Thinking about Death - Research Paper Example

?Brief 603984 Thinking about Death The works chosen for this analysis focus on the process of memorisation, and the way it contributes to a greater understanding of what one has lost. The artistic works I have chosen—Henry James’ Beast in the Jungle, W Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues’, and Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’—all provide different negotiations of this theme. There are common elements in all three of these examples of the theme: however as we shall see there are critical modulations of this. I argue that the recollection of a loved one who has been lost is closely connected to a process of self-realisation, or actualisation about the futility of existence self through its association with the lost figure. However, as we shall see, this is modulated very differently in all three examples. Section 1: Henry James, loss and self-actualisation. The critical apogee of Henry James’ story, The Beast in the Jungle, comes only moments from the end in which the protagonist comes to understand himself. The self-awareness that John Marcher develops is critically, and inextricably, linked to the death of Mary Bartram. By connecting Mary’s death with Marcher’s epiphanies about his own life, the realisation of loss, ironically, becomes about the discovery of self-knowledge and the truth about life itself. The story of Marcher’s and Bartram’s relationship is defined by Marcher’s belief that he has an unusual fate: to die by some catastrophic event, what he terms ‘the beast in the Jungle’. It is for this reason that he decides that he will attempt to protect others and himself by not falling in love with others, or developing a deep connection with someone. This fate is developed throughout the novella and then finally achieved in the final moments of the work, when Marcher comes to understand his failure to connect to another person. When contemplating his friends death, he finally comes to understand in real painful terms what he has lost: ‘He had justified his fear and achieved his fate; he had failed, with the last exactitude, of all he was to fail of; and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn't know. This horror of waking--THIS was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. ... He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. His eyes darkened--it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, face down, on the tomb.’ (James, The Beast in the Jungle) Instinctively, the reference to throwing himself down on his tomb points out the connection between Mary’s death and his achievement of his fate. Mary’s death is intimately connected to the acquisition of self-knowledge. He comes to understand, and in that moment achieves, his fate. The loss of Mary at this point becomes then the catastrophic event in his life; he realises what he has lost at the last, and is pained by it. Just as he comes to understand his fate, he comes to understand the way in which he and Mary had lived, and his ultimate failure in life. He comes to understand that his life was a solipsistic one. Marcher’s life is detached—detached from human connections, from the emotions and the intensity of profound connection that defines Mary’s life. This is expressed in a number of ways. Recall for instance his inability, in the opening scene of section 1, to remember his earlier meetings with Mary. (It is also expressed in the third person perspective of the narrator, for example.) The consequences of this solipsistic, detached life are brought home to him in the final scenes when faced with Mary’s death. She had offered him an escape from his fate: ‘The escape would have been to love her; then, THEN he would have lived. SHE had lived--who could say now with what passion?—since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.’ (James, The Beast in the Jungle) In this moment, Marcher recognises his failure—that he has not really lived—and that he has simply failed to connect to the people around him. What comes home to him in the ensuing moments is both the failure of that life practice, and the impossibility of reclaiming it. Not only does Marcher come to understand the futility of his life, but the impossibility of reclaiming it. Marcher therefore comes to understand the absolute finality of death and loss; that to really live involves connection with others, and, consequently, unavoidable pain at their death. Her death brings home to him what he has lost, and in the process it brings with it an understanding of the nature of life. For Marcher, in the end, and for Mary connection with others was based on the intensity of memory and recollection. Marcher’s detachment from the world—and from those around him—is in a large part defined by his inability to remember others. The opening passages of the novella dramatise by emphasising the sheer difference between the way Mary and Marcher react to other characters. Mary remembers their conversations of earlier meetings, and indeed their meetings, with intensity: such intensity that she can remember the secret he imparted to her. Her memory of their past underpins the intensity of her connection. Marcher, in contrast, can’t remember their earlier meeting: ‘It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the sequel of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn't know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was also somehow aware--yet without a direct sign from her--that the young woman herself hadn't lost the thread. She hadn't lost it, but she wouldn't give it back to him...’ (James, The Beast in the Jungle) In the final moments, when confronted with her loss, Marcher comes to understand memory, and what it means to remember. He remembers her, recalling what she had offered him (note the phrase: ‘and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he mightn't know.’ Death invokes in Marcher a recollection, and an understanding of that which he has lost; and it is that ability to remember that comes to redefine his connection with Mary in the final moments of the novella. Section 2: Auden and the futility of future life. Auden’s famous poem ‘Funeral Blues (originally published under the title: ‘Stop all the Clocks’) dramatises many of the themes of loss and longing which underpin James’ searching exploration of the solitary life. However, they differ in a number of crucial respects. Like James’ work, Auden’s poem emphasises the futility of solipsistic life. But this emphasis is connected to concerns about how one continues on alone having lost someone; it is also based on the profound awareness of the importance of the lost one to the survivor. ‘Funeral Blues’ repeatedly emphasises the sheer destruction that the death of a loved one has brought to speaker’s life. Throughout his desire for things to be brought to a close, stopped, or silenced, Auden dramatises the way in which death renders the markers and the structures of the cosmos irrelevant. ‘Stop all the clocks...’: Will time continue? Is time even relevant in the world without his loved one? ‘Pack up the moon, dismantle the sun...’: the things which define the earth’s cycle through night and day, are no longer going to have any meaning. This futility of life without his loved one is brought home clearly in the last line: ‘for nothing now can ever come to any good’. Auden enunciates the sheer destruction that has occurred in his life; his life no longer has any meaning, any structure; indeed its very continuation is in doubt. Like James’ Marcher the speaker of this poem emphasises the sadness of life lived solipsistically; life only has meaning with other people; through connections with other people; for both characters, death brings this stark reality home to bear. Having said this, it is also clear that Auden’s speaker differs in at least one crucial respect from James’. Whereas Marcher needed the loss of a loved one to understand their importance to his life, Auden’s speaker understands already: ‘He was my North, my South, my East, my West My working week, and my Sunday Rest.’ In this way, Auden’s speaker shows how his partner was the chief defining element of the direction of his life—the cardinal direction; a fact which makes the reference to the cosmological structures like time or the sun and moon even more poignant. However it is also clear that he already knows this; death doesn’t bring revelation, it brings emphasis of a truth already understood. The one aspect in which knowledge does emerge from the death and the realisation that his partner is gone forever comes in the final line of this stanza: ‘I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.’ Here, intimations about the realisation that love is limited comes to fore, emphasised by the fact that his lover is gone. Like Henry James’ Marcher, the death of a partner makes the individual realise through loss a truth about life. Section 3: Tears in Heaven The final piece I want to analyse in this discussion concerns Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’. As has been acknowledged, this song was written in memory of his son, Conor, who died in 1991. This work has a number of commonalities with the two works we have analysed above, this primarily relates to a concern with the recollection of his son. However, this is expressed in a slightly different way. Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’ focuses on the fictitious possibility of meeting his son in Heaven. The expression of this ultimately impossible desire appears to represent the way in which death provides a limit to the possibility of interaction with those who have died. What Clapton appears to long for here is the possibility of reclaiming time with his son. On one level, this theme appears to connect with the theme of loss that we have been discussing thus far in this analysis: like James’ Marcher and Auden’s speaker there appears to be a longing for the impossibility of reclaiming the time that one had with a loved one. Having said this, however, it is also clear that this wish is expressed as a desire for future interaction. Clapton’s use of the English subjunctive ‘would’ appears to convert his concerns about interaction into a wish for the future. What is expressed in these hypothetical concerns are worries about a relationship that will never get the chance to develop fully, to achieve its full potential. In conclusion, it appears that there are several common points to emerge from this discussion concerning the way these three works deal with the loss of loved ones. These common points focus on the way in which memory plays a key role in longing for those who have parted. Where these works differ is their concern for the way in which this confounds different notions of selfhood in the survivor. In James’ work the loss of the protagonists love one involves an acquisition of self-knowledge, and an understanding of the futility of solipsistic life. This theme is repeated in the work of Auden where the speaker’s grief is tied up with a realisation of the futility of his future life, although the acquisition of self knowledge is downplayed. Finally, Clapton’s work focuses also on the memory of a loved one and the futility of trying to build a relationship with that person. References Clapton, E,‘Tears in Heaven’. 1991. James, H. The Better Sort, Methuen & Co.: London, 1903 Kaplan, F, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius (1992). Mendolson, E, The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939. (Faber, 1976). Roberty, M & Welch, C Eric Clapton: The Illustrated Disco/Biography (Omnibus Press, 1984) Wegelin, C, & Wonham, H (eds.), Tales of Henry James: The Texts of the Tales, the Author on His Craft (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). Read More