Tales from the Valley of Death. Rachel E. Menzies
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of individuals who have resisted decay continue to be displayed in temples all around Asia in an effort to remind visitors of their own impermanence. Buddhism is not alone in this regard, with the worship of preserved bodily relics and display of corpses being common in Catholicism. So, although religious texts may attempt to assuage believers’ fears of death through the promise of eternal life, or the emphasis on accepting death, the practices observed at religious sites across the world reflect a more complex struggle to embrace our own mortality than that painted for us in the scriptures.
Literature and Art
Across at least 4000 years of human history, fears of death have played a significant role in literature. Most notably, the oldest surviving great work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is centred entirely on one man’s struggle to cope with loss. Written in 2100 BC, the Babylonian epic poem tells the story of King Gilgamesh, who is devastated after witnessing the death of his close friend Enkidu. This moment has a powerful effect on Gilgamesh: Not only has he just lost his dearest friend, he has suddenly realised that he too will inevitably suffer the same fate one day. Gilgamesh laments:
‘My friend, Enkidu, whom I loved, has turned to clay.
Shall I not be like him, and also lie down,
never to rise again, through all eternity?
…Sorrow has entered my heart! I am afraid of death.’ (George, p. 77–78).
This prompts him to begin an ambitious quest to find the secret of immortality. Of course, he fails to do so and eventually is forced to accept that mortality is simply his lot in life, as it is for all of us. While the epic story of Gilgamesh is famous for its portrait of humankind’s struggle with death, various cultures have similarly dealt with themes in their literature. The plays and poems of the ancient Greeks and Romans were riddled with such themes, and medieval European literature even developed entire genres focused on death, such as the memento mori genre of poetry (translated as: ‘remember, you will die’).
Lived experiences of loss and death have also prompted some of literature’s most famous tales. James Barrie, who went on to write the famous children’s book Peter Pan, was heavily inspired by a family tragedy in his childhood. When James was just 6 years old, his 13-year-old brother died after cracking his skull while ice skating. His mother was devastated at the loss, and James did all that he could to replace the hole that his brother’s death had left, even dressing up in his deceased brother’s clothes and whistling in the same manner that he used to. James’ mother was reportedly comforted by the fact that her favourite son, now dead, would remain a boy forever. It is no coincidence that the full title of Barrie’s famous book is: Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. English novelist Mary Shelley, who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein, seems to have been similarly inspired by loss. In 1815, Mary suffered the death of her newborn daughter, whom she had birthed prematurely just two weeks prior. She was haunted by this death, experiencing visions of her baby, and suffering an acute depression. Only one year later, on discussing ghost stories with friends, Mary wondered whether ‘Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated’. She immediately began to pen her first novel, Frankenstein, which famously tells the story of a young scientist’s decision to resurrect a human corpse, after immersing himself in his experiments to deal with the grief of his mother’s death. Outside of her work, Mary Shelley’s own life tells a similar story of fixation with death. On the first anniversary of Mary’s death, her son opened her keepsake box, finding enclosed locks of her dead children’s hair, and the remains of her husband’s heart, alongside some of his ashes. The bestselling novel Interview with a Vampire, which went on to be made into an Academy Award nominated film, has an eerily similar backstory to that of Frankenstein. Its author, Anne Rice, wrote the novel in just five weeks, while grieving the death of her 4-year-old daughter. Her daughter went on to inspire the character of Claudia, the 5-year-old immortal vampire girl, who, like Peter Pan, will never grow up.
In a similar vein, art has been used for centuries as a way of grappling with mortality. In addition to two genres of art which specifically depict images of death (the Danse Macabre and ‘vanitas’ artwork, popularised in the 15th and 16th Centuries), almost all of the great artists have depicted death in some form, including Gustav Klimt, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, M.C. Escher, and Edvard Munch. The motifs of crawling ants that famously typify Salvador Dali’s work are intended to represent decay and death, and to remind the viewer of their own impermanence. And, if one wants to see the terror of death immortalised in art, one need only look up Pablo Picasso’s final well-known self-portrait before his death, aptly titled Self Portrait Facing Death.
The Future of Death: Embrace the Inevitable, or Dream of Immortality?
Today, developments in technology are set to rapidly change our relationship with death. Creative ways of holding onto the physical remains of loved ones are becoming increasingly popular, and include the option of having their cremation ashes mixed with ink to be tattooed onto one’s skin, made into a diamond and worn as jewellery, or even pressed into a vinyl record, which can be created to play the favourite song of the deceased, or even a recording of their voice. Further, living in the digital age has led some individuals to design technology which offers a virtual life after death. After the death of a close friend, Eugenia Kuyda developed a program which uses data from a deceased individual’s online profiles and message history, so that a user may simulate conversations with their loved ones long after their death. Although the program is not currently available for public use, its development in 2015 shines a light on the direction that modern technology may be leading us when it comes to dealing with death. But do such programs truly help people grieve, or are they one of many ways in which we continue to try to deny mortality?
While the development of such apps offers some sense of, albeit artificial, continuity after death, other technological advancements provide a more literal promise of immortality. One such example is that of cryonics, a procedure involving the preservation of a human corpse at low temperatures in the hope that it may one day be completely revived. Despite the high cost (averaging between $28,000 to $200,000 USD per body) and the absence of any scientific evidence that the procedure will actually work, nearly 2000 people have already signed up for cryonic preservation. These individuals, based primarily in the United States, hope for ‘a second chance at life’, as the promotional video of one major cryonics organisation optimistically offers, before adding: ‘Considering the alternative, which is certain death, cryonics is the rational scientific wager.’ But is investing in what may be considered the modern equivalent of mummification, rather than becoming comfortable with the inevitability of death, truly the ‘rational’ choice?
Fortunately, alongside this technological push to deny death through any means possible, the last decade has also seen an upsurge in the ‘death positivity’ movement, which hopes to foster societal acceptance of mortality. ‘Death cafés’ represent one increasingly popular manifestation of this movement. These informal gatherings involve a group of people, often strangers, who meet over coffee and cake to discuss death and dying in a non-judgmental and relaxed setting. At present, nearly 9000 death café meetings have been held across 65 countries, suggesting an encouraging degree of success in the movement’s aim of breaking the silence surrounding death, ‘to help people make the most of their (finite) lives’. So, although some modern developments may increasingly lure people into denial, the death positivity movement appears to be fighting back, armed with funeral-planning apps, eco-friendly burial options, and death-themed board games and activity books. The increasing popularity of all of these offers some hope that society may strive to accept death and make the most of our precious moments on this earth, instead of fighting off the inevitable.
The Psychology of Death Anxiety
Terror Management Theory
One leading theory in psychology, Terror Management Theory (TMT), offers a comprehensive account of how our fears of death impact a large number of our behaviours. TMT is largely based on the book The Denial of Death by the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, for which the author won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. In his groundbreaking book, Becker proposed