| Much of the American anxiety about old
age is a flight from the reality of death. One of the striking qualities of the
American character is the unwillingness to face either the fact or meaning of
death. In the more somber tradition of American literature-from Hawthorne and
Melville and Poe to Faulkner and Hemingway—one finds a tragic depth that belies
the surface thinness of the ordinary American death attitudes. By an
effort of the imagination, the great writers faced problems that the culture in
action is reluctant to face—the fact of death, its mystery, and its place in.
the back-and-forth shuttling of the eternal recurrence. The unblinking
confrontation of death in Greek time, the elaborate theological patterns woven
around it in the Middle Ages, the ritual celebration of it in the rich, peasant
cultures of Latin and Slavic Europe and in primitive cultures; these are
difficult to find in American life. Whether through fear of the emotional depths, or because of a drying up of the sluices of religious intensity, the American avoids dwelling on death or even corning to terms with it; he finds it morbid and recoils from it, surrounding it with word avoidance (Americans never die; they "pass away,") and various taboos of speech and practice. A "funeral parlor" is decorated to look like a bank; everything in a funeral ceremony is done in hushed tones, as if it were something furtive, to be concealed from the world; there is so much emphasis on being dignified that the ceremony often loses its quality of dignity. In some of the primitive cultures, there is difficulty in understanding the muses of death; it seems puzzling and even unintelligible. Living in a scientific culture, Americans have a ready enough explanation of how it comes, yet they show little capacity to come to terms with the fact of death itself and with the grief that accompanies it. "We jubilate over birth and dance at weddings", writes Margaret Mead, "but more and more hustle the death off the scene without ceremony, without an opportunity for young and old to realize that death is as much a fact of life as is birth". And one may add, even in its hurry and brevity, the last stage of an American' s life—the last occasion of this relation to his society—is as standardized as the rest. |