In Don Delillo’s book, White Noise, he confronts this awareness and the effects that it has on the daily lives of a typical American family. Delillo easily constructs a scene where the Gladney family is gathered in front of the television set watching the evening news. He writes, “there were floods, earthquakes, mud slides, erupting volcanoes. We had never before been so attentive to our duty, our Friday asse

With each step they take, Poe’s characters rapidly remove themselves from rationality and the real world, only to lose themselves in an inescapable preoccupation with death. Ultimately, Poe’s madmen choose the method and means of their own deaths. Sadly, their every attempt to avoid death results in death anyway, made worse by the terrifying and maddening suspense which precedes it. This ending alone is a perfect example of Poe’s constant emphasis of death’s inevitability.

“The Tell-tale Heart” is not the only Poe story that confronts this fear. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Usher is hyper-conscious of his own past and the madness of his ancestors and understands the inescapable nature of his demise. He tells the narrator, “’I shall perish,” and, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost’” (“Usher” 235). Mark Kinkead-Weekes, in his reflections on the story, continues that Usher’s “capacity for sensation has become not only unnatural, but morbid,” and adds that, “his over-developed senses have made him helplessly vulnerable” (22). It is Usher’s fear of the sensual experience of death that paralyzes him, considering that he suffers “from a morbid acuteness of the senses” (“Usher” 235). Everything save “the most insipid food … garments of certain texture” etc., “inspire him with horror” (235), and the disastrous consequences he is sure to face simply because “response to anything, especially fear, is sure to result in his own doom” (Weekes 23).

In conclusion, after reading these texts, it is obvious that a distinct concentration on and/or fear of death extends throughout American society. These classic American works share this similar thematic concern and exploit the danger of allowing fear to consume American lives. In the age of technology and information, death will always be visible and constantly in our awareness, but it is how we react to this knowledge that classifies us as uniquely American. With the constant ebb and flow of warfare, crime and tragedy, death is, and mostly likely always will be, the forefront of American fears. Death is inevitable and everlastingly unknown and will, therefore, always offer mystery, anxiety, and more simply, fear.

Although this discomfort originates within only the speaker of his poem, E

Some topics in this essay:
Alfred Prufrock”, White Noise, Ernest Becker, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Science Review, Reality Death, Tell-tale Heart”, Noise Jack, Ultimately Poe’s, Usher” Usher, fear death, “the love song, song alfred, song alfred prufrock”, alfred prufrock”, love song alfred, love song, “the love, preoccupation death, american society, “the tell-tale, “the tell-tale heart”, avoid death, death eliot,