Student Name

Newman

8 English

9 October 2010

Divergent Representations of Grief in Short Fiction

Two American short stories, both from the 20th century, demonstrate the difficulties

one faces in coping with the death of a loved one. In Ry Terr’s “The Last Words He Said,” the

young Lotta watches her father die from pneumonia only a few days after becoming ill with what

his family thought was a simple cold; the narrative illustrates her deepening isolation and

hopelessness as the weeks pass after this event. I.M. Moody’s story, “Die, Die, Die!” gains its

title from the protagonist’s angry tirade aimed at the memory of his recently dead friend; Yuri

tries to resist reality and deny that his friend has died because Yuri feels he should not have died,

and the story gradually reveals the way he comes to acknowledge and accept the facts. These

quite different short stories reflect the varied ways that people deal with death, and indicate that

this experience can be quite individual for people, depending on the circumstances surrounding

the death.

[S] These pieces involve main characters who are struggling differently with their

grief. [E] Yuri Dyculus, in “Die, Die, Die,” knows that his friend Spike has passed away but is

angry and unable to accept it. Yuri refuses to resign himself to the finality of his best friend’s

passing from a rare form of cancer: [G] Yuri says, when faced with the doctor’s kind but

unwavering explanation that “there was nothing more that medicine could do to help,” lashes out

at him: “You doctors think you have so much power, but when it comes down to it, you are just a

sham. A sham, I say!” [I] Just as the doctor seems to patiently accept this outburst, the reader too
recognizes that Yuri will only gradually accept the inevitability of Spike’s death, and yet that his

resistance and anger are unsurprising. [E] Lotta Tiers, the protagonist in “The Last Words He

Said,” experiences her loss quite deeply, and in fact cannot seem to stop crying, She has accepted

her father’s demise, but her grief is bordering on despair when, six months after his funeral, she

tells her brother: [G] “Really, there is nothing left to do except cry and cry some more each day,

and hope that I will be able to join Father in heaven soon.” [I] Clearly, Lotta’s expression of

grief is no more bizarre than Yuri’s, but as the characters around her realize, it does require that

they intervene so that she will not sink into a serious depression.

Friends and family members respond differently to the main characters’ behavior,

and thus prolong and complicate the process of accepting the loss. Yuri’s boss, a well-read

yet intolerant man, listens one day to another of Yuri’s angry outbursts about the doctors’

incompetence in treating Spike and then grows irritated with him:

Yuri, don’t you realize that you are in denial? It isn’t just a river in Egypt, you know. I

heard about the stages of grief on Oprah! You keep pretending that if something more

had been done, Spike would be alive today. But that’s baloney. Anyone with cancer of

the sprenectus is doomed, and your friend was lucky! Yes, lucky! He didn’t have to

linger, suffering for months or years, until finally he could be freed from these earthly

chains. (Moody 245)

From Yuri’s reply, the reader understands that his boss’s lecture is not the remedy for Yuri’s

unhappiness: “You know best, Boss. I wish I was half as smart as you,” (245) he says

sarcastically. In much the same way, Lotta’s family members argue with her, several months

after her father’s demise, to re-enter face reality and take up her life again. In fact, Lotta says, she

has a new vocation in life, to “honor the memory of a man who had no equal on earth.” Lotta
sees the future in terms of ways she can raise money to build a monument to her father, with his

last words inscribed on it. When she finds that her family members are plotting to have her put in

a mental institution, she becomes desperate and shouts at all of them, gathered around the dinner

table: “When Father passed away, he told me, ‘The world is actually flat. You must make people

see this’” (Terr 36). This, she shrieks, is “a sacred duty” her father has placed on her shoulders,

and she will fulfill his dying wish or “perish trying.” Their desire to stop her seems only to make

her more determined.

Thus, these characters’ behavior ranges widely from sadness and despair to anger and

denial, and the added pressures from people around them do not improve their coping skills.

Circumstances surrounding a person’s demise are all individual, sometimes expected, sometimes

shockingly unexpected, and their loved ones may not be able to accept the loss initially;

however, when others react negatively and attempt to manipulate them to recover quickly as is

demonstrated in these two pieces, the consequences are seldom favorable, and may even be

detrimental to their healing. Through these short stories, a reader gains a greater awareness of the

disparate, and yet perfectly normal, ways people can respond to the loss of a loved one.