The Whole Death Catalog

by Harold Schechter

According to all available evidence, the dread of death is a universal emotion. “All life fears death,” declared the famed British scientist Sir Edward B. Tylor. Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker goes so far as to argue the terror of death lies at the very root of human behavior—that what drives us is not (as Freud would have it) unconscious sexual desire but a desperate effort to deny our mortality to control the overwhelming anxiety provoked by the knowledge of our inevitable fate. “The idea of death haunts the human animal like nothing else,” writes Becker in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death (Free Press, 1973). “It is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.”

  The fear of death is one of the abiding themes of literature. The ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh—the world’s oldest written narrative, dating back to 1300 B.C.—hinges on the titular hero’s terror of dying. After watching his bosom companion, Enkidu, perish of a lingering sickness, Gilgamesh—the greatest warrior in the world, slayer of the monster Humbaba—is reduced to abject fright at the notion that, like his friend, he too will one day “be laid in the earth forever.”

  Death rules! Seventeenth-century woodcut.

  In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the character Claudio—condemned to death for the crime of fornication—is similarly unmanned when he contemplates the grave. “Death is a fearful thing,” he says to his sister, Isabella, hoping to persuade her to save his life by sacrificing her chastity to the play’s villain, Angelo. When she suggests that her own honor is more important than her brother’s life, Claudio famously replies:

  Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

  To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

  This sensible warm motion to become

  A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

  To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

  In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

  To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

  And blown with restless violence round about

  The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

  Of those that lawless and incertain thought

  Imagine howling: ‘tis too horrible!

  For the seventeenth-century English writer William Sherlock, death is “very truly called the king of terrors,” while the poet Robert Browning describes it as the ultimate horror—the “Arch Fear.”

  Of course, plenty of writers have tried to look on the bright side of things and offer various kinds of consolation. The early American poet Philip Freneau, for example, argues that there is no reason to fear death since it is simply a return to the state we inhabited before our conception: “If nothing once, you nothing lose, / For when you die you are the same.” The British writer William Hazlitt expresses a similar sentiment:

  To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and disburthening of the mind: it seems to have been holiday-time with us then: we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes and tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain perdus all this while, snug, out of harm’s way; and had slept out our thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free from care, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of infancy, wrapped in the finest and softest dust. And the worst that we dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes, and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream of life!

  Of course, it could be said that this argument is itself a symptom of the writer’s death anxiety, an attempt to reassure himself that there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s an argument, moreover, that not everyone buys. The great English poet Philip Larkin, for example, found it entirely unpersuasive, insisting that there is a big difference between the oblivion that preceded our birth and the oblivion of death, since the former ended with our “being here,” while the latter is utter, eternal extinction: “total emptiness forever.”

  Larkin clearly didn’t believe in the afterlife, though people who do are not necessarily better off. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is the most famous expression of one common variety of death fear: the terror of the unknown, of the “undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns.” But even those who think they know exactly what awaits them in the hereafter aren’t immune to death anxiety, particularly if their conception includes the very real possibility of suffering the eternal torments of hell.

  For other people, it isn’t the fate of their souls that worries them but the prospect of undergoing intense pain during their final hours. They do not fear death per se but rather the process of dying—of ending up like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, whose long, torturous passing culminates with three days of continuous screaming, a noise “so terrible that one could not hear it through two closed doors without horror.” Of course, there is one great benefit to such prolonged physical agony—at least according to the late social gadfly Erich Geiringer (who was clearly a glass-is-half-full kind of guy). It is, he felt, “a most effective means of banishing concern about death. It is amazing to watch how aversion to death and love of life are blotted out in a very short time by the effects of pain. Those who die in pain die willingly.”

  This isn’t true for everyone, however. For some people, even extreme suffering is better than the ultimate horror of eternal annihilation, of the absolute and irrevocable cessation of our personal being. “I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death,” quips the philosopher Thomas Nagel. Indeed, though sickness and age are supposed to make us more reconciled to death—perhaps even crave it—there are many people who wouldn’t trade even the most wretched earthly existence for death. As Shakespeare’s Claudio puts it while pleading with his sister:

  The weariest and most loathed worldly life

  That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

  Can lay on nature is a paradise

  To what we fear of death.

  Though some experts argue that the fear of death is learned, most agree that it is innate—an inseparable part of our instinct for self-preservation. By programming us to shun potentially life-threatening situations, evolution ensures the survival of the species. As the poet-undertaker Thomas Lynch observes, the fear of death is not only normal—an emotion “that anyone in his right mind has”—but positively healthy, since “it keeps us from playing in traffic.”

  Of course, there is such a thing as an abnormal fear of death, a morbid obsession known as thanatophobia. For people suffering from this condition, the mere thought of death can produce a range of extreme physical reactions, from dizziness and dry mouth to all-out panic attacks. Another common symptom is “unwarranted apprehension of imminent death”—the terrified conviction that every moment is your last, even when you are in the best of health.

  Like other phobics, thanatophobes require therapeutic help. But how do ordinary people suffering from run-of-the-mill death anxiety cope? As philosopher Jacques Choron makes clear in his excellent book Modern Man and Mortality (Collier, 1964), people resort to various strategies to alleviate their natural dread of death.

  There is, for example, the always popular method of ignoring the subject—distracting yourself from unwelcome thoughts of mortality by focusing your attention on something else. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, the sixteenth-century English cleric and author Robert Burton advises his readers to “divert their minds” from the contemplation of death by immersing themselves in books. (Nowadays, of course, we are much better off than Burton since we also have iPods, YouTube, and pay-per-view cable TV to keep our minds off any potentially depressing subjects.)

  Other people have taken the diametrically opposite approach. Instead of looking away from death, they try to face it head-on—to become so familiar with it that it ceases to be fearful. The legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt, for example, lik
ed to snooze in a coffin, while the great French philosopher Michel de Montaigne “made it a habit to have death not only in his imagination, but constantly to talk about it” (a practice that, however helpful in mitigating death anxiety is almost guaranteed to play havoc with your social life).

  Then there are the various ways people try to minimize death—to convince themselves that it’s nothing to be afraid of. The Greek philosopher Epicurus famously argued that “death is nothing, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not”—in other words, there’s no logical reason to fear death since we won’t be around to experience it. (Among many others, however, the poet Philip Larkin views this argument as “specious stuff” since it is precisely the thought of nonexistence—“no sight, no sound, / No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, / Nothing to love with or link with”—that is so terrifying.) In the same way, the ostensibly reassuring argument that death is comparable to sleep is also un-persuasive to many people for the obvious reason that when we lay us down to sleep each night, we can be pretty sure (in spite of the bedtime prayer) that we’re going to wake up the next morning.

  A very different strategy isn’t to minimize death but to minimize life—that is, to convince yourself that your earthly existence is so empty and meaningless that you won’t really lose anything of value when you die. This is the meaning behind the Zen koan “Live each day as though you were already dead.” After all, if you’re already a “living corpse”—a person who goes through life with no desires, dreams, passions, or attachments to other people or possessions—becoming an actual corpse won’t be a very difficult transition.

  Such utter renunciation of everything that makes life worthwhile may, indeed, be a most effective preparation for death. But as a way of experiencing the few fleeting years vouchsafed to us on earth, it kind of sucks.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Besides the books by Ernest Becker and Jacques Choron mentioned previously, there’s a fine essay “The Universal Fear of Death and Cultural Response,” by Calvin Conzelus Moore and John B. Williamson, which can be found in volume 1 of The Handbook of Death and Dying (Sage, 2003), edited by Clifton D. Bryant. Also recommended: Sandra M. Gilbert’s erudite and beautifully written Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve (Norton, 2006).

  The Evil Dead

  There’s a good reason why horror movies are full of cannibal zombies, malevolent ghosts, and rotting skeletons returned from the grave to wreak havoc on the living. These fantasies reflect one of the most deep-seated of all human emotions: the primal fear of the dead.

  In his classic 1913 study, Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud explores the primitive belief that “at the moment of death,” even the most “dearly loved relative … changes into a demon from whom his survivors can expect nothing but hostility.” Your sweet white-haired grandma might have doted on you when she was alive. Once she’s dead, however, you can be sure that she’ll turn into a malignant spirit, “filled with a lust for murder.”

  There are different theories about the sources of this ancient belief (Freud, unsurprisingly, attributes it to unconscious ambivalence toward the departed, based—you guessed it!—on the Oedipal complex). But there’s no question that, from time immemorial, people have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect themselves from the dead.

  Freud himself cites a practice, common among certain aboriginal tribes, of burying the dead on islands or on “the far sides of rivers.” Under the apparent theory that demonic spirits are really bad swimmers, these primitive tribespeople “did not feel safe from the dead until there was a sheet of water between them.”

  In many ancient cultures, corpses were buried with food, drink, and assorted valuables—a way of honoring them but also of making sure that they were happy enough in the afterlife to stay put. Other cultures have taken more extreme measures, burning, binding, or beheading the dead. The common custom of putting pennies or other weights on a cadaver’s eyes is also meant as a protective measure: a corpse that can’t open its eyes won’t be able to find its way home and kill you.

  Other vestiges of this archaic belief persist to this day. When Jewish people visit the grave of a loved one, it’s traditional to leave pebbles on the headstone. Various explanations for this practice have been put forth—for example, if you want to leave a token of your visit, pebbles make more sense than flowers because they last longer. But some scholars have a different take on the custom, seeing it as rooted in pagan superstition. According to Theodor Reik, the small pebbles left on a gravestone help keep the dead in their place, preventing them from escaping and attacking the living. Grandma may already have a nice headstone over her grave—but some extra rocks to keep her underground never hurt.

  Death Anxiety Scale

  Not everyone actively dreads the thought of death. There are some people who even see it as a blessing—a “consummation devoutly to be wished,” as the melancholy Dane puts it. For most of us, however, Woody Allen’s oft-quoted comment—“I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens”—probably rings truer than Hamlet’s suicidal musing. Ask people how they feel about the prospect of dying and the responses, by and large, will fall somewhere between abject terror and stoic acceptance.

  If you want to know exactly where you fall on this spectrum, there’s a simple test you can take. It’s called the Death Anxiety Scale and was first devised by a psychologist named Donald Templer. Following is a revised version developed by James A. Thorson and F. C. Powell. For each of the twenty-five questions, give one of these responses: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

  I fear dying a painful death.

  Not knowing what the next world is like troubles me.

  The idea of never thinking again after I die frightens me.

  I am not at all anxious about what happens to the body after burial.

  Coffins make me anxious.

  I hate to think about losing control over my affairs after I am gone.

  Being totally immobile after death bothers me.

  I dread to think about having an operation.

  The subject of life after death troubles me greatly.

  I am not afraid of a long, slow dying.

  I do not mind the idea of being shut into a coffin when I die.

  I hate the idea that I will be helpless after I die.

  I am not at all concerned over whether or not there is an afterlife.

  Never feeling anything again after I die upsets me.

  The pain involved in dying frightens me.

  I am looking forward to a new life after I die.

  I am not worried about ever being helpless.

  I am troubled by the thought that my body will decompose in the grave.

  The feeling that I will be missing out on so much after I die disturbs me.

  I am worried about what happens to us after we die.

  I am not at all concerned with being in control of things.

  The total isolation of death is frightening to me.

  I am not particularly afraid of getting cancer.

  I will leave careful instructions about how things should be done after I’m gone.

  What happens to my body after I die does not bother me.

  DEATH FUN FACT

  Did you know that injecting yourself with extract of canine testicles is a surefire way to prolong life? Just kidding! The seemingly self-evident lunacy of this crackpot theory, however, did not prevent the eminent French physiologist Charles Brown-Séquard from advocating it or trying it out on himself. In 1889, at the age of seventy-two, he injected himself with a liquid made from the testicles of a freshly killed dog and claimed it had totally rejuvenated him. Brown-Séquard’s highly touted “discovery” did not do much for his life span—he died within a few years. It did, however, inspire countless quacks to peddle a variety of similar elixirs concocted from the sex glands of various male animals, from guinea pigs to goats to monkeys.

&n
bsp; SCORING: For the positively phrased statements (numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, and 24), give yourself these scores: strongly agree = 4; agree = 3; neutral = 2; disagree = 1; strongly disagree = 0. For the items that are phrased negatively (numbers 4, 10, 11, 13, 17, 21, 23, and 25), score as follows: strongly agree = 0; agree = 1; neutral = 2; disagree = 3; strongly disagree = 4. Count any items left blank as neutral (score = 2). Then just add up the items to get the total score. The higher the number, the more terrified you are of death.

  SOURCE: James A. Thorson and F. C. Powell, “A Revised Death Anxiety Scale,” in Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application (Taylor & Francis, 1994.)

  All life fears death.

  —EDWARD B. TYLOR

  Never Say Die

  Death is so disturbing that people go to great lengths to avoid the very word. Here, in alphabetical order, are some common euphemisms, along with a few specialized ones.

  Asleep in God

  Beamed up (restricted to Trekkies)

  Bought the farm

  Breathed his last

  Called home

  Cashed in

  Checked out

  Croaked

  Crossed over

  Departed

  Expired

  Found everlasting peace

  Gave up the ghost

  Gone to a better place

  Gone to glory

  Gone to his reward

  Gone to meet his maker

  Handed in his chips

  Headed for the last roundup (a cowboy favorite)