The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder Pieter Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death depicts a hell on earth scenario that many would find difficult to look at. Believed to have been painted around 1592 (Woodward, 2009), Bruegel’s brush strokes illustrate peasants and nobles alike being tortured or killed by an army of skeletons. However the greater detail of this oil on panel painting lays out much of what is considered on one hand a parody of life and on the other an ominous reminder that death and war is inevitable and indiscriminate of social class. Although The Triumph of Death was painted late in Bruegel’s artistic career it’s documented that he was registered in 1551 as a master with the Guild of Saint Luke, a prominent art guild founded by Pieter Coecke van Aelst in Antwerp, who is also believed to have been the artist Bruegel apprenticed under (Emile & Charles, p. 62). The work itself depicts …show more content…
brutal scenery of distant fires burning in the background while skeletons burn, torture and pillage what seems to be a small village from a forward perspective. Although there is much violence within the overall painting there is much to be gathered from its detail. In the bottom right, two figures can be seen playing a lute and reading seemingly untouched by all the surrounding chaos; while on the bottom left, a king is lying in wait as a skeleton holds an hour glass, suggesting that time inevitably leads to death. The kings outreached hand pointing to another skeleton stealing the kings’ fortune. Above these two opposing outcomes the scene becomes that of indiscriminate chaos; a war machine trudges along in the center of the portrait as skeletons lead peasants and noble alike into a large box structure in the center right. Behind the war machine another group of humans seem to be fighting back against the undead army, pushing them back against a cliff in the distance. Another figure on the top right of the scene prays on their knees while a skeleton raises a sword behind him. All of these scenes illustrate an interesting message; death will come for all of us. It’s up to our interpretation of how we prepare for it however. The lighting for this piece is surprisingly bright and gradually darkens as the landscape expands into the horizon. More importantly, many of the scenery in Bruegel’s painting illustrate a deeper meaning about life and death. Peter Thorn notes that “Details throughout the picture repeat the warnings of medieval Christianity: Death is an ever-present threat in this world” (p 291). Much of the religious tones are apparent, crosses are depicted everywhere and skeletons are seen playing trumpets in what appears to be a choir box in the center left of the painting. Another important feature and overall statement in the painting is the two scenes on either side of the bottom borders; the distraught king on his death bed and the peasants unfazed by the carnage. On the one hand, the depiction of the two figures points out that so long as we as people focus on happiness and ignore the troubles and worries that would normally come from thinking of death, death will come for us without notice. On the other hand those that spend their days preparing for death are doomed to leave what they prepared behind, as evidenced by the king reaching out towards lost riches. In the center of the bottom part of the scene two figures in traditional funeral garments of the time period are seen, one in a casket on wheels and one underneath the casket. These two figures bring the painting to a central statement about the inevitability of death.
The chaos that Bruegel illustrates only shows us that humanity’s fixation with preparing for death only makes us victims of it, and although it’s only a small portion of the painting, it’s possible to enjoy life without becoming burdened by preparing for the inevitable. The most important statement Bruegel makes is that life and death is indiscriminate, that regardless of social status or religious denomination, the concept of death is not foreign or avoidable. Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death blends a chaotic landscape of war and seeming Armageddon with a powerful message about the benefits of leading a life without worry and the downfall of those who dwell upon the notion that death is something we can prepare for. Although the scenery is grim and the skeleton army is throughout the landscape, the contrast of those closest to the viewer perspective and those in the distance beating back the army also shows that it is possible to beat the concept of
death.
War as seen through the eyes of Ambrose Bierce in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge depicts it as truly gritty. The author successfully sends a message of how death is a part of war, and it is not as noble or glorious as one would think it is. Due to popular media, we have this attitude that the protagonist is going to go down in a blaze of glory, and while it may be true for some, it is not like that for everyone. War is rough, dark, and gritty but no one ever wants to talk about those parts of war because it would ruin the fantasy of it.
In the beginning of Death, Nagel presented the question of whether it is a bad thing to die. He furnished two positions on the subject. The first position is that life is all one possesses and to lose life is the greatest loss one can encounter. The second position is that death is a blank, not an unimaginable condition, that has no positive or negative value whatsoever. Stating his aim to be considering whether death is in itself an evil, Nagel clarified that the state of being dead, or nonexistent, is not in itself evil for several reasons. First, death is not an evil that one is able to accumulate more of. A person cannot receive a larger portion of death no matter how long they have been in that state. Secondly, one would not regard temporary life suspension as harmful. In the case of long-term suspended animation or freezing, one can view this as a continuation of their present life. Thirdly, few people regard the long period of time before their birth as a misfortune. From these points, Nagel concluded that humanity does not object to death because it involves indeterminable periods of nonexistence. He then proposed that if death is an evil at all, it can only be because of what it deprives us of, since it has no positive features. He did not, however, agree with the idea that death is bad because it brings an end to all the good things in life. Nagel formulated that if all good and bad life experiences were removed, what i...
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the war.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
No other epidemic reaches the level of the Black Death which took place from 1348 to 1350. The epidemic, better regarded as a pandemic, shook Europe, Asia, and North Africa; therefore it deems as the one of the most devastating events in world history. In The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, John Aberth, compiles primary sources in order to examine the origins and outcomes of this deadly disease. The author, a history professor and associate academic dean at Vermont’s Castleton State College, specializes in medieval history and the Black Death. He wrote the book in order to provide multiple perspectives of the plague’s impact. Primarily, pathogens started the whole phenomenon; however, geological, economic, and social conditions
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
“Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but
With exaggeration, authors craft their writing to have an even greater, more impactful effect on their audiences. This enhanced effect found in Candide serves the purpose of highlighting how humans adopt a type of absolute viciousness and inhumanity in times of war. One example is the instance where Candide - a member of the Bulgar army, at the time - must choose between being “flogged” by the entirety of the military command, or to endure “twelve bullets in his brain” (24). Here, Candide is given a nonsensical, almost ludicrous, ultimatum. Voltaire offers an embellished example that serves to demonstrate the barbaric military practices that come with war. Being a recurring aspect of war, Candide is, essentially, forced to choose between death and death. In fact, along with exaggeration, Voltaire satirizes war even further as the choice of whether it be a gradual or speedy demise is Candide’s own luxury. Voltaire does not just simply antagonize the ramifications of war, but rather, he ridicules all facets of war. Another example within Candide is when the Old Woman reveals the story of her own life as proof of the grim hardship that she too has experienced. In the midst of another battle, “one buttock” was cut off of the live bodies of every woman present in the interest of feeding the starving soldiers (56).
In Thomas Nagel’s “Death,” he questions whether death is a bad thing, if it is assumed that death is the permanent end of our existence. Besides addressing whether death is a bad thing, Nagel focuses on whether or not it is something that people should be fearful of. He also explores whether death is evil. Death is defined as permanent death, without any form of consciousness, while evil is defined as the deprivation of some quality or characteristic. In his conclusion, he reaffirms that conscious existence ends at death and that there is no subject to experience death and death ultimately deprives a person of life. Therefore, he states that Death actually deprives a person of conscious existence and the ability to experience. The ability to experience is open ended and future oriented. If a person cannot permanently experience in the future, it is a bad or an evil. A person is harmed by deprivation. Finally, he claims that death is an evil and a person is harmed even though the person does not experience the harm.
...eave one with a similar "air of tragedy". However, if we can gather the strength to adopt an authentic way of being, if we can see that we have a self to find and overcome the repression for selfhood, we can at the very least be freed from the mistaken view of death and thus, be freed from the irrational fear that normally accompanies it. The role of mortality in Heidegger's philosophy may be methodological and catalytic, but the import of mortality to Human Being, whether authentic or inauthentic is and always has been significant in conjunction with our cultural overlays and traditions. Heidegger's phenomenological view of death as a way-of-being is significant to us because it provides a workable alternative to the common dogmatic views of death and it can help to guide us through a profound existence, that is laden with the traps and pitfalls of inauthenticity.
Intro : Introduce the concept of death, and how the concept of death is shown to be something to be feared
The concept of human mortality and how it is dealt with is dependent upon one’s society or culture. For it is the society that has great impact on the individual’s beliefs. Hence, it is also possible for other cultures to influence the people of a different culture on such comprehensions. The primary and traditional way men and women have made dying a less depressing and disturbing idea is though religion. Various religions offer the comforting conception of death as a begining for another life or perhaps a continuation for the former.
In the play “everyman” death is depicted as something that is terribly feared as no one seemed ready for it, death is perceived as something that takes one away from the pleasures of this world.
Death is a great wave whose shadow falls upon the lives of all beings below Olympus. Amidst this shadow and its immediacy in war, humans must struggle to combat and metaphysically transcend their transitory natures. If they fail to forge a sense of meaning for themselves and their people in what often seems an inexorably barren world, they are lef...