Death and God

            
             Death is perhaps the greatest mystery of life. It is one of the few things we can offer no concrete answer. We know why we die and what causes death, but we do not know if anything exists after death. Modern man seeks truths based on facts and proof. We do not have any proof or eyewitness accounts of whether there is life after death. There are no scientific studies to prove we have spirits and they go to a "better place" when our bodies have ceased to exist. Death therefore, is the end that all life leads to. When we die we just become cold unfeeling corpses buries under mounds of dirt. More and more people are beginning to accept this as true, but there are still those who refuse to believe such a morbid end. .
             In the late 1800's, when Christianity was still quite apparent in early America, death was more moldable. This made death a subject of grief, symbolism, literature, and even life. To a great extent, it still is. Women's poetry in the late nineteenth century was very sentimental and death was a common tool in provoking pathos in the reader.
             A good writer can lead his or her readers to feel as the characters feel. In Silko's Ceremony, when Tayo was sick from the horrors of war, we felt sick with him. We traveled his healing journey and became well with him. The words authors choose are arranged to express the feelings of the characters in a way so that we can relate. Poetry is the expression of feeling. Women poets in the late 1800's used an obsession with death to create these feelings in their readers. .
             In the late 1800's, Christianity was still dominant in early America- its literature, its morals, and its poetry. Christianity is evident in the works of Sarah M. B. Piatt. In her poem We Two she says "God's will is-not mine. Yet one night I shall lie very still at his feet, where the stars may not shine" (805). According to popular belief, Piatt knows whether she follows what she feels is God's will for her life or not, she is still at His mercy and will someday die.