HW#8 -- The Great Teacher: Death

Reflect upon Walker's "To Hell with Dying" and Stephen Jay Gould's "The Median isn't the Message" in order to answer the following prompts in-class today. If you are absent, you can submit your reply below.

1.) What do the narrator and her brother learn from the many "rescues" they perform for Mr. Sweet? Do you see these lessons as negative, positive, as a combination? Explain.

2.) Gould admits that his technical knowledge helped him to understand his illness. However, what does he say about the limitations of technology, and what does he say was most necessary to his survival, more important even, than all the research he conducted?

3.) In many ways the narrators of these two essays experience an epiphany or anagnorisis. How is death a teacher? What lessons does it force us to learn? How have you gained a better understanding of the world through loss? Explain why you feel the way that you do.