Disease And Death: Literary Representation In American Stories

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Disease and death: literary representation in American stories

“The disease is the night side of life, a more expensive citizenship. To all, at birth, they grant us a double citizenship, that of the kingdom of the healthy and the realm of the sick. And although we prefer to use good passport, sooner or later each of us is forced to identify, at least for a while, as a citizen of that other place."Susan Sontag. "Disease and other metaphors. AIDS and its metaphors"

Each person has a different perception of death, for me it depends on the moment you ask me. Most of the time I think it is part of the cycle of life, but at other times I will say that it is a feeling, which is the agonia to live submerged in sadness. Each person generates a defense mechanism against it, because in the end, very deep down, we all know that it is closer to what we believe.

Cliché will sound to sound, but we all know the types of people regarding death. First is the paranoid, which almost does not eat because it can die drowned. Then the one that believes is invincible because "in the end we are all going to die". Also the one who lives as if there was no tomorrow and leads a life of excesses. We cannot forget the people who live it daily, they have respect. To the sick people that we all point out that they have it closer than anyone. And so the list is lengthened.

Of all the groups that we can name there is one that is very special, because, I do not remember where I read it, this group of people feel in a more intense way. They do not have a midpoint. For them, death can be something terrible and catastrophic or something really precious. You will know who I mean, yes, artists. Each feeling paint it, they sing it, they write it, in a really unique way. They do it from the heart. A great example can be observed in the painting "The triumph of death", by Pieter Bruegel el Viejo, which shows a devastation scene where a leading skull, which is the representation of death in this work, along with other skulls they wantdestroy with everyone. They take both the king and the rest of the people without being able to escape, except for lovers, who represent that love is that dose of fantasy so as not to be aware of reality. Artists seek to capture their ideas on the canvas. Painters with brushes and writers with feathers. Writers have a more sensitive, raw.

How many stories have we not read about death? How many authors have not portrayed it in a way that we consider grotesque? One of the most famous we know is Edgar Allan Poe, that if he did not know that it is wrong to deduce that it is due to the very tragic life he lived, but as I do, he would have to ask him. We don’t know Benedetti? Surely yes, but only as a romantic. However, he has written several stories about the death they reflect. Last and not least, there is Alberto Barrera Tyszca with his book "The Disease". I know that many do not know him so I present it. I must also notice that throughout the text I will be citing the authors because there is no way to understand what I am trying to express unless they are read, without their words, mine would not make sense.

In the text, "The mask of red death", Edgar Allan Poe takes the mask, which according to the SAR is a figure that represents a human face, of animal or purely imaginary, with whom a person can cover his face not tobe recognized, take the appearance of another or practice certain scenic or ritual activities, such as the literary representation of death. Poe begins his story with the following words:

“It had been a long time since the red death ravaged the country. No plague had been so horrible and frightening so far. Blood was his badge, and his seal the redness and the horror of the blood. They felt acute pain, sudden dizziness, and then the pores bleed abundantly until they cause death. The scarlet spots that appeared on the body, and in particular on the victim’s face, were like the announcement and question of that plague that launched the attacked away from all human help and of all attention from their neighbors."

With these words it manages to perfectly describe the disease that was booming in the 19th century, tuberculosis, the symptoms coincide correctly. Especially for that characteristic of the reddish color in the victims, confusing the terrible tragedy in health, because when we talk about red, we talk about something alive. How to mention Susan Sontag in his book “Death and other metaphors. AIDS and other metaphors ”tuberculosis is a disease that in many cases makes believe that the person is fine, because he looks pink, or has vivid feelings. It should be noted that at the time the image of the disease was romanticized, this being an important fact because the writer always described it as a heartbreaking. He also takes it as a death announcement, therefore all people want to get away from her.

Throughout the story, Poe not only is responsible for telling the lives of people try. When taking death as a mask, it refers to the fact that it is an accessory, because many times people see it as something that is not their own, so its story ends in this way:

“And one by one, all those stubborn were falling to the ground in the witnesses of their bacanales, bathing the sumptuous carpets with the blood that sprouted from their bodies and dying in the desperate posture of their fall. The life of the ebony clock was also extinct with that of the last of the cheerful libertines. Tripod’s flames were extinguished. And darkness, decomposition and red death were savage."

Mario Benedetti, on the other hand, in his writing "death" takes as a representation of death the focus of light that we have all heard when talking about loss. Recalls certain scenes that a person who is sick, probably of cancer, who again and again speaks of the moment he is prepared for the moment he reaches his door. But the truth is that we are never, that is what the author tries to demonstrate. Also throughout history he tries to show that although the sick character tells himself that he is prepared, when doctors tell him that he is worsening, he shows a sign of hope, that he can. However, many times it is not so, but this is our way of being, people usually know the truth but the desire that it changes even if it is a little is immense. In addition, Benedetti tries to describe perfectly how he believes that it is that moment when little by little the heart stops beating and does so with the following lines:

“He had the feeling that the objects were leaving, they moved away from him but without admitting that they departed. A hypocritical leak, the same. How did not notice before? Anyway, that vertiginous escape from things and beings, soil and heaven, gave him a kind of power. And this could be death, nothing more than this?, thought with unexpected avidity. However I was alive. Neither agueda, nor Susana, neither coconut, nor jungle, nor octavio, nor his father inside, nor the box num. 3. Only that focus of light, huge, that is, huge at first, that came who knows where, not so huge afterwards, it was worth leaving the Balledosa Island, smaller later, it was worth facing everything in the middle of the street, little, smaller, yes, insignificant, right here, it does not matter that the others flee, if the focus, the foquito, is approaching, right here, right here, the lantern, the firefly, increasingly further and closer, toten kilometers and also ten centimeters of eyes that will never be dazzled."

Definitely words that mark, like all those memories of people we love but at some point they broke our hearts for the messages out of their interiors. When reading about the disease and death, it is like that, if you connect with the author, you end up devastated. And it is not the opposite case when we point out this story. Susan Sontag, throughout his book “The disease and his metaphors. AIDS and its metaphor ”, mentions many times that cancer is a hated disease, so much so that when a person’s disease comes to light the perception of all around him changes completely. Everyone takes a position regarding their illness, as we see in history with the protagonist’s friends. Shame to be sick. Shame to be sentenced to death. However, as Benedetti says "hope, hope, there is hope, there are hopes, sometimes in singular and sometimes in prural". It depends on us, after analyzing all these lines, helping not to continue helping to collapse these people.

Alberto Barrera Tyszca does not represent the death in such a simple way to see, unlike other writers, but leaves the interpretation the idea that being sick leads to death. Death are all those little symptoms that lead you to stop breathing. The story talks about a man who suddenly passed out and his son, who is a doctor, worried so much until fear invaded his soul. When reading this story I was surprised because being a doctor does not imply peace with death? If you tell me that people study medicine to avoid it, I will tell you that a basic principle is that there is no death and vice versa. So one is intrinsic to the other. However, when it comes to family and death everything is paralyzed. Our world stops turning, how is it possible for our person to go and although it may not be serious, our feelings begin to collapse. As the author plates in this paragraph:

"I don’t know, I didn’t know at that moment. But he had that incomprehensible and unpleasant sensation, he felt surrounded by a fatal imminence, by the intuition that what had happened that day with his father was the first sign of something much more serious and definitive: a Burkitt lymphoma, for example,or a cutaneous mucinous carcinoma, or an asymptomatic neoplasia of plasma cells … Andrés knows perfectly that nature translates these words ruthlessly. The image of his father suffering is what terrifies him. His shrunk father, shouting, twisting, crying. Pain is the most terrible of body languages. A grammar of screams. An ay turned into the only sound."

The author describes the living image of irrational fear when talking about death. The fear of losing a loved one. Connects the disease with death like all people, but in a much more stylized way. Tyszca, shows that although it is something we should already be used to, we are not.

I have concluded that people usually fear death, but to everything that this entails, pain, agony, despair, uncertainty. Suntag describes many metaphors that are used to avoid facing it, due to people we equal disease, but the same point is always reached: fear. In the end, in us is the decision, if it is finally time to face it or at least be prepared for its arrival, also not to succumb to despair. But I warn, if you are an artist you will not be able to escape from this amazing but stormy place.

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