Death and its Personofication in Greek Mythology and Other Cultures

1559 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The theme of death used in literature

Death “The fear of death is deeply embedded in us” (Cave 1). Death is something that everyone fears. As humans we like to believe that we are inhuman and that death will never affect us. It’s the ugly side of life that no one likes to think about. It doesn’t matter what race, culture, or region we are, we’ll all die. Many believe that when we die we go to heaven or hell, but what happens to our body after we are dead? Do we float on to parallel universe, or does our body just appear wherever we are destined to be. The grim reaper is what many of us believe is the carrier between the two worlds and the keeper of our bodies. The Grim Reaper is known as the personification of death. He comes for every person, like an hourglass hand waiting for the last drop of sand to fall. Many remember him in a long black cloak, with a tall razor sharp blade wait to cut through to your soul. His skull face is hidden underneath the droopy black hood. This view of the Grim Reaper was mainly adapted by Americans. The Greeks, believed that death shouldn’t be seen as such a horrible part of life, thus they named death Thanatos. Thanatos is the older brother of Hypnos (Sleep), who looks up to him. Thanatos powers only affects humans and not the Gods, which is what he wants to be. This angers him because he doesn’t want to limited in the people that he can to kill. Therefore, this makes Thanatos hate all mortals because of the God’s rejections to become one of them. Death and Sleep had to take care of Lycian prince Sarpedon. Prince Sarpedon was the son of Zeus, the king of the Gods, and his mother Laodamiea. He was the hero of the bloody Trojan War. Sarpedon fought along with the Trojans but he was stabbed by the Greek Warrior Patroculs. When the hero w... ... middle of paper ... ...ave been killed by the black plague. Death waits for Block, but Antonius stalls his life by challenges to a game of chess and Block loses. This shows a grimmer version of the Reaper, and how he can be deceitful when human test his powers. The Grim Reaper is a very complex character but, in today’s popular culture he is portrayed as a one dimensional character. His background information isn’t showed in movies, they chose to show the bad parts of him. This is many because it will give them a greater profit to portray the way he has been seen for thousands of years. If the true story of the Reaper was portrayed it will make people more sympathetic to him and he wouldn't been seen as the blame for Death. We as humans are terrified of death and therefore we need someone to blame it on and it would be lose if we took the time to get to know the monster, The Grim Reaper.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Two Thoughts Of Death By Countee Cullen

    444 Words  | 1 Pages

    Death is pictured at the beginning of the poem as a pretty women. Suddenly the picture changes and the narrator explains seeing death coming for him from out far, moving like the wind and cutting down the flowers in her path. Somehow the picture of the grim reaper appears, death is clearly the main topic

    Read More

  • The Devil and Tom Walker versus The Masque of the Red Death

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    The concept of mortality is truly fascinating, because no one living knows what happens after death. Some choose simply not to think about death’s inevitability, but the realm of the living is rife with reminders of what everyone must become. The stories of Tom Walker and Prince Prospero serve as such reminders to the readers of their macabre tales. In both stories, the protagonists are scared of the prospect of death. The eponymous Tom Walker of The Devil and Tom Walker worries about what will become of the riches accumulated from his deal with The Devil and consequently becomes very pious.His fate is sealed when one day he exclaims “The Devil take me if I have made but a farthing!” at a time when his Bibles are not present. The Devil himself returns and carries him off on a black horse, never to be seen again. In The Masque of the Red Death, however, Prince Prospero decides to just blatantly ignore the inevitability of death. He locks himself and his friends in his castle. All is well until the eve of a grand masque. An uninvited guest intrudes seemingly dressed as the Red Death. Outraged, Pro...

    Read More

  • Fear Of Death In Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fear of the unknown, and fear of what is to come in our lives, has generations of people wondering what will our lives be like tomorrow or the next day. Death is always there and we cannot escape it. Death is a scary thing. Our own mortality or the mortality of our loved ones scares us to the point that we sometimes cannot control how we are dealing with such a thing as the thought of death. Why do we fear such a thing as death? We don’t know what happens after we don’t how it feels. The fear of death is different for most but it is most certain to come and we cannot hide from it. For death is just around the corner and maybe it’s will come tomorrow or the next day! We fear not death, but the unknown that comes from death, that is the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Denial Of Death By Ernest Becker

    1544 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to Ernest Becker, “The main thesis of this book is that it explains: the idea of death, the fear of death that haunts humans like nothing else; the mainspring of human activity designed to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man” (“Becker” ix). The author of this book describes and quotes many other psychological thinkers views on the different kinds of fear and what contributes to the fear of death in man. The author explores several topics like self-worth, heroism, fear, anxiety, depression and many other issues throughout this book.

    Read More

  • Essay On Ancient Greek Suicide

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    When it came to suicide, ancient Greeks often regarded male suicide as honorable and female suicide as disgraceful. The ancient Greek culture regarded war as one of the most important aspects of the society and could not stand dishonor. As a result, most ancient Greek warriors committed suicide out of valor. If all other fellow warriors were killed in battle and one warrior returned home, that warrior would be viewed as pusillanimous and ignominious for not dying in battle or fighting to the death with his fellow warriors.3 Such was the case in the suicides of Orthydas and Pantities. “Fearing the charge of cowardice, the Spartan Orthrydas committed suicide out of shame at being the lone survivor among three hundred of his fellow warriors in a battle against the Argives.”3 Like Orthydas, “Pantites, a Spartan survivor of the battle of Thermopylae, took his life when he returned home.”3 Honorable suicides like these could also be seen throughout the entirety of the Peloponnesian War. Honorable death by suicide was so significant that there were consequences if the warriors did not

    Read More

  • Death and Immortality in The Epic of Gilgamesh

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    nsciousness after death, or maybe a combination of both, which creates this fear. The fear felt is undoubtedly universal. However, the ways in which it is dealt with are varied and diverse. The concept of human mortality and how it is dealt with is dependent upon one’s society or culture. It is the society, which has the greatest impact on an individual’s beliefs.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Mortality in Hamlet by William Shakespeare

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    Intro : Introduce the concept of death, and how the concept of death is shown to be something to be feared

    Read More

  • Cultural Analysis On Death And The Afterlife

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    If there is one constant in this world, it would surely be death. Dying is an unavoidable part of life. Indeed, everything that lives will at sometime die. The fear of death is held by everyone. Perhaps it is the correlation of death with pain or the unknown state of the human consciousness after death, maybe a combination of both, that creates this fear. The fear felt is undoubtedly universal, however, the ways in which it is dealt with are varied and diverse.

    Read More

  • After Life Beyond The Horizon: The Ancient Greek Belief of the Afterlife

    1674 Words  | 4 Pages

    What do all cultures have in common? All cultures have some believe that after death the soul goes to an underworld. In the underworld there is a variety of different gods and creatures, beliefs of what happens to the soul, the settings in them, and the hero’s journey to and from the underworld.

    Read More

  • Death And Death In Don Delillo's White Noise

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    Is there such a thing as free will, what is the relationship between mind and body, and the true difference between right and wrong are a few questions about human existence that have plagued philosophers and average men alike since the days of Socrates and Aristotle. While not everyone may pay these questions much attention, there is one philosophical thought that has probably crossed the mind of every human at some point in time, and that is the concept of death and what happens after. There are widespread thoughts about what happens postmortem which range from the idea of immortality during the days of the ancient Greeks to the belief in reincarnation that is associated with many Eastern religions. These beliefs, along with others similar to them, provide some with a sort of safety net because they know that their essence (soul, spirit, etc.) will continue to exist after they pass. That being said, not everyone shares these opinions and for some the idea of death can be frightening. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise examines this fear through Jack Gladney and several other characters. While the novel does not offer any answers, it does stimulate thought regarding death in modern society and how it should be handled. Although many of the characters try to do things such as ignore or embrace their fear in order to get it off their minds, Jack cannot shake his angst, all of which mirroring the various reactions people in today’s society have regarding death.

    Read More

  • Death, A Personified Representation Of Death

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    The theme of death is portrayed in both Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Whether it be death itself, or a personified representation of it. Allegory characters such as the Seven Deadly Sins have been used, as well as the notion good and evil, as a way to corrupt characters which lead to their deaths. Chaucer and Marlowe have achieved this by using elements such as language and structure, imagery and macabre. These elements and themes have been used in my own creative writing work.

    Read More

  • Fate In Greek Mythology

    835 Words  | 2 Pages

    Solomon, Robert C. "On Fate and Fatalism." Philosophy East and West 53.4 (2003): 435-54. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014. .

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Death

    1294 Words  | 3 Pages

    He may be Death but he seems to be forced into this. Death is not that fond of wars as he says “They say that war is Death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: “Get it done, get it done”. So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.”(309) As you see Death sees it as the most annoying job ever in history. He talks about it as if he works for a company that is unruly and quite exhausting. It seems the job that we have bestowed upon is just getting him tired. Death never gets a break from this. Death shows empathy with no one showing it back towards him. Empathy is always needed. Yet we seem to not give it to Death. At the very end of the story he says something that proves it. “***A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR***I am haunted by humans” This is quite true as he takes the souls of the humans. Not only that the amount of deaths on average per day is 151,600. The death rate back then must`ve been heavily raised possibly putting it higher than this number. If you account for how long he has done this. Death can say he is haunted by humans, after all he has been taking our souls back and forth ever since he

    Read More

  • Death: Learning to Live

    1603 Words  | 4 Pages

    What is death? What makes death such an avoided subject? According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, death is defined as: the permanent cessation of vital functions; the end of life. So maybe we fear death and death’s process because the thought of life ending is unbearable or because we know little about the dying process and naturally, as humans, we fear the unknown. These all may be true and in most cases probably are. But if one was to take a look at death and the process and consider the true meaning of that very moment in one’s life, maybe we would view it differently and maybe, just maybe, see life itself in a whole new way?! Marie de Hennezel, in her book Intimate Death defines death as . . . “our life’s culmination, it’s crowning moment and what gives it both sense and worth” (xi). She sheds light on the positive side of death, the part no one thinks about or acknowledges. And she shows us that death can in fact make us see how amazing life can be. In his book, The Body Silent, Robert Murphy shares with us the changes in life and actions of society when faced with the process of death.

    Read More

  • Death In Life Essay

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    Death is something that causes fear in many peoples lives. People will typically try to avoid the conversation of death at all cost. The word itself tends to freak people out. The thought of death is far beyond any living person’s grasp. When people that are living think about the concept of death, their minds go to many different places. Death is a thing that causes pain in peoples lives, but can also be a blessing.

    Read More

More about Death and its Personofication in Greek Mythology and Other Cultures

Open Document