3 Essays from Short Takes

NOTE: The three essays are titled "Confessions" (88), "Bullet in My Neck" (318), and "The Big Nap" (322).

Life and death are perhaps the two heaviest topics that a writer can attempt to tackle. It likely does not surprise anyone that, in the realm of creative nonfiction, they tend to come up quite a bit. I have selected three essays from Short Takes that deal primarily with life and death, but beyond that, the feelings that they bring with them. I like to think they each tackle life and death in different ways, but are similar enough to the point where a trend in nonfiction writers is seen.

In “Confessions” by Amy Tan, her mother holds a knife to her neck after outright stating that she wishes that she would have died instead of her brother or father. Amy was clearly a victim of frequent abuse, and she grew up around death. Perhaps fittingly, she now has to worry about her own at the hands of the one person on the planet who is meant to defend you more than anyone else. The striking moment comes when her mom asks “Why you don’t cry?” We are treated to the inner thoughts of Amy, who is thinking “so what?” if she should die. She believed that she was at the point where no one would care, and in that moment, she primarily felt sad for her mother and the situation. This is certainly a unique view on death: being so used to it that you simply do not care if it should come and claim you.

In “Bullet in My Neck”, Gerald Stern has a bit more of a severe encounter with potential death. He is shot in the neck by a couple of teenagers while sitting at a red light in Newark, New Jersey. He states that “Everything in such a situation takes on a life of its own, and the few seconds it took me to realize I wasn’t going to die seemed like a much longer stretch of time, and though my neck swelled up and blood was pouring out, my only thought was the get out of there as quickly as possible.” Here, we see a strong desire to survive. Gerald’s survivor instincts kick in, and, despite the rapid blood loss and potential for panic, he is able to gather his thoughts quickly enough to know one true fact: he needed to get to a hospital quickly. This is in stark contrast to Amy’s essay, in which she is far more accepting of her fate. Gerald could have simply sat there, letting the blood pour, perhaps believing that there is nothing more he could do.

Finally, in “The Big Nap” by Michael Perry, we are given a completely different view on death. Instead of being the person about to be (almost) killed, we see an EMT’s opinion. For instance, in one scene he writes about, he has been called to an elderly woman’s assistance and was attempting to save her life while her crying husband watched on. He says “I wish we hadn’t been called at all. I wish he had simply put the phone down and held her hand as she died.” I don’t view this as evil or anything, as it’s basic human nature to not want to bear witness to such terrible moments in life. Even so, it’s interesting that an EMT, a person trained to see and deal with death on a daily basis, can still be moved by each experience as opposed to being desensitized.

I think this says a lot about creative nonfiction. It shows that what the common person may think to be the most obvious topic to write about may be one of the least obvious. That readers can be surprised by the turns an essay takes, and the massively different views that separate essays can present when dealing with the same theme. Life and death may be common elements of nonfiction essays, but they certainly do not have to all be about a relative dying and being sad about it, or any other common trope.