Eng 125

Death and Impermanence in “I Used to Live Once” and “Dog’s Death”

Aaron Habig

ENG 125

Donna Hinsey

October 9, 2011

Death and Impermanence in “I used to Live Her Once” and “Dog’s Death”

Death and Impermanence are both represented in the short story “Dog’s Death” and the poem “I Used to Live Here Once”. In these texts, the main characters experience death and the impermanence of life. After reading and experiencing the feelings embedded in these texts, it may become obvious that everyone experiences death and impermanence differently and you just never know how short life is until it is gone.

Death is something we see, hear and experience in our everyday lives. Everyone dies differently and everyone has a different experience dealing with death. In the story “I used To Live Here once” (Jean Rhys (1976) it shows a lot of symbolism throughout this short story. The term, symbol, when used in literature is often a figure of speech in which a person, object, or situation represent something in addition to its literal meaning (Dave Louis (2010) Symbolism in Literature Works).In the short story the main character dies while going across the stepping stones on her way towards home. The main character describes each stepping stones from the stepping stones being round, unsteady, pointy, flat, and the safe one in the middle of the river where you could stand and look around. The description of the stones symbolizes the lady’s experiences of going across the stepping stones on the way home. It shows her knowledge about each stepping stone telling the reader it is not her first time going across the stepping stones, that these stepping stones and the lady in the story have history. It is at this point of the story where two significant events take place. The author then writes “The next one wasn't so safe for when the river was full the water flowed over it and even when it showed dry it was slippery” (Jean Rhys (1976). The last stepping stone described in the...