while winter represents death with the lines “That
time of year thou mayst in me behold, / When yellow
leaves, or none, or few do hang, / Upon those boughs
which shake against the cold” (ll. 1–3). The speaker
is calling for the reader to see how he is getting close
to death. The sonnet ends with the line “To love that
well, which thou must leave ere long” (l. 14), which
again alludes to the carpe diem theme. However,
Shakespeare incorporates diverse ideas about death
in his works, and one that is different is in Sonnet
71, “No longer mourn for me when I am dead,” in
which the speaker recommends forgetting about
him, “Lest the wide world should look into your
moan / And mock you with me after I am gone” (ll.
13–14). Here, Shakespeare proposes a different idea
about death, mainly to forgo grieving and simply get
on with life. Of course, he employs the death theme
in his plays in various ways as well, from the suicidal
Ophelia in haMLet to the pretended death of Hero
in Much ado about nothinG to the deaths brought
on by the evil Iago in otheLLo. Characters avenge
deaths of loved ones, face death in battle, and even
plot the betrayal of other characters. Shakespeare is
perhaps unparalleled in all of literature in his abil-
ity to invoke the whole range of human emotion
regarding death.
Through later periods of literature all over
the world, authors have continued to use death as
a major theme, symbolically, metaphorically, and
physically. Evident in such novels as Herman Mel-
ville’s Moby dick, Charles Dickens’s a taLe oF
two cities, and Richard Wright’s native son,
Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Leo
Tolstoy’s war and peace, death provides authors
with the substance to create an emotional response
in the reader like no other topic. Themes like
betrayal, vengeance, greed, honor, justice, courage,
and failure are almost always portrayed in conjunc-
tion with death. Some of the great novels have been
born in a response to death, including Mary Shel-
ley’s Frankenstein, in which Victor struggles to
create life out of his response to his own mother’s
death, but in the ensuing action, he loses those most
dear to him.
Looking at more contemporary novels, some of
the most famous American writers—Stephen King,
John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks—are noted for their
riveting stories that revolve around mystery and
death. Authors have all the material of life around
them from which to draw, but nevertheless, death
has always been and will continue to be one of the
most prominent themes in literature, and for many
reasons: There is a pervading symbolism attached to
death in different cultures and religions. Death sig-
nifies an end and a great mystery about what comes
next, and the range of human emotions surrounding
it is so vast that authors are able to combine it with
many other themes.
See also Allende, Isabel: house oF spirits,
the; Bierce, Ambrose: “Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge, An”; Brontë, Emily: wutherinG
heiGhts; Browning, Robert: “My Last Duch-
ess”; Camus, Albert: stranGer, the; Capote,
Truman: in coLd bLood; Coleridge, Samuel
Taylor: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The”:
DeLillo, Don: white noise; Dickens, Charles:
christMas caroL, a; Dickinson, Emily: poems;
Eliot, T. S.: “Love Song of J. Alfred Pru-
frock, The”; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Rap-
paccini’s Daughter”; Keats, John: poetry;
Miller, Arthur: death oF a saLesMan; Poe,
Edgar Allan: “Fall of the House of Usher,
The”; Shakespeare, William: roMeo and JuLiet;
Welty, Eudora: optiMist’s dauGhter, the;
Whitman, Walt; Leaves oF Grass; Woolf, Vir-
ginia: Mrs daLLoway; to the LiGhthouse.
FURTHER READING
Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel.
New York: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998.
Christopher Lessickeducation
It is no surprise that education, which affects the
relationship between the individual and society,
should figure as a perennial theme in literature from
the ancient classics of Greece and Rome to con-
temporary literature. The shadow of the Dark Ages
is said to have lifted only after the ancient classics
were rediscovered in the wake of the fall of Con-
stantinople in 1453 and the dispersal of its famous
libraries that housed these books. Education is not
always delivered through the same channels, nor
does it always serve the same purposes, and it is noteducation 25