  Fantasy
This week: On Death and Dying Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
-Mark Twain
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
-Epicurus |
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What happens when we die?
I'm not asking about belief in an afterlife (or lack thereof), or the scientific explanation of the process of going from living to non-living. I'm asking in the context of fantasy and science fiction - worlds, peoples and cultures of your creation.
This past weekend, I attended a memorial for the father of one of my oldest and closest friends. I admit to being a bit uncomfortable - of all the people who were there, I knew my friend, his daughter, and his mother (the wife of the deceased), and that was about it. But though my friend and I have been in contact since grade school, we were raised with different religious beliefs.
This doesn't get in the way of our friendship, of course, but during the memorial, it occurred to me that some of the biggest differences between cultures and/or religions are seen in the way they deal with death.
Jokes about taxes aside, it does seem true that the one thing we can be certain of in life is death. Death, and the foreknowledge thereof, is one of the few things that the vast majority of us humans have in common. I think that, in the context of speculative or creative fiction, any people or culture that we create that is sentient would also have that in common with us - leaving aside for the moment the mythology of the immortal, which, to be sure, can only be defined by the absence of death.
But while it's a universal experience in that sense, the way we deal with it - as individuals, and as cultures - can be very different. One nation might have a preference for cremation of bodies, while for another it would be taboo. The idea of burial in the ground could be foreign to a particular religion, though for another, it might be a requirement. A certain culture might memorialize its dead through stone monuments, while another could choose to leave them in the past. And that's just the material aspect of death; things can get even more divided when the concept of an afterlife is added to the mix. Is death seen as a release to a "better place," or as the entry into reincarnation, or is it just what it seems - an end to consciousness?
Put aside your personal beliefs (or lack thereof) for the sake of the story, and try not to focus on your cultural prescriptions concerning death and dying. As a writer, you don't always have to portray things from your own point of view; in fact, as a writer of fantasy, it's rather important to consider alternative viewpoints. What is acceptable or unacceptable for the culture you've created for your story? And what does that say about the people and individuals within that society, and about your characters in particular? As with other aspects of world-building, you might answer these questions for yourself without giving everything away in your stories, but it's always worth the time to consider these things as they relate to the world(s) you've created. |
Since we're talking about death...
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Fantasy: March 15, 2017 Issue [#8180]
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