Death Motif Essay

Death is an inevitable fate for everyone. One cannot escape the fate that lies before them. We do not know when we will die, nor do we know when the ones we love will part us for an endless slumber. Death cannot help but be a theme, a motif, for many stories, because it is so strong and can carry so much drive for story which keeps the reader engaged. Throughout the semester, we have read several writings that can be considered to be centered on death. In “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling, death is the unfortunate fate for a man who did nothing but help the ones that thought so lowly of him. He sacrificed his health to take care of the ones who he thought needed it more. In “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden the entire poem is speaking of a death of a loved one. The narrator also speaks of how there is basically no point to life because love was supposed to last forever, but he was wrong. In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling, Harry’s whole motif to learn who he is thrived from the death of his parents when he was merely a baby. Harry gets himself into a lot of trouble trying to unlock all of the mysterious of his past. Death is the reason people are scared to live their life to the fullest. Death can be a heart rendering disaster to some. But it can teach you a lesson and make you grow. Gunga Din, Funeral Blues, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone all have the theme of death, because it gives suspense for the reader and gives the characters in the stories a motif as to who they are as characters.

Gunga Din, written by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about a native water-bearer who is killed after he saves the life of a soldier. The soldiers do not treat the natives well at all. They think very lowly of the natives...

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...s because of the helping hand of Dumbledore that Harry survives the second encounter with Voldemort.

Dumbledore operates by trust as much as by skill, however, and as Harry later realizes, the old headmaster "sort of wanted to give me a chance" (Sorcerer's Stone, 302), not just another chance to face his parents' killer directly but to learn his own ability and possibility. In their second meeting, Voldemort is again defeated, but the effort of the combat almost kills Harry. Just as maternal love saved Harry's infant life, however, his connection to Dumbledore saves him now, the wizard rushing to the rescue just as Harry loses consciousness.

If it were not for Dumbledore, Harry would have died. Death is everywhere in this book. The theme was not as obvious at first but the more I analyzed everything, the more I realize that death is what the book is centered around