Life is no mystery. We can see it, taste it, and feel it. Sometimes life knocks us down onto our knees and we hang on by tooth and nail. Sometimes we conquer life and we thrive in our happiness and success. We experience it every day, but something that is universally feared is death. We only experience death once and we are never able to tell any living soul what it is like to die and remain dead. A handful of people claim to have experienced the afterlife in the moments when doctors were trying to revive them. One person claimed he was being dragged to Hell and that demons pulled and ripped his burning flesh from his bones. Others claimed to have been guided to heaven by the light of the angels. Humans have made hundreds of religions to help us feel comfort in dying. We go to Heaven, we are reincarnated, and we cross the River Styx and our afterlife reflects our life. The wrong-doers are always punished for their crimes while the righteous ascend to someplace better. Religions have been phased out and replaced by new religions. The religions that are tossed aside are called false and renamed as mythologies that are to be studied and enjoyed as stories. The gods of old religions are no longer feared and offerings are no longer given to them. No one prays to them for guidance and help. They are simply stories. Some unfortunate souls may die with unfinished business or suffer from a violent death then remain in the land of the living as spirits, ghosts. The truth is we do not know what happens when we die. We can only guess and only in death can we truly know. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe is the perfect example for this.
"I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere." (The Complete Tales and Pomes of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, Pg. 448). In The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allan Poe describes the scene in great detail, whenever the character is allowed light. Poe wants us to know exactly what to imagine. Poe is meticulous in the descriptions. In the beginning Poe describes the fire as if it were an angel. The character explores the prison with no light but once he is able to see it, he finds it is much smaller than what he first thought. He sees the masonry is actually metal in nature. Poe describes in great detail of what the prison looks like. Poe even discusses what the ceiling and floor look like and what it is made of and the specific height and length of it all. Just as in the story, our senses create a vivid scene for us to explore in life. We can feel and see the slightest detail. We experience life in the details. Our senses make what we see and experience real, even if it is bad. The good and the bad in life let us know we are alive.
Death is not good or bad. Death just is. It happens to everyone and everything. We claim we know what happens once we die, but we truly do not. Many people speculate that religion was created to help explain the way the world worked. The volcano erupted because one of the gods or god was mad at the village. Maybe religion was also created so we would not fear the unknown circumstances of death. A majority of todays' people are scared of even getting old, not to mention death. To get old means to die slowly and no one wants to die. We try to stop aging, or the appearance of aging. Many people dream to live a life immortal. It has even been slightly considered taboo to say someone has died. People do not die. People "pass away" or have "moved on". The unknown scares us as humans. It is natural to be scared. The pit in The Pit and the Pendulum is an amazing metaphor for our fear of death. There is no description to describe what is in the pit and all we see is the reaction. "'Death,' I said, 'any death but that of the pit!'" (The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, Pg. 454). Like death, we know nothing of the pit. It is up to us to figure out what the pit is or what is in the pit. Sometimes our imagination is scarier than the actual thing that scares us.
Maybe death is something to fear and worry about, but the living can never know what it is like to die until it actually happens. We do not even know if there is anything after death, let alone what the afterlife would be like. We can only speculate. Which is why I think Poe's work is still discussed and enjoyed today. He described death in a way no one thought of before. He used metaphors like the pit to show us how fearful we are of something we do not know or understand. Poe used that fear to ignite our imaginations. Yet he described the prison in such great detail that our world melts away and we are put into the room so we can experience it the way he wants us to. Being alive means to have experiences and maybe Poe wanted us to experience a new way to look upon death.
Work Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 448, 454. Print.
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Academic Papers
Non-FictionThese works are the papers I've written for my community college and university courses. Topics will range from violence in video games and literary analysis to slavery and rape. There is also some poetry in here!
