Comparatively, the death of her mother for Celie in 'The Color Purple' by Alice Walker is void of any sort of emotional attachment. Walker employs short sentences and avoids any extensive displays of adjective language to convey death as normality for Celie – something she is desensitized to, even in regard of her own mother. 'My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing.' While the misuse of present tense 'die' insinuates her lack of education and perhaps therefore her lack of ability to properly express herself in the letters, it also displays how Celie can relay what should be a traumatic and horrifying event in a factual manner. This somewhat belittles the overwhelming nature of death, and the novel instead focuses on feminism and gender prejudice, which acts as its main appeal.
The linear structure of the passage's narration enables us to see more starkly the contrasting reactions to death from various characters, building up to Heathcliff's spiteful curse and refusal to let Cathy be at peace without him. Initially, the reader encounters Edgar's predictable, though nonetheless poignant, reaction; his 'fair features were almost as death-like'. Bronte here conveys the all-encompassing nature of death and grief, as well as the deep-felt capacity for empathy humans have that we may appear 'death-like' in the face of the reality. Comparatively, Heathcliff in his death is described to hold a 'life-like gaze of exultation', a response antithetical to the convention, but through this dichotomy Bronte conveys the idea that life is full of suffering, but death is a moment of 'exultation' or the beginning of lasting happiness. Edgar's grief is made more pitiful by the fact that he and Cathy are in opposition even in death – his form being of 'exhausted anguish' and hers of 'perfect peace', the alliteration also illustrating the harmony of death and peace.
