The Life Review in Five Short Stories about Characters Facing Death

Abstract

Five modern short stories about people facing death illustrate and connect various observations of and theories about the dying process developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Robert N. Butler. Kubler-Ross's observations of the fifth stage of the dying process–acceptance–are illustrated in the dying characters' desire to withdraw from their loved ones and to be left alone. Butler's concept of the life review is then applicable. In response to the imminence of their deaths, the characters survey their past, attempting to reintegrate their life's experiences. Their life reviews do not become a form of reminiscing to escape the pressures of physical pain, mental anguish, and/or confusion; rather, they take the form of reveries and selective memories of past incidents and events, pleasant and unpleasant, in the distant or recent past. Their reminiscences result in consequences for the main characters that are either positive, ambiguous, or self-destructive.