On the Fear of Death: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Analysis (Essay Sample)

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On the Fear of Death: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Analysis
“On the Fear of Death” is a classical piece of work that was authored by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It is an article that deals directly with the studies of grief, death and dying. Basically it is an article that tries to evaluate the feelings of people in the processes of dying. The piece of work was written in 1969 and it essentially borrowed a lot of information from numerous resources, interviews and seminars. The main message that is portrayed by the author here is that the people who are well should not overlook those who are in death beds: they should not be ignored, isolated or avoided. The writing gives the audience a step-by-step explanation of the different stages of grief that are experienced by different patient. In line with that, this report is going to evaluate the theme of death and grieving and some of the specific styles that have been written in this particular paper.
To explain on the grief that is experienced by people who are almost dying, the author first takes a look at how different families are affected by different epidemics. In some families, death of infants is always very common in others the latter is not observed. Different incentives that have been brought about by technology and modern medicine have helped reduce the number of deaths that is caused by diseases and other epidemics (first paragraph). The latter is quite true because there are numerous medicines that have been developed for purposes of reducing the harm that is caused by diseases and epidemics. Some diseases such as chicken fox and swine flu and many more used to kill many people but of late the same has reduced. Currently it is only cancer and HIV/AIDS that are still proving to be a big challenge to the modern medicine and healthcare technologies. Basically, the importance of this paragraph is to provide the audience with a quick glimpse of the exact effect that is brought about by the new technology. However, technology cannot stop death as all living things are entitled to die at some point in life.
As human being we are supposed to care for those people who are almost dying. Apparently, death brings a lot of problems to the family of deceased. And once a person has been diagnosed to be in the path of death, it is important for people to help the patient to withstand that death. In explanation to the fact by which people are grieved once they lose their loved ones the author uses a very creative form of imagery especially where she talks about, “many a parent will remember remarks of their children such as, I will bury my doggy now and next spring when the flowers come up again, he will get up...” (p. 91). The author also explains the grief that is experienced by the loved ones when she says that even for a couple that has been fighting, when one dies the other one will wail, cry and whine.
From the write up, it appears that there are different stages of dying and death. After reading the whole text closely, the first step appears to be denial. This is the point where a dying person fails to accept that he or she will die especially after a doctor or a physician has diagnosed death as the final stage of an illness. Many people tend to start believing that the doctor was making a mistake and all was not true. it is quite clear that anger is the second step of the dying ...