Death: The Soul Dies

It would appear that this would constitute, in some way, as a first blog post. And, as fun as it would be to talk about the Lucreation Sublime in Steven's poetry, I'd much rather explore a different avenue of the Sublime that Rio touches on in his blog entry that highlights Greenblatt: the conception of death. The soul dies. There is no afterlife. Death is nothing to us.

In one of my other classes, we have been given the assignment of reading John Green's Looking for Alaska; a text that depicts a high school junior struggling with an identity of self, and ultimately falling in love with a girl who passes away right as he comes to terms with how he actually feels about her: " 'Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you,' and the Colonel whispered, 'I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did,' and I said, 'No. Not past tense' " (Green 152). It was right about this point in the story that I have had to set the book down, pull up a chair, and start on writing this.

I'm into my second pot of instant brewed coffee now--and there is a marvelous and interesting thing you learn about instant brew coffee when you are on your second pot: it smells like the ambrosia of the mythological gods, yet tastes like what you would expect cardboard (or glue, for those of us who weren't that kid) to taste like--when the connection to the Lucreation Sublime hit me like a ton of bricks.

...Takumi and Lara had faded away, and it was just the three of us--three bodies and two people--the three who knew what had happened and two many layers between all of us, too much keeping us from on another. The Colonel said, 'I just want to save her so bad,' and I said 'Chip, she's gone,' and he said, 'I thought I'd feel her looking down on us, but you're right. She's just gone,' ... She wasn't even a person anymore, just flesh rotting (Green 152).

In a story that is geared towards a youth and adolescent culture, it is amazing how this above quote just screams Lucreation. The narrator shows that, upon death, an individual no longer becomes a subject of the present text, but a moment of the past. As Chip makes the realization that she is "just gone," it pulls attention to two of the Greenblatt statements in italic font: the soul dies, and there is no afterlife. Chip is able to acknowledge that she is not in some spiritual afterlife, looking down on them and trying to give the two boys some form of comfort. She is merely dead. Simple a stated fact, and nothing more.

Green also shows how the third element of the above Greenblatt bullet points is prevalent to this outside, primary source. At the end of the above passage the narrator states that "She wasn't even a person anymore." Of course being dead makes them no longer a member of the living, but how could this make her no longer a person? Again, turning back towards Greenblatt--and in particular, discussing the idea of the swerve and free will--shows that her death makes her void of an ability to administer any amount of free will. Without free will there is no ability to cause a swerve and create, and one of the greatest gifts mankind can offer is the creation of art, thought, philosophy, and more. I ask then, is a person actually a person if they cannot create?

 This is a topic that I hold very dear to me. Having been on the grieving end of a very serious passing of a loved one, I find it very hard to believe that Greenblatt has it correct about death. After all, how can the soul actually die when in fact we are left with fragments of memories and moments in time. Even Green goes on to make a note of this when Chip and Pudge go to help clean out Alaska's (the girl from the above passage) room; "I caught the edge of her scent: wet dirt and grass and cigarette smoke, and beneath that the vestiges of vanilla-scented skin lotion" (Green 153). Alaska has a distinct smell, and one that cannot be mistaken to the narrator as he enters her room. For a moment, the narrator is able to conjure up the essence of her and is able to forget that she is gone, and dull the pain.

Having these connections to what I would call the soul--the very essence, and elements that linger with you--of a person helps add to one of the other elements that Greenblatt discusses: the highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. If having these connections to someone who is dead--someone who no longer has a soul, for it has died--culminates in achieving the highest goal of human life, are they really dead? Has the soul truly been extinguished? After all, the only way you could live on in an oral culture was by being preserved in their stories and acts of great craftsmanship. Does the soul really die when we're dead? Or is this just a delusion, and not a pain of loss?

Only time, and maybe another pot of instant coffee will tell.