The Human Condition

Literature is means of describing the human condition. That is the underlying theme. We have seen many sides to the human condition as Dante and Shakespeare would have it. We have explored pain, pleasure, isolation, and the need for human communication. We have explored blue devils, and learned of those who hear Puccini when they fall in love. We have explored the paramount desire to be free and loved, and this is the idea of the human condition.  As Eugene Ionesco, a French Dramatist, once said,“No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”

I can not exceed the words of Ionesco because he has managed to encompass the broad and complex aspects of the human condition in one statement, and I can assure you, my version would be much more lengthy. But I will say this. I possess a euphoric sense of pride and pleasure that I am human. I cherish the fact that I can possess emotions. I adore the fact that I can make my own Utopia as I please, with strength I know I possess. I commit the sin of Pride, in that I am proud of all that I have accomplished, and all that I plan to conquer in my path to my own Paradise. The human condition is no scarlet letter. It is a mark I wear proudly.

When Love and Life Share One Coffin

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

                                                                                                                        -Khalil Gibran

The Ripper leaves a path of calamity when stealing the love of another.  Love; although an overused and over abused words; is merely a word that does little justice to idea that it represents. Love represents all the feelings, words, nonexistent words, and memories that we share with another individual. Each time you love, it is different, therefore; it is just to say that it is incomparable.  And when love is disrupted by any means, it can cause the slow deterioration of a person or people. Skeeter Davis’ “The End of the World,”  W.H. Auden’s , “Stop all the Clocks, Cut Off the Telephone,” and Margaret Atwood’s “Death of a Young Son By Drowning,” sublimely depicts the arduous inner battle that plague’s an individual  when grieving the loss of a loved one. Slowly but surely, he or she will begin to lose track of time, happiness, and begin to express piety for the lost loved one. But the reoccurring theme, throughout each song and poem, is that once you lose someone you love, you slowly die with the love you shared with that person.

There are many forms of death when speaking of love. There is the death of a lover, the death of a family member, or the death of a love affair. But there is one major affect that each type of death has on a person, and that is anguish. All death brings sadness that is unavoidable. But it is this sadness that causes an emptiness that eats away at us. As in Davis’ “The End of the World,” the woman sings “Why does my heart go on beating? Why do these eyes of mine cry? Don’t they know it’s the end of the world. It ended when you said goodbye.” (Davis 13-16). The woman is confused how she could possibly be living when the person that she loves no longer shares the same feelings for her. The woman is expressing her deep confusion with how her body is still functioning when internally she is broken. She expects her sadness to be the death of her as does the narrator of Auden’s “Stop the Clocks, Cut off the Telephone,” when he or she says “ Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.” (Auden 14-16). The narrator is convinced that now that his or her lover is dead, the world need not continue. The speaker is flooded with such emptiness that he or she believes that the world in itself has ended, and for this, there is no further reason to live. One can infer that by “Packing up the moon and dismantling the sun” the show, that is life in and of itself; is now over. Auden’s poem is much like Atwood’s poem, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning,” in that exhaustion for life takes place once you lose a loved one. “After the long trip I was tired of waves. My foot hit rock. The dreamed sails collapsed, ragged.” (Atwood 25-27). The parent in this poem lost a son when he journeyed out into the world or the way the speaker depicts as “the sea.” And he died out at sea, drowned perhaps during his journey of self-discovery. And the parent, now discovering the “swamped body” (Atwood 18), has been plagued with devastation. And the feeling that is beyond devastation is the emptiness. And the son’s parent has found him or herself tired of the “waves” or one can infer; life. He or she has hit rock, as does a ship when it can no longer go any further to the shore. His or her ships’ sails have “collapsed” and are “ragged,” he or she can no longer use them for direction and movement. Once a child is lost, a parent’s own ship begins to fall apart, and it is at this moment that they die on the inside. And once an individual dies on the inside, they lose track of time and reality.

Death ceases all time. Time seems to be nonexistent when you lose someone. You can sit in one place for what seems to be a second, and be there for weeks. Or you can be somewhere for just a few minutes, and feel like you have been there for an eternity. Time is obsolete when one is suffering. As Davis says in “The End of the World,” I wake up in the morning and I wonder, Why everything’s the same as it was. I can’t understand. No, I can’t understand, How life goes on the way it does.” (Davis 9-12). Davis’ perplexity for the enigma of the course of time is conveyed in these lines. She does not understand how the world can seem so untouched by such a loss. She expects the world to be crumbling at the event that she is alone, much like Auden’s speaker in” Stop the Clocks, Cut off the Telephone.” The speaker states in the first lines “Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.” Earlier in history, old traditions were practiced; that when a person died, one must go throughout the home and stop the clocks at the exact time of death. Because at that hour, death had seniority over time. Perhaps, this is what the speaker is trying to say. Now that his or her lover is dead, out of respect, time should cease, much like the speaker in Atwood’s, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning,” who finds him or herself perturbed by the continuation of springtime. “It was spring, the sun kept shining, the new grass kept to solidity; my hands glistened with details.” (Atwood 22-24). The parent watched as the course of nature continued to flourish as the memory of his or her son’s death remains on his/her hands. Much like Lady Macbeth’s inability to wash the blood from her hands, perhaps it is guilt for letting his or her son venture out into the world alone. Perhaps death was the price to pay. However after death, the dead seem to become almost God-like in the eyes of the mourner.

How often does one see a person being worshipped in death? It occurred throughout history, and it occurs now. People have a tendency of worshiping the dead. The dead become Deities and the living becomes pious worshipers. Davis glorifies her lover in “The End of the World,” when stating “Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above? Don’t they know it’s the end of the world. It ended when I lost your love.” (Davis 5-8). She perceived the love she shared with this God-like creature to be so significant that at the loss of it, the birds have no business singing, and the stars have no business glowing. It is almost audacious that they dare carry out their normal activities. One can also infer that Davis perceives this lover as God-like and to her, he or she no longer exists to her, therefore, without a God, Birds, moons, stars, waves, all of nature would not exist, therefore, it is unbelievable that they all remain unscathed. The same instance occurs when Auden’s speaker states “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.” (Auden 9-13). The speaker describes his or her lover as the source of his/her life. As many religious groups would say, God is in everything they do, see, and don’t see. The speaker’s lover was his/her God. And his/her faith perished along with the death of the lover (God). However in the case with Atwood’s speaker in “A Death of a Son by Drowning,” the speaker perceives his or her son as a hero. An eternal relic. “ I planted him in this country like a flag.” ( Atwood28-29). The parent views his/her son as a reminder of the valiant traveler that he was. As a parent buries his or her soldier, a person who fought for their country, the parent in this poem buries his/her son, he/she believes him to be as brave as a soldier. And he will forever represent greatness.

The moral of the story is that, there may be differences in the way we lose people, and the way grief hits us, but there is always elements and stages that no one person can ignore. Losing any person you love is devastating, and everything from that point on will seem meaningless. Whether that person is alive, happily without you, or buried six feet under, the pain is just as deep. The scars may lighten over time, but they will still remain. So when you come into contact with a person with scars, just remember, that for each scar that person has, a part of them has died away.