Literature, Art and Film Connections

The Dilemma of Death

Edvard Munch

Fellowship assures Everyman that he will accompany his friend wherever he is going, but when he hears of the destination, Fellowship declines.

He offers women and good times, but he will not go on a journey to face God’s judgment

Everyman

Pride: excessive belief in one’s own abilities

Envy: the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, goods, or situation

Gluttony: desire to consume more than one requires

Lust: a craving for the pleasures of the body

Anger: the individual spurns love and opts for fury

Greed: the desire for material wealth

Sloth: the avoidance of physical work

Seven Deadly Sins

Everyman turns to Goods, for whom he has committed so many of the sins that weigh heavily upon him.

Goods cannot leave earth’s bounds; what man acquires on earth must be left behind.

Goods

Fellowship abandons Everyman

Relatives abandon EverymanEveryman becomes aware that he has trusted in the wrong things

What will he do now?

Betrayed

Everyman asks Good Deeds for help, but Good Deeds is weak, collapsed at Everyman’s feet.

Good Deeds is incapacitated by Everyman’s sins and cannot help.

Good Deeds

Knowledge takes Everyman to visit Confession, where he learns that repentance of his sins is the means to salvation.

Acknowledging his sins, the burden is lifted from Everyman’s soul

Knowledge

In addition to Knowledge, Everyman now has the companionship of Discretion, Beauty, Strength, Five Senses

Discretion, Beauty, Strength, Five Senses

Everyman prepares to meet DeathBeauty abandons EverymanStrength departs from EverymanDiscretion leaves EverymanFive Senses abandons EverymanKnowledge departs from EverymanOnly Good Deeds remains with Everyman

for the final journey

End of the Journey

An Angel Attends Everyman

An Angel greets Everyman to escort him to the Final Judgment, where only Good Deeds can speak for him.

All men must make this journey

“O Death, you come when I had you least in mind.”

Devastation, pestilence, fatal, hideous, horror of blood, sharp pains, profuse bleeding, scarlet stains, victim, disease = The Red DeathThe signature marks of The Red Death:

Redness of the bloodScarlet stains

Death occurs within thirty minutes of infection

Sudden destruction will come upon them…they shall

not escape.

Prince Prospero, has summoned a thousand of his “lighthearted friends” to join him in a “castellated abbey” which has strong and lofty walls and “gates of iron.”

Outside the ‘secure fortress’ Red Death rampages and decimates its victims

Allusion—Prince Prospero—Shakespeare: In the Tempest Prospero realizes his short comings and is transformed. However, in the “Masque of the Red Death,” Prospero is destroyed because of his hubris

Happiness and Prosperity

Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of hubris in ancient Greek literature is in Homer’s Iliad,

Another example is in Oedipus Rex. Oedipus meets King Laius of Thebes. Oedipus kills King Laius who is his biological father. He then marries his mother, discovers what he has done, and gouges out his eyes because of his guilt and shame.

In The Odyssey Odysseus incurs Poseidon’s wrath for blinding Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son; Odysseus is then punished for his actions

Greek Theater and Hubris

Folly and futilityPeople try to escape deathHowever, Death is a foe we cannot

escape

And the high fortifications of his walls he will bring down, lay low,

and cast to the ground, to the dust

Poe uses unity of effect, in this case a closed room and high exterior walls, to give the impression that there is no escape from impending doom

Unity of effect is the emotion that the text conveysThe term was coined by Edgar Allen Poe.

The revelers are locked inside high walls and the gates of iron; they are further enclosed by the seven halls

The Red Death “passes in close proximity to all of the guests”

Unity of Effect

Possible interpretationsSeven Deadly Sins

Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man

Poe’s Seven Rooms

Pride: excessive belief in one's own abilities; interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God

Envy: the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, goods, or situation

Gluttony: desire to consume more than that which one requires

Lust: a craving for the pleasures of the bodyAnger: manifested in the individual who spurns love

and opts instead for furyGreed: the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring

the realm of the spiritualSloth: the avoidance of physical or spiritual work

Seven Deadly Sins, Again

InfantScholarLoverSoldierJusticeMiddle ageOld Age and Death: That ends this

strange eventful history…Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Seven Ages of Man

Room 1: decorated in blueRoom 2: decorated in purpleRoom 3: decorated in greenRoom 4: decorated in orangeRoom 5: decorated in whiteRoom 6: decorated in violetRoom 7: decorated in black

Poe’s Seven Rooms Reprise

I’ll take what’s behind door number 7!

The apartment is “shrouded in black velvet,” the windows are “scarlet—a deep blood-color.”

“The effect of the firelight upon the blood tinted panes is ghastly in the extreme, and produces so wild a look upon the countenance of those who enter it that there are few…bold enough to set foot within it.”

Poe’s purpose in these descriptions, particularly the black room, has no relation to reality. No such place as the black room would be used as a part of a ballroom. But Poe wants to achieve an effect—a total, unified effect—in order to show the close proximity of the revelry of life to the inevitability of death.

Unified Effect Reprise

Black usually symbolizes death. Moreover, in describing the black decor of the room, the narrator says that it is shrouded in velvet, shrouded being a word always referring to death.

Likewise, the window panes are “scarlet—a deep blood color.”

This is an obvious reference to the “Red Death.”

Symbolism

BeginningThe Eastern

room (symbolic of the beginning of life)

The Western room (symbolic of the end of life)

End

The rapid passing of time, represented by the black clock; every time the clock strikes the hour, the musicians quit playing

It is as though each hour is “to be stricken” upon their brief and fleeting lives.

Poe reminds the reader that between the striking of each hour there elapses “three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies.”

You are a mist that appears for a little time and then

vanishes.

There never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Arabesque Costumes

Phantasm Costumes

Madmen

At midnight

At the end of the day

As a corpse

Sprinkled with blood

Red Death Appears

Poe, by his choice of words, captures man’s universal fear of death

HORROR

A Christmas Carol

Ebenezer Scrooge is: Unfeeling

Unsympathetic Miserly

Redemption versus Death

Ebenezer Scrooge: employers versus employees

Ebenezer Scrooge versus employees: symbolized by Bob Cratchit

Ebenezer Scrooge versus the poor: symbolized by the two Good Samaritans

Ebenezer Scrooge versus the imprisoned: symbolized by the two Good Samaritans

Law (symbolized by Ebenezer Scrooge) versus Grace (symbolized by Fezziwig, Fred Scrooge, and especially, Tiny Tim)

Ebenezer Scrooge versus the sick: typified by Tiny Tim

Ebenezer Scrooge versus the supernatural: typified by the Spirits

The Powerful versus the Powerless

“It was a strange figurelike a child: yet not so like achild as like an old man, viewed through some supernaturalmedium, which gave him the appearance of having recededfrom the view, and being diminished to a child’rs proportions.Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, waswhite as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle init, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms werevery long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its holdwere of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare.”

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Ghost of Christmas Present

Ghost of Christmas Future

Scrooge’s encounter with the Ghost of the Future (AKA Death) transforms him from a cold, ruthless, miser into a giving and caring gentleman

Scrooge temporarily avoids his inevitable date with Death

He is given more time to accrue Good Deeds and to get his account in order before the Day of Reckoning

Changed!

It's a Wonderful Life

Cosmic Battle

I owe everything to George Bailey. Help him, dear Father.

Joseph, Jesus and Mary. Help my friend Mr. Bailey.

Help my son George tonight. He never thinks about himself, God; that's why

he's in trouble. George is a good guy. Give him a break, God.I love him, dear Lord. Watch over him tonight.Please, God. Something's the matter with

Daddy.Please bring Daddy back.

Spiritual DimensionsIt’s a Wonderful Life

Potter: Have you put any real pressure on those people of yours to pay those mortgages?

Bailey: Times are bad, Mr. Potter. A lot of these people are out of work.

Potter: Then foreclose!Bailey: I can't do that. These families have

children.Potter: They're not my children.Bailey: But they're somebody's children.Potter: Are you running a business or a charity

ward?

When the wicked triumph over the righteous

Angels we have heard on high

George Bailey—the unsung hero of Bedford Falls George lives by a creed that always places

human need above richesCapra effectively captures the darkness of

George's mood as his mounting personal and financial troubles plunge him into an abyss of despair—George standing on a bridge, contemplating suicide.

George's lovable, bumbling guardian angel, has to prove to George that his life is worth living.

To defend his position, Clarence grants George one wish: to see what the world would be like if he had never been born.

Portrayals in Art and Poetry

Memento mori (Latin: remember that you must die)

Ars moriendi ("The Art of Dying")

The Three DeadYou, Laborer, who in care and pain

Have lived your whole life Must die, that is certain...

You should be happy to die, For it frees you from great care...

To which the Laborer replies; Many long for death

Not I! Come wind or rain, I'd rather be back in the vineyard

again.The Guyot verses

Poetry and Death

We are alive, therefore we

will die.

Pass by! O pass me by! Away, wild mask of death! I am still young! Oh why

destroy me with your breath? Give me your hand, you lovely,

tender child I am your friend and bring no

harm. Have courage. See, I am not wild.

Now go to sleep upon my arm.Schubert's 1817 suite Der Tod

und das Mädchen.

Because I could not stop for Death–He kindly stopped for me–The Carriage held but just Ourselves–And Immortality. We slowly drove–He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility–We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess–in the Ring–We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain–We passed the Setting Sun– Or rather–He passed us–The Dews drew quivering and chill–For only Gossamer, my Gown–My Tippet–only Tulle–We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground–The Roof was scarcely visible–The Cornice–in the Ground– Since then–’tis Centuries–and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity–

   

Because I could not stop for Death

Out of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.

Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid…I am the master of my fate;I am the captain of my soul. 

                   

Invictus

Sunset and evening starAnd one clear call for me

And may there be no mourning of the barWhen I put out to sea...

 But such a side is moving seems asleep

Too full for sound and foamWhen that which drew out from the

boundless deepTurns again home.

 For tho’ from out our stream of time and

placeThe flood may bear me far

I hope to see my Pilot face to face,When I have crossed the bar.

If there’s no resurrection…then everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors…Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ—sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection.

I Corinthians 15

The truth is: Christ has been raised from the dead…

Everybody dies because of Adam’s transgression; everybody comes alive in Christ. God won't let up until the last enemy is down—and the very last enemy is death!

As the last trumpet sounds the dead will be raised from their graves, never to die again. Then the saying will come true:

“Death has lost the battle!     Where is its victory?    Where is its sting?”

 Sin, guilt, and death will be vanquished and demolished. In Death’s place we will be given the gift of eternal life.