Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death does not qualify as the "ultimate revelation" [that is, a completely honest presentation of another's dying and one's own response to that experience, but it comes close] … to a confrontation with the inappropriate death of a loved one, in this instance her mother. But even in this narrative, disclosure is balanced by unconscious suppression, as we witness how a sensitive literary intelligence (when writing from her own point of view) has difficulty exploring all the implications of mortality. One is tempted to conclude that art alone liberates the imagination to probe the darkest corners of the arena where man contends with the experience of dying—his own and others'. It seems that de Beauvoir's literary intuition taught her this, because she organizes the chronicle of her mother's death around an alternating pattern of present scene and past recall so that the two time sequences flow into each other and memory becomes an important means of confronting death. The patient has a social existence as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a good Catholic, a friend—and these roles sometimes contradict, sometimes reinforce each other. Simultaneously, the author has a multiple existence as daughter, sister, companion of Jean-Paul Sartre …, and—vitally important—as the narrator of the events.
Simone de Beauvoir recognizes … that when an "other" voice intervenes between the dying and their death, we can never obtain a fully objective portrait, but only an interpretation tempered by the insight and psychological courage of the observer. A Very Easy Death … is a dual account—of how the mother died, and how the daughter adjusted to the fact. For every death necessitates at least two responses, from the victim and from the survivor(s); moreover, these responses often interact, modifying each other. The reaction is further complicated by the survivor's memory [of other deaths]…. Indeed, one is led to believe that no confrontation is ever "pure" in the sense of a totally selfless concern for the dying. (pp. 27-8)
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