http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/death Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:56:27 -0400 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:56:27 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1881/death-in-john-keats-ode-to-a-nightingale-and-the-eve-of-st-agnes By Anne R. Hill - This paper explores Keats’ depiction of death in “Ode to a Nightingale” and “The Eve of St. Agnes.” “Ode to a Nightingale” juxtaposes two types of death. The first kind of death is a drowsy union with nature which allows the speaker to merge with the world around him. The speaker embraces this metaphorical death because he is terrified of literal death and its ugliness. Literal death is not a unifying force, but an isolating reality that wrecks the speaker’s unity with the nightingale and imprisons him in his “sole self.” While readers... Thu, 25 Feb 2021 08:55 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1881/death-in-john-keats-ode-to-a-nightingale-and-the-eve-of-st-agnes http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1644/aristocratism-and-authoritative-politics-in-behns-oroonoko-the-existential-and-socio-political-semiotics-of-death-and-torture By Conner R. Hayes - Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko offers a complex representation of the semiotic and socio-political meaning of seventeenth-century torture and death and the intersectional manner in which physical agony coincides with authoritative colonial politics. The novella’s protagonist, Oroonoko, is hyperbolically described in terms of his Eurocentric physicality and aristocratic traits; this descriptive treatment reinforces his singularity from his slave peers and objectifies him as the subject of their mass spectatorship. His sharp physical, cultural, and ideological divergence from the collective slave... Tue, 30 May 2017 09:28 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1644/aristocratism-and-authoritative-politics-in-behns-oroonoko-the-existential-and-socio-political-semiotics-of-death-and-torture http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1435/addressing-shortcomings-in-afro-pessimism By Michael A. Barlow Jr. - Afro-Pessimism forwards a crucially important foundation with which anyone concerned with forming Black resistance strategy should navigate. It accurately understands that Black life exists outside of the traditional humanist metric, and Blackness is rather an ontological condition that is relegated to the level of the non-human. While Afro-Pessimism is a vital starting point, there are needed revisions to some theoretical applications within the field. Pessimists go too far in their understanding of how internal Black liberation interacts with its own ontology. This paper provides insight to... Thu, 01 Sep 2016 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1435/addressing-shortcomings-in-afro-pessimism http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/795/irreversibility-and-the-modern-understanding-of-death By John Fortunato - Recent advancements in medicine have resulted in technology that allows us to have a better understanding of the essence of life. In turn, this has allowed us to more precisely identify the moment of death through certain criteria, whether through the cardiopulmonary criteria of death or through the newer, brain-oriented criteria of death. According to modern medicine (up-to-date medical technology and health care practices), human life is best measured by evaluation of brain function; however, the specific brain function that most directly relates to the essence of life has not been determined... Wed, 20 Nov 2013 03:37 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/795/irreversibility-and-the-modern-understanding-of-death http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1487/power-religion-and-capital-punishment-a-comparative-analysis-between-abolitionist-turkey-and-retentionist-iran By Mariam Azhar - Turkey and Iran are both predominately Muslim-populated countries with a history of powerful political leaders who have shaped their societal values and perceptions towards capital punishment. Until the 1920s both countries employed a fairly punitive policy with regards to capital punishment. However, with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Ataturk Mustafa Kemal finally achieved Turkish independence, which started Turkey on the road towards Westernization and secularism. Similarly in 1926, Reza Khan deposed an age old monarchy in Iran and followed the Kemalist ideology to lay the foundations for... Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:00 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1487/power-religion-and-capital-punishment-a-comparative-analysis-between-abolitionist-turkey-and-retentionist-iran http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1608/the-populist-bind-death-penalty-abolition-as-an-anti-democratic-decision By Aubrey Rose - The continued application of the death penalty in the United States marks the country as an extreme outlier among its allies and like-minded nations in the 21st century. In order to explain America's retention of this criminal punishment, scholars have sought to first explore: what explains variation in a Western democracy's retention or abolition of the death penalty? In an attempt to eliminate intervening variables present in past studies, this paper provides a comparative historical analysis of death penalty abolition movements in Great Britain and the United States. While many scholars have... Fri, 31 May 2013 12:00 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1608/the-populist-bind-death-penalty-abolition-as-an-anti-democratic-decision http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/690/shakespeares-king-lear-the-promised-end By N B - William Shakespeare's King Lear begins with Lear ignoring the natural order of family inheritance by deciding to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters before his death.. Typical of human nature, Lear is swayed by the sycophantic flattery of his two eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, while his true and loving daughter, Cordelia, is left out in the cold. The most notable aspect of human nature present in this play is greed, something Lear’s two eldest daughters, their husbands, and assuredly Edmund suffer from. Even Lear himself divides his kingdom for a greedy reason, wanting all... Mon, 03 Sep 2012 09:26 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/690/shakespeares-king-lear-the-promised-end http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/662/finitude-existence-and-community-letting-the-individual-die By Nicole Billitz - Addressing finitude as it relates to existence and community, Jean Luc Nancy and Martin Heidegger recognize finitude to be both the impossibility of being at one with oneself and the radical fragmentation of Being, in terms of mortality. Nancy contends that there is a fundamental relationship between the community and death, which necessitates an ethical imperative to the other, and by association negates violence to the other. For Nancy, existence or “being-with” is necessarily ethical because we are constituted by other beings. For Heidegger, ethics is dwelling in closeness to Being... Mon, 16 Jul 2012 04:58 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/662/finitude-existence-and-community-letting-the-individual-die http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/365/exploring-time-in-folktales-analyzing-youth-without-age-and-life-without-death-and-where-there-is-no-death By Iulia O. Basu-Zharku - The theme of time is found in many folktales, from all over the world. Thus, one of the earliest versions known is a Japanese tale, “Urashima the Fisherman,” that comes down to us from the Account of the Province of Tango, dating from 713 A.D. Urashima follows a goddess to an island where they live happily until he starts missing his family, but when he comes back to his village, 300 years had already past by and he cannot go back to his wife either (Tatar, 66-68). Similarly, “L’Ile de la félicité,” a French tale by Countess Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy... Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:24 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/365/exploring-time-in-folktales-analyzing-youth-without-age-and-life-without-death-and-where-there-is-no-death http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/358/retelling-the-stories-of-the-holocaust-in-shoah-and-maus-distorted-images-of-a-monstrous-past By Jeremy S. Page - An artist, especially one who works with the visual media, is bound to come across obstacles in his creation of a work that represents or recollects images of the Shoah (i.e., the Holocaust). Precisely how does one represent an almost industrial genocide on such an enormous scale? Shoah and Maus take two very different approaches in their attempt to represent the experience of the death camps, and Maus in particular is a deliberate distortion of the image, but in retelling the stories, the testimonies, experienced by survivors of the camps using such deliberate artifice, both texts are capable... Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:46 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/358/retelling-the-stories-of-the-holocaust-in-shoah-and-maus-distorted-images-of-a-monstrous-past http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/290/the-death-penalty-and-intellectual-disability By A. M. Foerschner - Should convicted criminals who are legally declared as mentally ill be excused from the death penalty? In 1981, Ricky Rector of Conway, Arkansas went on a shooting spree that resulted in the death of one man and the injury of two bystanders. Ricky also shot and killed Officer Bob Martin, who had gone to the home of Rector’s mother after Ricky agreed to surrender. In 1982, the mentally retarded thirty-six-year-old was sentenced to death for his crimes. In a revealing glimpse of his limited mental capacity, Rector set aside the piece of pecan pie that came with his last meal, announcing that... Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/290/the-death-penalty-and-intellectual-disability http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/285/the-sobibor-revolt-death-to-the-fascists By Ryan A. Piccirillo - “We knew our fate […] we were in an extermination camp and death was our destiny. […] Only desperate actions could shorten our suffering and maybe afford us a chance of escape. […] the will to resist had grown and ripened” (Blatt 139).The prisoners at Sobibor knew that escape was the only hope for survival. Past escape attempts were met with bloody Nazi retaliation, a deterrent which successfully frightened prisoners into submission. However, an underground movement, led by a Polish Jew named Leon Feldhendler, began plotting a final revolt and escape despite the... Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/285/the-sobibor-revolt-death-to-the-fascists http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/239/immortality-and-the-poem-comparing-and-contrasting-marvell-and-shakespeare By Brian Richards - The meaning behind both Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Shakespeare’s sonnets has been debated since their respective publications. Marvell’s poem and specifically Shakespeare’s sonnets 55 and 60 have undeniably divergent content but nevertheless convey themes relating to life, death, and love. The ideas illustrated through the lines reveal somewhat of a mutual disdain for death, as well as a passion to live and love. The poems emphasize mortality—the approaching doom and death—in a similar way that presents time as a personified villain... Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:05 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/239/immortality-and-the-poem-comparing-and-contrasting-marvell-and-shakespeare http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/219/ivans-transformation-and-coming-to-terms-in-leo-tolstoys-the-death-of-ivan-illyich By Michael C. Wiseman - In Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illyich, the story's protagonist--Ivan--is dead before the story begins. The first chapter concerns itself with some of Ivan’s work associates. With the exception of a posthumous cameo, Tolstoy completely omits the title character from the first chapter. He does this to show that Ivan was shaped by the flaws of his society. By displaying Ivan’s friends at a significant time, Tolstoy shows us what Ivan’s society was like, and vicariously shows the readers what kind of man Ivan was. In short, Ivan lived as a vicious bureaucrat: living life to... Tue, 30 Mar 2010 09:51 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/219/ivans-transformation-and-coming-to-terms-in-leo-tolstoys-the-death-of-ivan-illyich