Two Books About Death
May. 14th, 2012 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaI am obsessed with death. Or, rather, I am obsessed with fiction that deals directly with the problem of death.
Like (I presume) many preteens/teenagers, at some point I went through a lengthy, stereotypical existential crisis, which involved reading a lot of Nietzsche (while understanding maybe 20% of it), fretting over various religious texts, and generally wanting to shake people and shout, "We all die in the end! What the hell's the point of it all?!"
It still shocks me that so little YA fiction (to my knowledge) directly deals with this experience—because I'm pretty sure every young adult goes through something like this. But for whatever reason, YA is content to continually grapple with Staying True To Yourself and Fighting Bad Guys, which is fine and good, but even when I was a kid I thought those were givens, and what I really wanted was something that was worried about death and wasn't some philosophical tome.
When I was going through this phase, I managed to hit on two books that really struck me: Le Guin's The Farthest Shore and Rosoff's Just In Case.
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin. Third in the Earthsea trilogy, and easily the best, in my opinion. The first book is an (excellent!) coming-of-age story, and the second book is a strange... love story, maybe? (It's odd to classify.) But this one is unmistakably about death, and it's all carried by Le Guin's melodic prose, which manages to describe both horror and beauty with the same even cadence.
It's hard to choose just one bit to quote, because it's all beautiful, and each scene gathers its power from every scene that came before it. But, this bit where Arren's talking to Ged after a close brush with death is striking in how well it phrases Arren's angst (which was, of course, my own teenage-existentialist-angst when I was first reading it):
It's not uniformly successful—even at the time I was reading it, I remember thinking it was rather uneven, with perhaps a bit too much strangeness/incoherence and too much obsession with Justin and Agnes's relationship towards the end—but it's stuck out strangely in my mind for over five years now, so I think it's definitely doing something right.
If anyone else knows of any other really excellent YA fiction (or, hell, just fiction in general) that is concerned directly with mortality, I'd be very happy for the recommendations.
Like (I presume) many preteens/teenagers, at some point I went through a lengthy, stereotypical existential crisis, which involved reading a lot of Nietzsche (while understanding maybe 20% of it), fretting over various religious texts, and generally wanting to shake people and shout, "We all die in the end! What the hell's the point of it all?!"
It still shocks me that so little YA fiction (to my knowledge) directly deals with this experience—because I'm pretty sure every young adult goes through something like this. But for whatever reason, YA is content to continually grapple with Staying True To Yourself and Fighting Bad Guys, which is fine and good, but even when I was a kid I thought those were givens, and what I really wanted was something that was worried about death and wasn't some philosophical tome.
When I was going through this phase, I managed to hit on two books that really struck me: Le Guin's The Farthest Shore and Rosoff's Just In Case.
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin. Third in the Earthsea trilogy, and easily the best, in my opinion. The first book is an (excellent!) coming-of-age story, and the second book is a strange... love story, maybe? (It's odd to classify.) But this one is unmistakably about death, and it's all carried by Le Guin's melodic prose, which manages to describe both horror and beauty with the same even cadence.
It's hard to choose just one bit to quote, because it's all beautiful, and each scene gathers its power from every scene that came before it. But, this bit where Arren's talking to Ged after a close brush with death is striking in how well it phrases Arren's angst (which was, of course, my own teenage-existentialist-angst when I was first reading it):
"I thought there was no use in doing anything. I thought your wizardry was gone—no, that it had never been. That you had tricked me." The sweat broke out on Arren' face and he had to force his voice, but he went on. "I was afraid of you. I was afraid of death. I was so afraid of it I would not look at you, because you might be dying. I could think of nothing, except that there was—there was a way of not dying for me, if I could find it. But all the time life was running out, as if there was a great wound and the blood running from it—such as you had. But this was in everything. And I did nothing, nothing, but try to hide from the horror of dying."Just In Case by Meg Rosoff. This is an obscure little YA book by an author who is more famous for her debut book, How I Live Now, but I liked this one more. It's ambitious, and strange, but the hook is irresistible. After a close call with death...
He stopped, for saying the truth aloud was unendurable. It was not shame that stopped him, but fear, the same fear. He knew now why this tranquil life in sea and sunlight on the rafts seemed to him like an after-life or a dream, unreal. It was because he knew in his heart that reality was empty: without life or warmth or color or sound: without meaning. There were no heights or depths. All this lovely play of form and light and color on the sea and in the eyes of men, was no more than that: a playing of illusions on the shallow void.
He lay in bed the following morning, replaying the scene in his head. He'd avoided tragedy this time, yes, but next time the arrow (the bullet, the boulder, the bomb) would find its mark. He could see the horrible scenario spooling out with the deceptive simplicity of a cartoon: fate wandering idly past, checking his watch, feigning indifference—and then WHAMMO!...the hero decides he's going to escape death by just becoming someone else. Which is the sort of ridiculous, magical-realism-premise that is made or broken by how well the author can sell you on it, and goodness does Rosoff sell you on it. Without spoiling too much, the book features Fate as a main character, a telepathic toddler, and a girl named Agnes Day (har de har puns are the best), and they all somehow fit.
[...] Oh god, he thought, brushing his teeth. I have to hide. No, not hide. Mutate. Become unrecognizable.
[...] His only chance was to remake his life one step at a time, starting with his name. And if he managed to be different enough, well, perhaps fate would forget about David Case and pass on to the next pathetic victim. Hound him to death.
He stepped out his front door and off the curb, causing a cyclist to swerve in front of a delivery van, and changed his name to Justin. Justin sounded suave, coolly ironic, hard-boiled, rigorously intelligent. More competent than David. Less vulnerable. Justin case was the sort of character who could cope with danger.
The screech and sound of the impact stopped him momentarily and he watched with interest as the cyclist flew off his bike and into the air.
No matter what happened, Justin would be fluid, clever, and responsive. He would duck and dive, beat the odds. The cyclist crashed onto the roof of the van, bounced once off the windscreen, slid to the ground, and lay still.
Justin Case would not be listed in the social service records, on the county birth lists, in the plans for the future of mankind. David's heart soared. He could hear the sound of the ambulance and police sirens and continued on his way, not wanting to be the sort of person who stops to stare at other people's misfortunes.
As he rounded the corner he felt triumphant.
Nothing bad could happen to Justin Case because he did not exist.
It's not uniformly successful—even at the time I was reading it, I remember thinking it was rather uneven, with perhaps a bit too much strangeness/incoherence and too much obsession with Justin and Agnes's relationship towards the end—but it's stuck out strangely in my mind for over five years now, so I think it's definitely doing something right.
If anyone else knows of any other really excellent YA fiction (or, hell, just fiction in general) that is concerned directly with mortality, I'd be very happy for the recommendations.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 06:28 pm (UTC)The most affecting book I've ever read was a YA book I encountered just last year, at the not-really-teenaged age of twenty, which as a matter of fact does contain a passage in which a
ramblyteenager angsts about death, or rather, about life. The novel doesn't directly deal with death, but this passage was the first thing to come to mind when I read this post, so here it is if you want it. Copiously excerpted and abridged here."Then I walked into a small room with only four paintings, and I remembered those paintings from the last time I had been in the National Gallery, which was on my eighth-grade class trip to Washington. They are by Thomas Cole and are called The Voyage of Life. Have you seen them?"
"No," she said. "I don't believe I have."
"They depict the four ages of man: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In each one a figure in a boat is floating down a river and is guided by an angel. [..] In the Manhood painting the stream has turned into a raging river, and the landscape is rocky and barren. It's dusk and the sky is full of storm clouds. The youth is now a man and he's still standing up in the boat, but now his hands are clasped in prayer as the boat heads toward the rapids. The angel is far away, looking down through a hole in the clouds, watching the boat as it plunges forward. It's very creepy. In the final painting the boat enters from the opposite side of the canvas. It's hard to say what time it is, because the sky is full of dark clouds except for far in the distance, where there are shafts of light falling. It's some twilit time outside of time. The river is about to flow calmly into a huge dark sea. An old man sits in the boat and the angel floats right above him, pointing toward the dark sea and sky. In the distance another angel looks down from the clouds. The old man's hands are still clasped, but it is hard to know if he's praying, or beseeching the angel to save him before he floats off into the huge creepy darkness."
I paused.
[...]
"I was shocked when I saw them again, exactly as they had been, in that same little room. I couldn't believe that such hokey paintings would be on permanent view at the National Gallery. And then I had the irrational feeling that they had not been, that somehow someone knew I was coming back and had just rehung them. That it was some sort of trap or something. But I knew that wasn't true. I knew that they had hung there--I guess it was only five years, but it seemed like a very long time. You can't go backward in time, I know that. But that's what I felt I had done. Everything else sort of dropped away, those five years and the entire world, and I felt like I was two people. Seriously. I could feel what I felt when I was thirteen looking at the paintings, and I could feel what I felt then. I stayed in the room for a very long time. I kept thinking, I should go now, but I didn't. A guard kept coming in and looking at me. And then I got upset because I realized I wanted to be in the last painting, Old Age. I wanted to be in the boat floating into darkness. I wanted to skip the Manhood boat. The man in that boat looked terrified, and I couldn't understand what the point was: why crash through those treacherous rapids along a river that only flowed into darkness, death? I wanted to be in the boat with the old man, with all the danger behind, with the angel near me, guiding me toward death. I wanted to die."
("Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You," Peter Cameron)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 06:36 pm (UTC)