People’s Perceptions About Death And The Afterlife In Literature

Death is a serious thing that everyone experiences. It kills many people knowing someone else killed himself, or cancer has taken them over or they have some type of disease. Death and the mysteries of the afterlife have been talked about in literature ever since the Anglo Saxons first began telling stories. Humans have been trying to see if people will live forever, and it’s just not going to happen. Nobody is here forever, and that’s the most heartbreaking thing to experience. Death really does affect people and authors have been writing about it for hundreds of years. It is in every genré of literature. “You will suffer until the day you die”. Much of what people believed about death and the afterlife can be found in the literature of the times. First, death and dying are still mysterious today. “He that hath killed my king and whored my mother, popped in between th’ election and my hopes, thrown out his angles for my proper life”.

Clinical death is defined as when someone’s heartbeat stops, her brain shuts off and she doesn’t respond to anything. Once one system fails, the others would soon shut down. What causes mosts deaths? What is the reason behind these reasons? Heart disease and cancer are the top leading things that cause death. Think about if your loved one had either of those. “Most people don’t like to talk about death”. When heart disease takes place, they will have to go through treatment, get put on special medication so you don’t get blood clots, and so there isn’t a high risk of heart attacks. Cancer is another thing. The first account was founded in Egypt. There are many different cancers in this world and some don’t have cures. Some of the cancers are lung, breast, and prostate cancer. That’s not even half of how many cancers are out there today and it seems like the cancers keep growing and growing into more and more problems. There is treatment open to get rid of the cancer but the cancer will always be in your body floating around. The worst cancer you could get is breast cancer. Cancer has been around since the 1600 B.C. (17th century). Cancer is in women mostly at the age of 40 through 79 and men mostly at the ages 60 through 79. The society had made a huge improvement for how they handle cancer. Every sixth death in the world is due to cancer. There was absolutely no treatment back then. Cancer was in you? You’d have to fight it off by yourself and that’s when most people passed away. The first treatment they used was back in 1901. Back in the day they had nothing to go from. They had no treatment, medication, nothing. People who had cancer had to fight for themselves. People who had cancer so bad just got to the point where they didn’t want to fight anymore and they just killed themselves. It isn’t the cancer that makes them want to kill themselves it’s there depression that hits them. It’s the fact they feel so weak and they don’t understand why they got the cancer. There is a 40% chance that people will try and killed themselves when they are first diagnosed with cancer because it’s a toll on your life and you’re going to have cancer within your body forever. “Depression itself drives people to suicide”. There are approximately 3.6 million cancer patients and they found that 2,111 committed suicide after the first year of going through treatment. People kill themselves over anything that could be happening in there life. Bullying, parents, friends, school, work, etc. Nobody ever knows what someone is truly going through behind closed doors. It doesn’t get better, everyone just starts to feel numb but it will be a sinker in the bottom of your heart forever. “Make peace with god. God is always with you”. God understand everything someone is going through and god will always be a person to go to.

Afterlife is an existence after death. Many religions believe in an afterlife because you either go to hell or you go to heaven. Heaven is a place that is full of positivity, light, and happiness hell on the other end is a dark fiery place and you go down to hell when you’ve done something wrong. Some people believe that afterlife is a punishment to get back at them for everything bad they’ve done when they were actually living and some people think it’s a reward to live wherever they want to be like it’s a dream. They want to be where they’ve always wanted to be. There are many different things that have to do with the afterlife. Is the afterlife real? Do people just talk about it to just talk? What is the reasoning that people think afterlife is true? When people are feeling close to death they say that they see many different things. Afterlife is important because the person is still there, just not where you can see them. They’re up in heaven or hell depending on what they did. People will think what they want to think when it comes to the afterlife. It’s all about what you believe in. Many people have different thoughts on the afterlife.

Macbeth was scared to murder someone which you should be because that’s a crime and you’ll be in prison for life. “Not so happy, yet much happier”. That’s not how it was back then. Someone killed someone that was your friend or was apart of your family then you get revenge on them. People think they need to do the worst order to get revenge on them and they don’t realize the penalty. There are consequences for everything you’re doing. Back then and now and rules and laws have gotten a lot strict then they were before because people need to realize and keep this environment safer. There needs to be punishments and sentences for everything that goes on. Especially murdering. Macbeth feels like he has destructive power until someone actually gets to him. They end up killing off Macbeth for everything that he’s done. They got revenge on him like he did to everyone else. Macbeth definitely has an afterlife. He was an amazing person until he committed all these murders. “Thought yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green, and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we will wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves.” Revenge gets people every time back. Nobody gets away with murdering someone. “To be or to not be that is the question”. There will always be tracks around and people will find where you’ve been. You’ll never get away. “There is an after life”.

Hamlet had a lot of ups and downs. There was revenge, killing, being nice to people. Marriages were weird. Dating and getting married to their uncles. Not taking time and picking the right guy or girl just jumping into a relationship and getting married a week later. We don’t do that to this day. We take things slow and work towards marriage. There is steps people take to make a safe and strong marriage. Be together for awhile, then get a promise ring, then get engaged, then get married. Take things slow and learn more and more about people slowly. Don’t rush into things because it’s going to get you nowhere. Fighting happens, secrets come and then there will be soon to be a divorce and nobody wants that in life. Then it leads to depression and suicide because people feel worthless and they don’t feel like they’re wanted anymore. Ophelia felt like she wasn’t wanted and she decided to go and drown herself and make it look like an accident. Some people will say she doesn’t know how to swim, other will think it was on purpose. She ended up leaving because she didn’t feel like she was enough. She felt worthless and a disappointment for everyone. Suicide is never the answer to any situation. Call out for help. Send a message. The world has changed for the better but also the worst. “There is times you realize you reach deeper into yourself realizing you’re dying”.

Nobody should be proud to die. Everything happens for a reason and that’s just how it has to be. People live and they learn from everything that happens. Tell your loved ones they’re loved because tomorrow isn’t promised. People seem to realize they’re out of time when they begin to feel weak and they can’t really be doing things by themselves. People go to war with themselves trying to stay strong and trying to stay positive when everyone knows your time is almost up. It’s just a matter of time. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare Hamlet 9) When you think about things, it gets people really going on how much time is really left no matter if it’s good or bad. When people think of the worst normally the worst happens. People try and fight for what they love, and they try to live their lives to the fullest. Most people always life for granted and don’t appreciate anything anyone does for them. That’s why there’s so many heartless people in this world. People are saying rude and disrespectful things and nothing would happen to these people back then. But, now there are new laws that put a stop to all this bullying and all these rude things in the world and that was nothing that happened back then. People where saying whatever they wanted to and nobody was getting punishments for it. They think they could get away with whatever they wanted to no matter what people say and that’s not how it ever should be. Everyone should be punished for saying the wrong thing because you never know what the person would do or if they act on it. The world needs to be a better place and have more caring people and people that understand what’s going on in the real world and aren’t all caught up in the imaginary world that don’t exist and people think they can just be rude about everything and not care about how people truly feel. I really hope people change for the better and start to understand the real world and realize words hurt. Back then and now. There still needs to be changes. Bullying and suicide has been around for ages and it will never stop. There’s more and more suicides each year because people are finding out more ways to kill themselves and nobody is trying to reach out of get help. They just feel helpless and they can’t be helped. Which is you can. Nobody is ever alone and nobody truly realizes that. You have people around that care about you. Even if they don’t show it.

When people die, everyone deserves a burial. No matter what the person has done. They are put on this earth for a reason whether the person likes it or not. Everyone deserves something even if they’ve truly done nothing in there life. There are many different burials you could get but people normally get the one above ground that stays with your name on it or whatever your family puts on it. Families don’t have to choose that one but that is the one that’s mostly common. People need to respect where you’ve been put and what’s on your burial. The burial will be at the graveyard forever unless someone does something bad to it but I pray that never had to happen to anyone or anything of there’s. People put stuff like that out there for a special reason and it means the world to them. Respect what people do for you and respect what people have set out.

References

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