Death, nowadays is never really thought of as such a big thing as long it doesn't happen to you or someone you love. Even a friend leaving this plane or shuffling off the mortal coil is no longer dealt with as such a big deal. We as a people have become desensitized to the gore due to many things from games to movies, but two pieces of literature show both views of death. The first, "Videotape" by Don Delillo, shows the view of a desensitized individual seeing death over and over again through the canvas of a videotape of an accident. The second piece is "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brian which deals with death in gory detail and show the view as if you were there in the novel seeing the blood stain your shoes. Both of these stories share an underlying story but they both show enough differences to show up as contrasting views.

In "Videotape" Delillo suggests that, while death is a morbid thing, the more that a person is exposed to it the less he or she feels in response. In this passage he shows this deadening of emotion; "You are looking into the mind of home video. It is innocent, it is aimless, it is determined, it is real. He is bald up the middle of his head, a nice guy in his forties whose whole life seems open to the handheld camera. But there is also an element of suspense. You keep on looking not because you know something is going to happen---of course you do know something is going to happen and you do look for that reason but you might also keep on looking if you came across this footage for the first time without knowing the out- come. There is a crude power operating here."(Delillo 15) The person holding the camera is witnessing a somber scene such as death but is unfeeling. Delillo it seems is trying to put across a message of numbness to the audience. He doesn't focus on the event that is going to happen but more on the suspense. This shows how the author is preparing the audience for death but not making it seem so real.

On a contrasting note Tim O'Brian uses his gory detail to make the reader feel as though they are right there.  O'Brian shows that in this passage, "He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole." This make the reader seems as though they are standing over this dead body peering into what was once a man and trying to figure out what shape the bullet that went through his eye made. Maybe we are standing here thinking about how far the bullet traveled before it killed him, or even what speed it was to make the blood splatter just so. In any case O'Brian uses his prose to rope the audience in to make you feel not just because he wants you to, but because you want to. He does this because the writer's job is not just to make you feel but also to make you want to keep reading. That is why he continues to use as much gory detail as possible to keep the readers interested.

Although the two works differ from each other there are some comparisons that can be made. First starting with O'Brian, he also uses some blunt imagery for death, same as Dellilo. O'Brian writes "They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way, it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of life itself." Even though O'Brian's basic principle is to drag the reader in and destroy the feelings of the audience to do that he needs times like this quote to reel the reader in. It is the same with Delillo only he uses this blunt writing style not to draw readers in, but to make them think about what they just read. Nevertheless readers keep picking up both authors for the comparing and contrasting views.

Both authors show examples that they show death in different ways. Although both Authors do this they also show examples of being able to work comparatively. Delillo writing are usually blunt and neutered to bring in the reader and make them think about what they are reading about. On the contrary to that O'Brian shows both views to both show the hindrance of putting things bluntly and the acceptance of the gore and death in his novels. Both authors sometimes use the numbed version to show tranquility in their pieces. This is how these authors write and weave together their pieces to create views of death.
