Death

Death is the irreversible loss of essential characteristics of an entity. Death comes to all of us, but should we accept death or not? Some people do not fear death, because they believe that they will have eternal life, and John Donne maintains that idea in his sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud”. Some people cannot accept death; they fear it and feel powerless against it. The protagonist in an excerpt from “The Death of Ivan Illych,” by Leo Tolstoy, holds this belief.

The speaker in Donne’s poem and main character in Tolstoy’s story agree that death comes to all of us. They also personify death. The main character in Tolstoy’s story describes death as a person that is “knocking ghastly at the door of his consciousness”. John Donne turns directly to death when he says “Death, be not proud”. He addresses death as a person.

John Donne’s poem, “Death, Be Not Proud,” embraces a notion of death that shouldn’t be feared. The speaker declares that death has no power over us, because he is just a “slave to fate chance, kings, and desperate men”. Death is just a sleep, and “poppy and charms can make us sleep as well and better” than death. The speaker in that sonnet says “poor Death”. By using a sarcastic tone he shows that death shouldn’t swell; we should. He speaks directly to death by using apostrophe, but indirectly to us to show that death is not to be feared. We will live eternally, and, ironically, it is death that “shalt die”, not us.

On the contrary, the main character of Leo Tolstoy’s story maintains “Death, that unwelcome guest, was simply unacceptable in the parlor of his consciousness.” To underline Ivan’s despair and denial of death, he uses an extended metaphor in that quote. We are witnesses to the inner conflict that takes place in Ivan’s mind. Deep down in his consciousness he knows that death someday will take him to the “other side”, but he refuses “to give admittance to the thought”. He denies death, because of selfish reasons: he thinks he is “unique, different”, not like ordinary human being, so death couldn’t concern him. “How could all those thoughts and emotions and experiences, all that he was, all that he had been or would be, simply disappear?” Ivan thinks “Impossible! It could not be the case.” He finds death disgusting and awful. To describe death he uses a lot of similes: a “terrible person, a bill collector – or worse, a murderer”.

There is no doubt that the speaker in Donne’s poem and the protagonist in Tolstoy’s story have different attitudes toward death. Everybody has his or her own image of death. Some people find it terrible and feel powerless against it, like the protagonist in Leo Tolstoy’s story. But some people find death powerless; so, death should be afraid of us. John Donne’s interpretation of death brings hope and power. Death doesn’t concern us indeed: when we are alive – there is no death; when death is here – we are not here anymore. One aphorism wrote by Forster may sum up the foregoing analysis: “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”