Literary analysis for Grief - Essay Example

The cruel hand of death was seen with just a mere act of coming together to have dinner. The event was simply beyond her understanding. According to her, life can change instantly. Her words can be taken to be mute. She could not describe what happened at that time until nine months afterwards. Her account can be best described as a great work of testimony, reach in power, grace and generosity as Joan emerges from grief. The unbelievable contrast between the ordinary circumstances and the extraordinary event that comes afterwards goes round and round Joan’s minds.

She tries to reconnect events like death with grief. She meditates on family life and children. How people become sick and how they heal afterwards. She gets into deep thought on how human beings takes life normal, may be thinking that death is far away. She generally gets to view life from another perspective. Joan loved her husband so much that when death snatched him from her, she becomes deeply affected and cannot imagine how cruel life is sometimes destined to be. They had had a happy life for over forty years.

Their idea of marriage was working together and cooperation. They worked for thirty five years together at home. The couples shared a lot, depended on each other so much and paid attention to one another’s ideas and thoughts. . People have the notion that a close relative or friend can die but the thoughts given to the events that are likely to follow are very small or not matching the magnitude of responsiveness a person can show. We only expect that one may just have a mere shock on receiving news of death but there is more to it than that, there is a heavy effect it leaves on both the mind and the body.

As she describes the difference between real grief and the mere thoughts of grief, great powers of her reflections are shown. According to her, as days pass by, the effects of grief reduce unlike the earlier days. According to her, the common belief that a funeral is the heightened moment of grief, is unreality. This is because a funeral is just a celebration that must occur to give a chance for others to pay their last respect to the deceased, but those affected will still be undergoing the reality of living without the deceased; a time of meaninglessness in life .

In giving her account on grief, Joan compares and contrasts two angels of looking at grief: individual and universal perspective. Since she was a child, Joan understood that change cannot be avoided and that nature shall always be the same. In her opinion this is even captured in the payer that God’s glory will always be. The challenge that comes is balancing the fact that everyone will face death and the meaning of existence. Self pity is another component of grief that is contemplated in her testimony of grief.

After careful analysis of events that come with grief, Joan is of the opinion that having self pity is normal. Self-pity is a natural phenomenon. She accepts that one can only learn and understand life’s ways given time and experiences. It leaves one a completely changed perception. (De Beauvoir