is possible to move back and forth between stages (Axelrod). At the realization that death is approaching, denial is often the first stage that is experienced. Death is a tragic occurrence. The majority of people who are …show more content…

As Laurel begins to enter the next stage, memories of her dead loved ones begin to flood back. John Byrne states that flashbulb memories are vivid memories that seem unforgettable. Most flashbulb memories are formed from traumatic events such as a death (Byrne 419). Sometimes, mourners will turn away from their emotions and avoid all objects that remind them of their loved one and their death. But the deceased may appear alive in the mourner’s dreams says Daniel Goleman of The New York Times. After Laurel finds a letter from her grandmother who mentions Laurel as a child, she finally breaks down. Her grandmother had wrote when Laurel was a teenager, that if she could send Laurel a pigeon, who as a child she had a great interest in, she would (Welty 153). This small memory of her childhood finally brings Laurel to tears. When she is finally able to mourn, she sees her husband Phil as he looks at her with eyes longing for his unlived life (Welty 154). He was taken away by the war without a warning. Their short, perfect love was ripped from her arms and she was left without even a body to mourn over. Goleman informs that a sudden death makes mourning difficult. Studies show that a person whose spouse died suddenly were more anxious and depressed even two to four years after the loss that those whose spouse died from a drawn out illness. Mourners will go through a review of their life with their passed loved one, then they will begin to move one. Those who had less of a connection with the deceased will have the most memories after the death, but the ones distressed by the death usually take longer for the vivid memories to flow due to traumatization. Intense thoughts of sadness and memories makes it hard for the mourner to concentrate. An intense need for the company of the deceased develops, it is the last effort of denying the death. This need eventually leads to the emotional

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