Student Essay on The Human Response to the Fear of Death

The greatest fear that humans will face at some point is that of death; however, because each human's psyche is different, their reactions to this fear will not be the same. The main characters in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl's Creek," and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" all have similar fears of death, but their individual thoughts, emotions, and behaviors result in different responses.

There are many fears in life, such as the fear of height or the fear of darkness, but the greatest fear generally revolves around one of the most mysterious questions of life- death. Death is the pivotal point to the utmost fear a human can have, but the human response to death varies depending on the type of situation. Some use the fear of death as a motivation while others react to the fear in a negative way. The prisoner from the story "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe fears death, but his fear motivates him to escape captivity. In the story "An Occurrence at Owl's Creek" by Ambrose Bierce, the character Peyton Farquhar correspondingly fears death; however, his fear leads to a psychological reasoning rather than a physical.....