Happiness in Life and Death

Ernest Hemingways, "Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and Emily Dickinson's, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," "Success is Counted Sweetest," "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died," and "Because I could not stop for Death," all show how happiness can be found both through life and death. Fear, desire and acceptance are three common life factors that can lead to ultimately finding happiness in both life and death.

Hemingway shows how fear can overtake the lives of human beings when he tells the story of Macomber. He shows how his fear leads to problems in his life and does not allow him to live life to its fullest. His strong fear of the lion eventually allows courage to become present in his life and when Macomber finds the courage to overcome his fears he begins to be happy with his life, although there are other problems going on in his life. On the other hand, as Macomber's wife sees him overcoming his fear and his building courage, she becomes fearful of her husband. She notices that her husband is tarting to become happier when his is overcoming his fears, and this is when her fear takes over her life and leads to the death of her husband. Hemingway shows that human life should not be lived full of fear, but courage needs to be present to overcome the present fears and allow humans to live a happy life.

Dickinson shows how desire leads to happiness in life, in both "Success is Counted Sweetest" and "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant." In the first poem she tells of how success is very important in the lives of human beings, it is what all humans desire and essentially is one of the basic entities of life. The desire of success, will eventually lead to success, but different people will have different understandings of the success of which they find, for the ones who have experienced success less or not at all, will appreciate and notice the little things about success more than those who are constantly successful. In the second poem she shows how the desire for the truth ultimately leads to happiness in life. Although this happiness cannot be found if the truth is told straight up, the truth has to be found at the own pace of different individuals. For sometimes the truth can be hard to handle, and to be happy people need to understand the truth to its fullest and therefore needs to be understood at the pace of the individual.

In both "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died" and "Because I could not stop for Death," Dickinson portrays the importance of acceptance in the lives of humans. In the first poem she tells about fearing death and her ultimate fate. But through her time of death she realizes that in times of death, nothing is meaningless. The most insignificant things become meaningful and therefore we need to accept death and put full confidence in our fate. In the second poem she shows how the acceptance of death is important in living life. She describes how death has presented itself in her life and how it has finally arrived to take someone. She then recalls her past, and through her past memories she finds that death should not be feared at all for it is a natural cycle of life, and that through accepting death it will lead to hopefulness and happiness of a persons true destiny.

Although life and death are considered the opposite in most minds, in the simplest forms, life and death are based upon the same entities. Humans need to live their lives to the fullest, but at the same time need to learn to accept their fate and ultimate destiny in order to be able to overlook death and live life the best way possible. There is no need to let fear of death to take over ones life, for it will lead to problems, and it is much better to live a life of happiness rather than fear.