How does our idea of death define us?

How does our idea of death define us?

A discussion of various poems

Questions, Writing Assignment, and Sample Paper
by Andrew Gottlieb

The writing assignment is on page 23
Write about the following question:

How does our idea of death define us?

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust thou return.”

(Genesis 3:19. Pentateuch And Haftorahs, second edition, edited by Dr. J.H. Hertz, C.H.)

Do you think the author of these lines in the Bible believed in an immortal soul?

From Macbeth
(Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
William Shakespeare

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

What is Macbeth’s view of life and death? Do you think he believes life is meaningful? Does he believe in an immortal soul? Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Dust in the Wind
by Kerry Livgren (from the Group: Kansas)

I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment’s gone.
All my dreams pass before my eyes in curiosity.

Dust in the wind.
All they are is dust in the wind.

Same old song.
Just a drop of water in an endless sea.
All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see.

Dust in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind.

Don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.
It slips away and all your money won’t another minute buy.

Dust in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind.
Dust in the wind.
Everything is dust in the wind.

What is Kerry Livgren’s view of life and death. Does he believe in an immortal soul?
Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Lee Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

What is Robert Lee Frost’s view of life and death. Does he believe in an immortal soul?
Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, – act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

How is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s view of life and death different from that of the
Macbeth, Livgren and Frost? Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Death, be not proud
(Holy Sonnet 10)
by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death shalt die.

How is John Donne’s view of life and death similar to or different from that of the other poets in this handout? Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Sonnet 55
By William Shakespeare
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover’s eyes.

Compare and contrast the view of life and death in Shakespeares’ Sonnet 55 with that of the views of the other poets in this handout. Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Sonnet 30
By William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

How does the poet in Sonnet 30 find consolation for the pain and sadness incurred by the death of a loved one? Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Sonnet 12
By William Shakespeare

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

How is Sonnet 12 different from the other sonnets in this handout? Refer to lines in the poem to support your view.

Lawrence Olivier playing Hamlet

To Be, Or Not To Be
Soliloquy Spoken by Hamlet – Act 3, Scene 1

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to! ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

 

 

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