Death is an inevitable aspect of life. Whether one's life is spent in constant fear and worry of the preordained or driven by the concept of living one's life to the fullest, death still remains as the unavoidable future. Literature is one of few medias that are able to capture the essence of mortality through personal accounts and experiences. In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and Don DeLillo's  "Videotape," death is the central focus. Each story depicts a death, but the perceptions of the death vastly differ. The concept of inescapable fatality drives each plot; however, the differences in realism and sensitization provide two separate interpretations of death. By DeLillo offering a more realistic and dry approach to death Poe's approach seems much more elaborate and drawn out to illicit a deeper feeling of death. 
Poe wrote "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" in 1845, partly in response to the recent fascination with hypnotism in the early 1800's. Poe's story is a first person narration with the speaker being only named "P". This narrator recounts the story of a man named Valdemar who is near death and wishes to participate in mesmerism (full hypnotic control) right before he reaches the point of passing away.  In "Videotape", DeLillo puts the reader behind a camera, in the hands of a young girl who, while innocently filming the traffic in the rearview window, captures the murder of the man in the car behind. Both stories revolve around the idea that death is inevitable. In Poe's story the narrator places Valdemar under a powerful hypnotism that allows his mind to remain living while his body is in a dying state but he ultimately deteriorates once "P" removes the hypnosis because death cannot be avoided.  Poe describes this moment, "As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once -- within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk -- crumbled -- absolutely rotted away beneath my hands." The narrator's reaction to Valdemar's death is visibly emotionally traumatizing and leaves an impression on the narrator that death cannot be stopped. In comparison, DeLillo approaches death more realistically by showing the reader that death can happen anywhere at any point in time. By using a young girl as the mastermind behind the video he is representing the randomness of death and describes it as pure innocence, "She wandered into it. The girl got lost and wandered clear-eyed into horror. This is a children's story about straying too far from home. But it isn't the family car that serves as the instrument of the child's curiosity, her inclination to explore." Death, as described by DeLillo, does not have a specific method or type it can happen anywhere at any point in time in one's life. Both stories are connected based on the idea that fatality cannot be stopped or avoided.

Along with being similar in theme, both stories present themselves using the same structure. The stories are told by only witness accounts. In "Videotape", the reader is being addressed personally throughout the story, but never is made aware of how the young girl feels, similarly in Poe's narrative one is only able to feel what "P" is feeling, not Valdemar. "P" explains exactly how he is feeling, but there is no example of what others in the room feel or Valdemar, "I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to do". Both stories consistently use simple pronouns that take away from the stories personal intimacy. This method of writing allows for each author to give a perception of death rather than a factual representation. Poe and DeLillo stories only give the reader a description of the events with a single point of view leaving the reader to decide whether the accounts are accurately portrayed. Although both stories possess similar qualities they differ on how they perceive death.

Throughout "Videotape" DeLillo denotes through textual techniques the growing desensitization of death. The opening sentence of the story begins with the pronoun "It", immediately from this language the reader gets the sense of commonality and informality because the narrator makes the story about the reader and not about the characters involved. DeLillo continues with this pattern of using simple pronouns such as, you, I , and they to form a conversational feeling to the story. The irony of using informal diction is that the story discusses the gruesome murder of a man, witnessed by a young girl, yet DeLillo talks of the event as if it's an everyday occurrence. To open the story DeLillo writes casually about how simple and unimportant the event seems, "It shows a man driving a car. It is the simplest sort of family video. You see a man at the wheel of a medium dodge." To add more normalcy to the story DeLillo brings in the readers personal relationships when describing how one reacts to seeing the video of the man's murder:  "You don't usually call your wife over to the TV set. She has her programs, you have yours. But there's a certain urgency here. You want her to see how it looks. The tape has been running forever and now the thing is finally going to happen and you want her to be here when he's shot". By inserting family into the narrative, the reader is able to better relate to the piece; however, upon doing so the author is also revealing the human's unconscious tendency to spread explicit footage. DeLillo's overall purpose of writing, "Videotape" is to show how desensitized the population is becoming to death and how death is no longer a touchy a subject, but rather a form of entertainment that people want to share with others. By contrast, Poe's perception of death does not include the insensitivity or commonality that DeLillo's story exemplifies.

Poe is famous for his ability to write abnormal short stories that contain disturbing plots. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is just one of his many gothic writings that drew controversy. The story allows for the reader to feel as if they are in the room when Valdemar is being placed under hypnotism. Poe begins his story by alluding to the fact that some people believe "P"s account of Valdemar is false. In response to this, the narrator constantly adds medical jargon to add credibility to his story using words such as, in articulo mortis, phthisis, and stertorious breathing. The use of these terms forms the idea of death and the dying process is complex and only understandable by medical experts, while DeLillo's story presents death as a simple act. Once Valdemar is under hypnosis, the narrator's descriptions of his body's appearance become very detailed, vivid and clinical, "... he lay in the same position; the pulse was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle (scarcely noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the lips;) the eyes were closed naturally; and the limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble." The increase of detail as Valdemar gets closer and closer to approaching death suggests the importance that death serves in one's life. Death is a strong force and can change a person physically and emotionally. When "P" views Valdemar's dying body he can't help but examine every small detail of what death looks like on a person. By placing Valdemar in a frozen state, "P" is able to watch death take its course in a physical form. In contrast to DeLillo's story where death is only viewed in a one-dimensional way and the viewer is unable to personally be impacted by the way death looks, smells, or feels.

Although both stories perceive death in completely different forms, they still are connected by the theme of death being an inevitable factor of life. No matter what way a person views death, whether it be an outsider watching or a personal encounter, there is no way to avoid it. The only way to control death is to change the way one handles it. By understanding the similarities between both stories one is able to view death as a multiple faceted concept. There isn't just one way to manage the strain that death takes on a person, or just one way to categorizes its effects. Fatality is unfortunately an unavoidable part of life that can only be understood by the one experiencing it.
