In both of these cases, Emily was living in denial of death. It was obvious that she did not like the idea of someone she knew leaving her or the idea of change. With that person not in her life anymore, Emily would have to get used to life in a way that the deceased were not involved anymore. Adaptation was the key to moving on with her life post-death and she didn’t like the fact that she had to change her life.
Finally, at the end of A Rose for Emily the townspeople and we (the readers) discover that Emily had one more life that she was not willing to let go of. After her funeral, the townspeople were in her house and in one room they noticed the man that had been courting Emily, dead in a bed and next to him on the pillow was a single long iron-gray strand of hair. The man was Homer Barron and a while ago he had planned on leaving the town and Emily and moving. Emily wouldn’t loose another person in her life so she kept him for herself.
In this story overall we get the sense that death is used to show the insecureness of Emily. She needed the people who had left her and found it hard to let the concept of them be lost. Most people create a memorial or something to commemorate the life of the deceased, for Emily it was the body of the person that was her memorial.
Next we have Thornton Wilder’s Our Town which throughout the first two acts of the play it seems to be about everyday town life. However, it isn’t until the third act in the cemetery that the idea Wilder is trying to get across comes clear.
Thornton Wilder wrote in the preface for Our Town that the play “was an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events of our daily life. Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the minds – not in things, not in scenery.” And just that was accomplished through the character of Emily Webb.
When Emily views her life from the afterlife point of view she notices so much she never did before. She notices how fast life goes and that her whole life she took all of the small things for granted. On page 108 she exclaims, “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.” Her reaction to her oblivious state while being alive causes her to break down into tears and question the authenticity of her “life.” She is thrown into a deep sadness and asks, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?” and she is answered “No.” by the Stage Manager. Now Emily is enraged because she was so blind. Now she can never have what she had in her past life.
Finally Emily comes to the conclusion that “That’s all human beings are! Just blind people.”(p. 109) Simon Stimson joins her in reasoning her past life. He says, “That’s what it was to be alive…To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.”
It is here that Thornton Wilder’s message is clear. He wants people to view life while they’re living now, in the way that Emily did after her death. Life is too short not to acknowledge the little things. After all, in the end it might be the little things that you miss the most.
Now to put death in another way we turn to Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport. In this play the two main characters Midge and Nat are two elderly men who are pretty much waiting on death and while they are doing that they are reflecting on everything that’s happened in their lives thus far.
Midge is a man who is realizing that his place in society is to just wait and let things unfold. He’s lost his job due to new technology and all he has left is his companion Nat. Together they share stories of past loves and family and take part in activities that are not expected from men their age such as embarking on little adventures and smoking a joint.
Nat on the other hand knows his place in society and like Midge, he is waiting on death day by day. He is different from Midge in a way that while living in the present he is becoming everything and everyone that he’s never been. Throughout the play Nat changes his identity to be a mob boss, human rights agent, and realtor to name a few. He is always fighting for what he believes in and finds unity highly important. With all of his identities, it isn’t until the end when Midge asks Nat his real name that he replies, “I was and am now no one.”
Nat and Midge together take death as something that is bound to happen. They know that they have lived their lives to their fullest and now they’re just waiting on a good ending. It is going to happen inevitably and both of them are ready for it. However, until that day comes they are going to appreciate the minutes they have left on this earth to breathe.
Collectively we’ve had death show us what it’s like to not move on with our lives, how we should act as every event is our last, and how death itself is certain. It doesn’t always have to be gloomy and depressing, yet it’s never always cheerful.
The lesson I’ve learned has got to be to live life to the fullest and accept what it will bring to you. There will be ups and there will be downs but that’s just how it is.
Additional Sources