Connections

In the section on Ahimsa, Gandhi brings up the subject of fearing death. "If we are unmanly today, we are so, not because we do not know how to strike, but because we fear to die" (97). This statement reminded me of other works we have read this year. Gandhi's statement corresponds with The White Castle and with Socrates. In The White Castle, the narrator says of Hoja, "...he didn't fear the plague; disease was God's will, if a man was fated to die he would die...If it was written, so it would come to pass, death would find us. Why was I afraid? Because of those sins of mine I'd written down day after day?" (Pamuk 73). In The Trial and Death of Socrates, Socrates says, "Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in war, contrive to avoid death at any cost...It is not difficult to avoid death...it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death" (Plato 40). All three men share the belief that one must face death in order to be courageous. This common theme is essential in the platforms of each man's religious beliefs. In America, the common attitude towards death is fear and sadness. This attitude is far different from that of other cultures and time periods.