Dying Wishes
Final
wishes before death; they've always been a pretty big deal in the world. They
should be. After all, they're your final thoughts before passing. People might
use their last breaths to express them, so it's only right that they're
respected and fulfilled. According to Anse in O Brother, Where Art
Thou?, Addie's dying wish was to be buried with her kin, hence why the
long and hard journey the crew had to endure took place. Anse isn't the most
reliable source of information, only looking out for himself. But we'll give
him the benefit of the doubt and say that Addie really did wish to be buried
with her family.
All this talk about dying
wishes got my brain churning, though. Historically, there have been some pretty
interesting death wishes out there. I'll talk about the happy ones for now
because I'm in a relatively good mood, but there are plenty of
negative ones out there. Dorothea Edwards'
dying wish was to have her pacemaker donated to a dog in need of
it. Rachael Beckwith's wish was to help others, and her family carried out
her wish by raising money for clean water for developing countries. Kevin
McClain's wish was to see his dog one last time before dying. I'm much
too indecisive to possibly know what I'd want, but what about you?
What would your final wishes be?
Interesting post. I agree, final wishes are a HUGE part of the novel along with how the dead are to be treated/respected. What I found most interesting about it in the book was Anse's friends' wives' outrage at the entire journey. It brings up the question "What's more disrespectful to the dead?" Is it better to follow their dying wishes or cart their dead, decaying body around rather than bury it in a timely fashion.
ReplyDeleteNeat post. Addie's dying wish is really interesting because it leads to so much confusion and strife for her whole family - but notably, not Anse. Anse trucks along just fine throughout the journey. I'm not sure what to do with that. Is that really what Addie wanted? For her children to have it much worse off than Anse himself? That seems really unfair.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I think it's also really important that Addie specifically crafted her dying wish to screw over Anse and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Bundrens. It seems like she hated being a wife and mother and hey, can't say I'd love being forced into an inferior role for, like, ever. Personally, there's no one I'm really dying (ha) to exact revenge over, so my own final wishes probably wouldn't be too much like Addie's. I guess I'd want have my body donated to science, or my organs distributed to the needy, assuming everything was intact. That sounds cool.
ReplyDeleteMy dying wish is not something I try to think about a lot because I have a particular relationship with death, but I tried for you. I think I'd want a traditional Christian (probably Methodist but if I died young, it'd be Catholic) funeral because despite my questions of faith, I definitely need to believe there's a heaven for my soul to reunited with those I've lost. As for my body, I'd like to not be cremated, though I know it's worse for the environment. My reason here is mainly because science is crazy and I love archaeology, and I would love to be someone's discovery in a millennium or three. These are the things I'd like, but in all honesty when I die, they'll be one child born to carry on. And that's all I could ask for.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a dying wish is an interesting one, because Addie didn't wish to be buried with her family as she died, but far before that, and her motivation wasn't to be buried with her family, it was more to force Anse to do something difficult and to not be buried with his family.
ReplyDeleteAs far as my (very premature I hope) dying wish goes, as I've told many people in my life, I want my organs to be taken out and donated, and then for my body to be taxidermied with a pose-able wire armature and displayed at the American Museum of Natural History (as an example of a human). I want the eyes of my taxidermied form to be glass however, because I want my eyeballs to be packaged up and sent to my congressperson via USPS mail, so they know I'm always watching them. Not joking. I know that all of that is really complicated though, so actually I just hope that my family do what is convenient and reasonable for them.