Homo Faber, a renowned literary classic written by Max Frisch in the late 1950’s, explores the miserable life of Walter Faber with an added bonus of delving into the unsatisfying, and in some cases tragic, lives of those closest to him in order to reveal the effects this has on Faber himself. His unhappiness in life stems from his constant struggle to accept death and his inability to cease to age, as shown by many motifs and symbols throughout the novel. Initially, Faber’s struggle to accept death is apparent in the way he refuses to acknowledge nature aging him. He rarely looks at his reflection in mirrors, unless he needs to shave, because he is afraid of what nature has done to his features as the years go by. In a rare instance of Faber …show more content…
His camera, by the end of the novel, reflects the rejection of impermanence he possesses. He films so he will not forget, and he films so he and his experiences will not be forgotten. Faber’s life experiences and Faber himself will have permanence through these films. Films which nature cannot destroy, and maintaining a part of him which cannot be defeated by death. He films for himself and he films in memory of his friend Joachim, who he found hanging from his friends home after committing suicide. He also films a young woman aboard the same ship, Sabeth, while she is talking, laughing, and putting her hair up in a ponytail. These to Faber are the most significant instances to capture forever, the memory of a lost but much loved friend and a young woman who captures Faber’s heart, and to keep these films out of the reaches of death and destruction. Near the end of the novel, Faber takes his camera reels into a film store and sees what he had shot over the last few years. He is embarrassed at all of the sunsets he captured and his friend hanging from a wire brought about no response in him. The reels containing films of Sabeth provided Faber with a different reaction. He stood silently watching the reels in awe, taking in every second of Sabeth’s screen time. He did not let a second slip from his eyes. Faber became sad, he would never find someone like her again. He left the reels at the shop and never came back for them …show more content…
The most prominent symbolism in this book is not a razor personifying his fear of aging or a fear of the effects of the years on his face in the mirror, it is death itself. The first inkling of death Faber encounters in the book is from the dead animals littering the ground around him while on his way to visit Joachim. The dead animals are almost always being picked apart by scavengers, called zopilotes. Zopilotes were everywhere death lingered. They were even outside of Joachim’s house after he had died, unable to get in because the door had been shut. He came to hate seeing these birds, understandably. His avoidance to death and aging was mocked by these birds who seemed to be everywhere. Once out of Mexico death did not stop being a nuisance to poor Walter Faber. By sheer coincidence he had ran into his old Professor while in Paris, Professor O. Faber had had an affair with Professor O’s wife when he was very young, she died shortly afterward. With the old memory of Professor O’s dead wife and Faber not recognizing Professor O because he aged so much that he looked like a completely different man. This had undoubtedly brought back the fear of getting old and dying in Faber. In the end, Sabeth, Faber’s daughter as it turns out had gotten bit by a snake and fell six feet off a ledge trying to run to get help. Even after Faber’s strenuous attempts at getting her to the hospital and being relieved that
More than death itself, Harwood’s poetry shows how many people fail to accept death. Their belief in immortality and fear of the end is also potrayed in Nightfall. Although when the subject of the poem is death, the words describe life, as if reluctant to face up to reality. The images are of suburbs, lights, birds and trees. Even with so many experiences, many of us will forever be ignorant seems to be the truth ringing perpetually though Harwood’s verses.
People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into for a deeper understanding of the choice death for these characters.
In the story “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf illustrates the universal struggle between life and death. She portrays in passing the valiance of the struggle, of the fight of life against death, but she determines as well the futility of this struggle. Virginia Woolf’s purpose in writing was to depict the patheticness of life in the face of death. Woolf’s conclusion, “death is stronger than I am,” provides the focus of her argument. Throughout the piece, she has built up her case, lead to reader emotional states its concept of the power of death. The piece would begi...
Nuland, Sherwin. How we die: Reflections on life's final chapter. New Yord: Vintage Books, 1993. 140-63. Print.
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author,” “From Work to Text.” Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephan Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. 142-148, 155-164. Print.
Death remains the most horrifying thought among (mentally healthy) people on Earth. This fear of the unknown and no knowledge of what happens after death best describes the term extinction in this context. Mary Shelley’s character, Victor Frankenstein, demonstrates extinction when he refuses to return to his apartment, “I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited…” (Shelley 36). Not only does the thought of death terrify humans, but also the thought of not living on Earth: the only familiar concept in human minds. It provokes people to protect their lives by living to the fullest in a successful manner. Extinction stimulates the mind to think of death. One less dramatic form of extinction is the fear of mutilation.
All people have probably considered that immortality would be an extremely joyous experience. William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, tells of the quality of life and how man exerts it; this is in direct comparison with Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, written by Kurt Vaunnegut. Where as he also writes of the quality of life with the implication of immortality by drinking the miracle drink, Anti-Geresone. The insignificance of man from Shakespeare along with the concept of living forever from Vaunegut, draws the question of why would someone not want to die if life was so worthless. Both authors question the quality of life and as a result they express their concern in their writing.
In his paper “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” Bernard Williams asserts his central claim that when immortality is feasible it is intolerable; further, it is reasonable to regard death as an evil. He argues his position by utilization of The Makropulos case, or the case of E.M. This character and circumstance is derived from a play by Karel Capek. E.M. is a woman of three hundred and forty two years. She has survived so long due to an immortality draught concocted by her father, a physician, long before the play’s action. E.M. explains her problem with immortality is that her unending life has become incredibly dull, her emotions have become cold and indifferent. She feels that in the end, everything has happened before and life has become unsatisfying. She stops taking the immortality draught and death overtakes her. This invokes the optimistic thought that immortality may be rewarding, if certain desires continue to be satisfied. Williams expands on the idea of these desires, called categorical desires and inherent motivation, but first we should confirm the views of death that make the conversation of immortality desirable.
One of the oldest and most prominent issues that mankind has faced throughout history is that of their own mortality. In every society mankind has wrestled with the inevitable problem of their eventual death, and literature often reflects each society’s take on their mortality. For instance one of the most pronounced motifs in the epic poem Beowulf is the impending doom that each and every character knows will eventually come for them. This is most clearly illustrated by the protagonist himself in his dialogue with other characters. It is also perpetuated by the compelling need for glory and renown that many of the characters continuously search for. Lastly, the issue of mortality is presented by the preeminence of the history of the clans
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Alexander Petrunkevitch’s story, “The Spider and the Wasp” carries a unique outlook on life through insightful diction that invokes one’s personal ideas and thoughts, while Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of a Moth” portrays a muted tone with familiar diction that makes it understandable.
The face is of a statue in the cemetery where the Comedian is being buried, raindrops running down its face as though it is crying. This chapter focuses on the funeral of Edward Blake, known also as The Comedian. As such, this chapter centers around and is the first presentation of the theme of death, a common theme in Watchmen – both real and symbolic, or “ontological”. Ontological death is best described as “the phenomenon of ‘world collapse,’ which occurs when one experiences an incident so jarring to his/her personal reality that the thing which gives one’s fundamental life, or world, meaning – whether God or something else – no longer applies. Preconceptions are extinguished, pushing one into a ‘new world’ where a revised reality must established.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2007. The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying,
Frank Herbert understood that thinking about one’s mortality “is to know the beginning of terror,” but knowing that one is mortal “is to know the end of terror.” Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief, weaves the tale of “a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery” (Zusak 5). This fictional account of World War Two illustrates the importance of words, bravery, and love. Moreover, it divulges the truth behind life: death. In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, foreshadowing, personification, and imagery reveal the transience of life.
In Saul Bellow´s “Dangling man” it is portrayed the figure of Joseph, a middle-age Canadian Jew that is waiting for his army draft in World War II. In a diary format, the book explains Joseph´s decay through a compilation of his thoughts and feelings during the never-ending wait. In this period Joseph undergoes not only the loss of some of his good friends, but also the deterioration of the relation with his brother´s family and his own wife, which lead him to live in isolation from society.
When writing occurs, the works are distinguished, but no unified meaning is deciphered. It is the option of the reader to decide whether a text contains an inherent meaning or the inability to find meaning at all. The Novella, Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon, allows the reader to determine meaning and to distinguish whether Balthazar’s generous approach possesses an underlying meaning. This concept is relevant to Barthes’s work, which criticizes the author’s intentions versus the interpreted context. The Death of the Author, discusses the theory of how an author enters his own death as the act of writing is taking place. This theory no longer allows the author to have definitive authority over the reader. To prevent “interpretive tyranny,” the reader must be able to separate a work from the inventor and conclude one’s own viewpoint.