Death. Whether it be slow and painful or quick and painless, it shares similarities and differences beyond that of which we may initially interpret. The two short stories, "The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar" by Edgar Allen Poe, and "Videotape" by Don DeLillo, brilliantly capture how death can strike in different ways and, as a result, carry vastly differing meanings. Through each author's use of literary elements such as setting and characters, they craft similarities and differences between death that are easily visible on the surface while others are only discoverable by digging deeper into the underlying meaning. As a result, through each author's use of these similarities, we gain a completely different understanding of the meaning of death.

Death can come in many different ways and forms, instantaneous or prolonged with varying levels of pain. In DeLillo's "Videotape," for instance, it happens in the blink of an eye. One second passes and everything is fine; in the next moment, "he is shot, head shot, and the camera reacts." The instantaneous nature of the man's death expresses to readers just how vulnerable and valuable life is by showing how quickly it can be taken from us. One moment he is fine, the next, "he dies so fast, no accompaniment of any kind."  Contrasting DeLillo's use of instantaneous death, Poe prolongs his character's death throughout the entirety of the story. By doing this, we grasp an entirely different aspect of death: pain and suffering, which is summed up in one of Poe's last paragraphs as Valdemar screams for his suffering to come to an end as he begs to be "put to sleep".

The overall meaning of a story is derived from its basic literary elements. For instance, changing a character's personality, age, or gender can dramatically affect the meaning of a story as a whole. Starting by analyzing each author's use of characters, we can begin to further interpret the differences between each story's use of death.

In DeLillo's "Videotape", there are three characters who come to the forefront: the twelve year old girl videotaping, the partly bald man who gets shot in the dodge, and the man watching the girl's recording of the death. What each character has in common is a sense of normalcy that almost comes to bore the reader. The girl is an average run of the mill child who loves to explore which translates into her interest in videotaping the world around her. The man being recorded is in his forties, balding, and driving an un-described Dodge, which plays upon our image of the average American Joe-Schmo. The characters are so average that it lulls us into a sense of un-expectancy that is instantaneously taken away as the man in the Dodge is shot and killed in the blink of an eye. At the same time, the girl's videotape is transformed from a curious exploration recording, into a flat out homicide. The third character, the man watching the girls recording, is the epitome of how us as readers feel; dismayed, stunned, and completely, utterly astonished. So much so that he continues to watch the video repeatedly, and even pressures his wife into watching in an attempt to share what he is feeling with another person. DeLillo's tactic of shock and awe leads us to the very notion he is trying to express; life is valuable, and can be taken in a single instant. As the DeLillo stated himself, no matter what's happening around you, "seeing someone at the moment he dies, dying expectantly, it is reason alone to stay fixed to the screen."

Poe's use of characters in "The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar" starkly contrasts that of DeLillo. Poe's two main characters, Valdemar and the narrator whose name we never fully learn, are significantly more fleshed out, detailed and overall interesting than those in DeLillo's story. Poe's narrator is a mesmerist (which in and of its self is an "interesting" job) who is enlisted to try and cure his patient, Valdemar, of phthisis. In his attempt to cure Valdemar, the narrator puts him in a trance-like state that results in a long, gruesome, seemingly supernatural death. Poe's use of detail presented to his characters directly emulates his use of detail to describe Valdemar's horrific death. He turns into a "liquid mass of loathsome-of detestable putrescence", which shares a similar shock and awe technique to DeLillo. However, instead of a sudden surprise death like DeLillo uses, we are given a horrifically gruesome, "several month long" death that conveys to readers the implausibility of attempting to combat death itself.

Just like changing character details affects the overall theme of a story, changing the setting can also affect how the reader perceives the story as a whole. For instance, changing the amount of detail given to the setting can vastly affect what the reader knows about story, albeit indirectly. Just like medical practices were not as advanced in the mid 1800s as they are now, changing the year, location, or even level of detail given to the story makes a world of difference in how a reader interprets the story.

To further drive home the notion that death can occur in almost any place or any time, DeLillo uses a very vague, ordinary setting; on a highway, in an average, everyday Dodge, on a seemingly average day. Combining an ordinary setting with an extraordinary death by gunshot while driving gives us the "one in a million" death that shocks readers and leaves them with a sense that "I could die at any given moment". How many times have you heard of someone being shot while driving down the highway? Because if you're like me, this is probably the first. And just to add to the entirety of the situation, DeLillo reveals that this is "either the tenth or eleventh homicide committed by the Texas Highway killer."

Contrasting this, Poe details his setting to both a specific time and city. As Poe specifically states, the story of Valdemar occurs in "Harlaem N.Y." during the mid 1800s. By living in a city, it grants Valdemar access to a larger amount of medical personnel as apposed to living in a smaller, rural town, which is shown by his two personal physicians and own mesmerist. At the same time, being able to afford living in the city alone furthers the contrast between the short stories by adding more background detail. Not only this, but given that the events take place during the mid 1800s provides us with the knowledge that medical practices were significantly underdeveloped. Add together these setting details with the given situation and the result is a highly detailed, in comparison to DeLillo's story, death scene that leaves a completely different message. No matter how complex the scenario, how much help you have, or how advanced the medical practices are for the given time period, you cannot escape death's icy grasp.

In the literary world, death has been discussed numerous times in many differing lights. Poe and DeLillo both go about discussing death in a way that is sudden and as a result shocks the reader, however, by using different literary elements they lead the reader to make different realizations about how death can be viewed. DeLillo creates a sense of normalcy that results in a shocking death whereas Poe fills his reader with detail in a horrifyingly gruesome death that makes the reader utterly sick to his or her stomach.  Despite the differences, both short stories provide unique themes relating to viewpoints regarding death that require digging deeper to fully comprehend.
