The Contrast Between Life And Death Is A Very Natural One
A candle in a dark room, the red coat in that black and white film, the energy, the emotion and the symbolism of these scenes can make apparent to any reader the abyss that there seems to be between the beginning and the end. But what happens when these contrasts between life and death are blurred? When two seemingly unarguable ideas contradict each other? The School, by Donald Barthleme and The Road out of Eden, by Randall Grace are examples of such conundrums. The texts use contrasting structure-styles, irony and differing thematic ideas to explore how various aspects of death impact individuals. The simplistic style in “The Road out of Eden” is used to emphasise the childish aspect of the narrator as he tells his story. His use of common descriptive words such as big, little, the focus on colour or temperature and the preference of description over emotional reflection is central to how death is viewed in the text. This descriptive style presents a feeling of innocence and works on the reader to create an atmosphere of lost superficiality, like that of childhood. This can be best seen in the climax of the story when the narrator, having just witnessed murder opts to describe the visual effect the murder had on Steven rather than reflect on the emotions that must surely be present. He notes “He closed his eyes and just began crying, his arms hanging at his sides, the gun still in his little hand.” The simplicity of the way narrator notes defeat (“and just began crying”), the focus of Steven’s now apparent small size (“tiny hand”) and the absence of reflection in the narrator’s observations proves the main character’s lack of maturity and thought processing power. The style is used by the author to approach death from what it looks like to a child, a view completely naive to the implications of death and murder. In practice it highlights to the reader how sudden, shocking and above all else simple death can be. Similarly, the structure in “The School” attempts