Mary Oliver's When Death Comes

“When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver is a poem where the speaker is contemplating her own demise. At first, the speaker is fearful of death coming talking about how sudden and surprising it can be, but in the end she turns out to be much more afraid of her life and her memories and experiences in that life. The speaker seems to fear, as she puts it, simply living and then dying, having not experienced and adventured the world to the fullest extent. Living implies dying and the speaker does not approve of this simplistic cycle, but adopts a new view of the world through the lense of how individuals’ ideas and actions allow them to have an eternal place in the world. The speaker uses the coming of death and the experiences of life to convey a tone

of uncertainty, which causes the speaker to reject the idea of the constructs that create uncertainty; time, life and death.

Uncertainty first takes on the role of death and when it will come in the beginning of the poem when the speaker is using similes to compare death to events that happen without warning even if the timing of such events can be predicted, they cannot be pinpointed. The first of these similes comes when the speaker says that “death comes like the hungry bear in autumn”(ln. 2). There is a timestamp put onto this event, but it is extremely broad, as the autumn season spans for months. Not only is the uncertainty evident in the time, but also in the bear. Bears are often seen as unpredictable and often depending on the type of bear depends on what you should do to survive the encounter. Some bears require that the person play dead and they will leave. Other bears, however, require that you act tougher than the bear to scare it away. Death often acts with this uncertainty as well, sometimes it is better to stand up to death and fight for your life while other times, it is best to accept it as fighting

will only make the suffering last longer with uncertainty as to when death will finally win out. Uncertainty with death leads into the speaker’s next contemplation, with death so uncertain, how can one be sure to accomplish life goals. The speaker also alludes to death as “an iceberg between the shoulder blades,” suggesting that death, while uncertain, is powerful and unstoppable. This only complicates the speaker’s fear of death as she does not have control over it as she does her life. The speaker merely wants control to decide her own destiny, but she realizes that she does not have this control. The speaker does realize that can control her life, therefore, she wants to control that and ensure that she is not “full of argument” as her life ends(ln. 27). Ultimately, death’s ambiguity causes the speaker to consider how her time should be spent while she still has life.
Uncertainty then comes as time when the speaker begins to reject time as a means to measuring life or anything else as time is only a human construct.

The speaker further suggests that time is not something she considers, stating, “I consider eternity as another possibility”(ln. 14). The use of time and eternity is important, because they seem related, however, eternity could not be further from time as it represents the absence of time. The speaker seems to be more focused on her life and what it means. Therefore, when she speaks of living for an eternity, it is in the much more figurative sense where her life has made such an impact that she lives on through her accomplishments. Her fear of the death then leads her to the conclusion of her poem, where she states “I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world”(ln. 28). The conclusion further implies her fear of dying without having made any difference, which would render her truly deceased. Furthermore, time is often viewed as a currency that each person spends throughout their life on everything and anything, but the speaker rejects this as a mere idea and that we can actually have an infinite amount of time. While traditionally, this notion would be impossible, the speaker claims that if one spends their time doing the activities that excite them, then their time is more invested in long term consequences that live beyond our human flesh. By referring to time and eternity as ideas, then a sense of immortality is

assigned to them as an idea and ideas live forever so long as they are passed down from generation to generation.
The speaker’s fear of uncertainty causes her to want some things to be certain especially the implications and accomplishments of her own life, which is plagued with the uncertainty of death and time. Her rejection of the traditional life and death cycle causes her fear of death and its ambiguity. Furthermore, the speaker’s unrealistic goal of being an extraordinary person always living life to the fullest and never having a dull moment is impossible. Life requires boredom sometimes in order to achieve the extraordinary and this feeds into the speaker’s anxiety about what death will hold for her.