The Search-death and its effect

To take part in the “search” Binx talked about in Percy Walker’s “The Moviegoer” an individual must be attuned to her / his own death.  Ideas from the film “The Seventh Seal,” Heidegger’s “Being and Time” and Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” show, not only, how difficult this attunement is, but how it might be understood and appreciated as well.

The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. It is set in Denmark during the Black Death of the Middle Ages it tells of the journey of a medieval knight, Antonius Block, and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death who has come to tell Block he is about to die.  It is a fait accompli that Death will out so after a brief interlude Block perishes. There is no bargaining with Death.

Heidegger’s being-toward-death is a way of being in the world by which the individual recognizes she / he has to face the Nothing, i.e., and to die on its own.  Death is inevitable and undeniable. Individuals may attempt to deny the “Nothingness” of death by creating the fantasy of an eternal afterlife.  These fantasies are obstacles to living a life with authentic meaning.  Only when the full responsibility for one’s own death is taken will the individual be free to live. 

Hans Castorp, the 23 year old protagonist of Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain” utters these words: 

"For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts." 

This statement is more eloquent than Heidegger’s technically stated being-toward-death, but they are both expressing the same idea.  Accept the facts of existence, including death, and do not let the omnipresence of death diminish the fullness of living.  Let death not be the sovereign in your life.  The moment will come soon enough and the words of Emily Dickinson capture this, “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me / The Carriage held but just Ourselves / And Immortality.”