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Quizlet death and dying
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The cold gleaming edge of the blade, a thin razor. It once was a replacement blade for a shaver, now it is the tool of my own death, a tiny piece of demise. The sharpened edge and cool steel a sharp reminder of what I held. My palm faced upward, a thin morbidly dotted line dashed across my wrist, the blue veins and worn crease lines hidden below the thick permanent black marker. The steel, now warmed from my hesitant and fearful touch pressed a single corner against my flesh, the natural flexibility of my flesh giving in slightly against the unwavering corner, but the natural elasticity pushed back against the steel as well. The edge was so perfectly sharp that as the flesh pushed against it, the flesh spread apart allowing the warm metal to lick its first drops of blood. The corner slowly pushed across the dotted line, splitting the black mark in half on either side of the wrist, for the first moments there wasn't a sense of pain but then as the steel slowly moved the ache started to flow with the blood and a tingle of pain set in. Vibrant trickles of crimson started to flow down my wrist,a rush of life that soon would touch the elbow. The trickle grew, the razor halfway across the wrist. It was almost pleasurable, almost enjoyable, but it wasn't. Now the distress was growing, a pain of panic and fear more than physical discomfort. A gnawing sensation of unrest and worry arousing that primal instinct of self preservation. A thick harsh swallow, my throat felt so dry, so thick. A simple swallow turning into a war. Muscles tensing up in my shoulders, my teeth gritting and grinding as I tried to steady and control my tattered breath and shaking hands. Sweat droplets formed on my palms and numbness called attention to my hands.
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...o scream, the pain to great to hold back any longer. The scream was mute, a silent calling into the world of pain, a mute scream of nothingness called out into a world without sound, only deft ears could hear and none were around. A gnawing thirst started, begging him to drink and drown out the parched feeling in him. He glanced up at his mirror self so high above. Why was he laying on the ceiling? What was the world upside down. Everything no longer made sense. How many days did he lay dead? Dying? Was he dead? A glace at the wall clock told him nothing, the numbers danced. With great mental effort he pushed his cold tired body up. He felt so numb, so distant and disconnected. The clock said 8 minutes had passed, 8 minutes from when he first danced with the razor. Tick TOCK Tick..ock... Nothing, forever more. He finally found OBLIVION. and more importantly, Peace.
“It was a large, beautiful room, rich and picturesque in the soft, dim light which the maid had turned low. She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and tortuous outlines of flowers and foliage. She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mourning notes without promise, devoid even of hope. She turned back into the room and began to walk to and fro, down its whole length, without stopping, without resting. She carried in her hands a thin handkerchief, which she tore into ribbons, rolled into a ball, and flung from her. Once she stopped, and taking off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the glittering circlet.
The duration of this short story is spent by the narrator in his torture chamber, alone and afraid. Only rats accompany the narrator in his cell, still offering no comfort to his soul. “They were wild, bold, ravenous- their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionless on my part to make me their prey.” The narrator is undoubtedly driven into melancholy during this deplorable period as he struggles to exist alone. Hiding away in his mind, the narrator questions every sound he hears, fearing it will be his last. Conversations of life and death are held inside the mind of the narrator, as the severity of his situation and isolation drive him mad. As the pendulum starts to approach our main character a struggle of the mind occurs. The narrator begins to weigh the positives and negatives of death. “I prayed-I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force my self upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble. There was another interval of utter insensibility. It was brief, for upon again lapsing into life, I saw that there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum.” In this selection of text the narrator first wishes for death, asking God to speed the descent of the blade, but
Unsurprisingly, the narrator finds comfort in trying to understand his environment and fate. He measures the room carefully because he wants to make sense out of his situation in order to ease his mind. His captivity is unpredictable and he never knows what is going and is totally unaware of his surroundings. However, he knows sooner or later that he is going to die. Upon receiving his death sentence, the narrator loses consciousness. When he awakes, he is in complete darkness. He is confused ...
Feeling utterly hopeless, when he reaches a river, he longs to end his life by submerging himself in the water. As he bent down, he heard a sound from a remote part of his soul, and awoke him from the gravity of the mistake he was about to make. It was the sound "Om," that saved his life and lulled him to sleep. Upon awakening he found himself changed, renewed, and reborn. He was no longer the man he recognized nor the man that his friend Govinda, who was watching him sleep, recognized.
He screamed unceasingly, not for minutes but for hours. For the last three days he screamed incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it; you could hear him three rooms off. Oh, what I have suffered!"
First came the pride, an overwhelming sense of achievement, an accomplishment due to great ambition, but slowly and enduringly surged a world of guilt and confusion, the conscience which I once thought diminished, began to grow, soon defeating the title and its rewards. Slowly the unforgotten memories from that merciless night overcame me and I succumbed to the incessant and horrific images, the bloody dagger, a lifeless corpse. I wash, I scrub, I tear at the flesh on my hands, trying desperately to cleanse myself of the blood. But the filthy witness remains, stained, never to be removed.
He killed his senses, he killed his memory, and he slipped out of his self in a thousand different forms. He was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened. The sun and moon shone,
My counterattack swung him around and I pinned him down to the dirt by his chest. This was it, this was where he would meet his end. I grabbed my dagger, raised it high above my head, and brought it down with enough force to kill any man, but all that happened was a quiet ‘chink’ as the blade struck his armor. I looked at the blade, surprise and anger swelling up inside of me. It was rusty and blunt, there was no way this would hurt the soldier who was strong enough to kill my precious son.
Death’s whisper traveled in my ear, wrapping around my mind, “I can take you away from this madness. Beyond this hell, that is life.” “Will it be more peaceful there?” I asked. “As serene as heaven above.” Possessive Depression responded. My heavy heart fluttered at the thought of serenity. No more painful days, or lonely, restless nights. No more of this living death. Anxiety murmured all my insecurities tempting me to make the decision, as every tick-tock from the clock he held, echoed in my brain, putting fear in me of things that will never happen. I thought about the invitation to eternal sleep, “I would finally be able to extract this smiling mask…” Thus, I decided to join the dance of death, done dealing with my dilemmas.
The time period this work takes place in is a very gloomy and frightening time. He wakes up in a dark place by himself and in fear, which makes things worse. A common theme we can relate this dark place to is when we fall off of the path of God. Since God represents all things good, the dark is the exact opposite. Since everything is not so clear in the wood he his describing, the path back to God is even more difficult to attain.
Everyone thinks that war is terrible, but those who experience first hand know what it is truely like. Soldiers know how it feels to have someone’s blood on their hands; they know the feel of holding a gun. Let me tell you how it feels when you have to end the life of a person you don’t know. It feels like you have the weight of the world crashing down on your shoulders. I do not know why you are are reading this and if I will be dead when you do, but I want you to know that it is not a joke. Everything that I mention in this journal happened to me, a simple man from Vermont, named Robert Gray. This is what happened to me in the Civil War.
I would shut my eyes because I knew what was coming. And before I shut my eyes, I held my breath, like a swimmer ready to dive into a deep ocean. I could never watch when his hands came toward me; I only patiently waited for the harsh sound of the strike. I would always remember his eyes right before I closed my own: pupils wide with rage, cold, and dark eyebrows clenched with hate. When it finally came, I never knew which fist hit me first, or which blow sent me to my knees because I could not bring myself to open my eyes. They were closed because I didn’t want to see what he had promised he would never do again. In the darkness of my mind, I could escape to a paradise where he would never reach me. I would find again the haven where I kept my hopes, dreams, and childhood memories. His words could not devour me there, and his violence could not poison my soul because I was in my own world, away from this reality. When it was all over, and the only thing left were bruises, tears, and bleeding flesh, I felt a relief run through my body. It was so predictable. For there was no more need to recede, only to recover. There was no more reason to be afraid; it was over. He would feel sorry for me, promise that it would never happen again, hold me, and say how much he loved me. This was the end of the pain, not the beginning, and I believed that everything would be all right.
My hand shaking at every thought, a cold shiver ran down my spine as cold sweat trickled down the side of my forehead. I lifted my hand up and a strong smell hit my nose, it was the smell of blood. I lifted the object and shock hit me like lightening, fear displaced my sadness, sickness changed my bloodstream from blood to a thick liquid pus and vomit. I held the muscle with my right hand as my left hand was paralysed with shock. The adrenaline shot me forcing me to move but shock shattered me into thin slices that were impossible to put back again.
I am sitting in a still room, borrowing a moment to inhale the serenity that seems to float in the air like a cloud of fog, and listening to the silence. Listening closely, I notice that the silence, an absence of apparent sound, is its own symphony; it is an orchestration that is being kept alive by a carefully beating drum. I concentrate on the drum’s beats, observing that its rhythm is steadily and confidently throbbing. When glancing, I make a discovery and erupt with laughter. At this moment, precisely 1:43 PM, I realize that the incessant pulsation is not the tempo of tranquility, but rather the ticking of my watch. A small, thin, golden band strapped to my wrist, the watch is a living creature; it has a face, hands, a heartbeat. It has its own mechanized mind, a willpower to keep ticking at the same pace despite the circumstances; some of the more durable watches even tick under water. Within each brisk movement of the second-hand, a human has laughed, some have shed tears, one is gripped by death, and yet another is being given the gift of life.
My heart was simply ripped apart. I could not believe it at first, but I knew I had to. After all these wonderful years and enthralling moments, I finally have to face God's greatest challenge. My mind wasn't as messy as before anymore and I couldn't even think of what to think. It seemed as if I had nothing to worry about, nothing to do, nothing to say. I was trapped inside this room waiting for the Grim Reaper to reap my innocent soul.