Death and Dying

The Overwhelming Nature of Death

None of a human being’s current experiences are as overwhelming as death. Despite its overwhelming nature, death remains a shadow figure whose existence is disputed. People have a tendency to push death to the outskirts of their lives. They have a tendency to believe that death is out of sight and mind. Death is like a mystery foreigner with a mask on his face (DeSpelder et al. 10). Nonetheless, the masquerade is frightening in comparison to reality. Understanding and understanding more about death and dying helps us peel back the mask and meet death in meaningful ways that are beneficial to our lives. The first stage in the process of achieving new choices related to death is to realize that avoiding thinking about death disaffects us from a fundamental characteristic of life.

Cultural Attitudes Towards Death

Direct experience of mortality is rare to most people. However, death still has a significant position in our social life as well as the cultural world. Attitudes from individuals in a given society reveal using the various manner of portraying death through mass media as well as in the use of language that people use to describe more about death (DeSpelder et al. 19). Death also has an expression of attitude in music, literature, visual arts as well as in-jokes. They formulate the basic attitudes of expressing death. The various expressions reveal thoughts and feelings concerning death both culturally and individually.

Death in the Media

In the process of reading the daily newspaper, or even an online news sources it is likely for one to have different encounters with death. In the news, one is likely to discover a collection of accidents, suicide and murder cases as well as disasters, which involves sudden violent deaths. If a jet crashes the media announces the news with strong headlines (DeSpelder et al. 21). The death of the average Jill is known through death notices, unlike obituaries. The death notices include small briefs and standardized statements that are published in minor category and itemized alphabetically in a pillar of major and vibrant figures. Nevertheless, most of the human being experiences the ordinary deaths. However, most of the natural deaths are ignored or rather only mentioned in everyday fashions. Whether death occurs in routine or the unusual manner, the daily encounter with death in the media affects the mode of thinking about and response to death. The news reports in most cases have less to do with the event rather than the process and perception of death (DeSpelder et al. 27). Whether television characterizes as a national hearth or even simply, another household appliance, most of the people look into the television not only for information concerning events but also for clues about the specific meaning.

Television’s Influence on Representations of Death

Television sets influence the lives indicating well establishment of death cases. Death is far from accepting ignorance. It is now a central theme in most of the television programs. Death appears movies as well as on crime and adventure series. Very few programs deal with real life topics on how people deal with loved one’s dead or the process of confronting their dying process (DeSpelder et al. 34). Even the children programs are expressed with the death and dying of major characters in the play to complete the main theme of the program. People who have ever had an encounter with dying people describes a different picture as opposed to the reality of death.

Language and Death

Language that people use in the process of describing and talking about death and dying is often direct. None of the individual wishes to use the death vocabularies more open and often. Most people tend to avoid the word death and dying in their conversation. Pass away takes the position of death; the dead is the deceased and burial becomes laid to rest. In most case, people refer to death as a negative patient outcome (DeSpelder et al. 40). The use of euphemism and metaphors in describing death and dying does not imply an impulse to deny the reality of death or avoid talking about the idea of death and dying. Additionally, the linguistic devices are also necessary for the process of communicating deeper meanings as compared to those related to plainer speech about death and dying. Moreover, some of the metaphors represent the deeper meaning of mortality. Passing on in most cases is a term that u=indicates spiritual transition among the members of religious and ethnic groups (DeSpelder et al. 31). Most of the people use the sympathy cards to show their sympathies to the bereaved household to avoid the mention of the term death. Furthermore, language helps in expressing the intensity and immediacy of a person’s close encounter with death in the form of danger expressed in most narratives.

Death in Literature

In literature, death have a deeper and greater meaning. It relates to a society of an individual. Novels related to war offers a direct indicator of how corporations and individuals search for meaning in shattering experiences of loss and trauma. Additionally, often explores the meaning of death in situations that are incomprehensible (DeSpelder et al. 44). In most of the literature, the fiction hero always tries to come to terms with sudden and violent deaths in situations where there was no time nor place for survivors. Sorrow is a mutual subject in poetry and that rhymes provide us perceptions in the universality of damage in methods that are reassuring and satisfying.

Death in Film and Art

In filmic talents, demise subjects occur over signs and marks as well as descriptions. Cultural attitudes and beliefs affect the expression of the topics. There is an expectation that after death an individual will undergo judgment in related to the earthly life. Some of the death related transcends the cultural boundaries. Art is one of the primary ways of expressing the powerful impact related to an individual loss (DeSpelder et al. 45). Ordinarily, Americas incorporates traditional and Christian symbols of death to memorize public figures, and family members, Such mourning art offers not only a way to perpetuate memories of a loved one but also focusses on physically coping with grief and reduces the memories of the deceased individual.

Globalization and Death

Forces of globalization expose individuals to information about deaths in a far distant from the comfort of the homes. Daily, the mass media has scores of deaths related stories to illustrate the severe and death and their causes. The study of death and dying offers and opportunity allows us to look at the stories related to death and to die. Nevertheless, death promotes and allows the evolution of species. Therefore, based on the perspective of species survival death makes sense, despite the explanation offering little comfort at a time when death hits a family.

Work cited

DeSpelder, Lynne Ann, and Albert Lee Strickland. The last Dance: Encountering Death and dying. Mayfield Publishing Co, 1996. P. 5-45.