Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, and Seamus Heaney's collection of poems, both consider the theme of death. There are many ways in which death is used in these texts to signify a retreat from the global. Both authors describe deaths which are logically, emotionally, or apparently caused by the effects of global culture - technology, communication, government, etc. In both texts there is an element of assigning blame to the global to signify the retreat, also using death to portray negative aspects of global culture, in particular the global force of economic exchange, and global value versus local value. The commoditisation of people and things, which, in globalisation, replaces personal value. This essay will also describe the way that death has been used in both the texts to show aggression or battle between the global and the local.

One...