HUMN 201
ESSAY
The Resurrection of Death
The one main perfection that an individual can have by being a human is having the ability to have an ever-expanding thought process. With this perfection, humans can distinguish themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom via the ability to have free will. Even though humans are perfected in making their own choices, they are flawed as to the decisions they make; one being the choice of war and death. Usually, the power of deciding over what is right and wrong can easily be made. But there are times where the right choice can lead to wrong consequences, even if those consequences weren’t meant to be; which then lead to the unnecessary birth of fears within the mind which is in this case, finding a way to escape from reality. The first third of H.D.’s, Trilogy, is an extraordinary example for showing how the right choice can lead to wrong consequences and its aftermath. In this third of the trilogy, H.D. expresses and establishes her vision on war, and the consequences that fall behind the choices made from the war. That major vision on the first-third of the trilogy is the fact that she knows that war is the meaning of “inspiration [and] …gloom: /” (H.D. 1) which is fueled by the thought of fear of the reality she is in. It is easy to come to the realization of how war can create a since of what kind of gloom, and” Evil that was active in the land, /” (H.D. 2) followed by the longing for a rapture commencing after the act of war. It is also apparent that the author is longing for this rapture after witnessing the war first hand; “Pompeii has nothing to teach us/… /the heart burnt out, dead ember/tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered, /” (H.D. 1) From the created fears stirred by her surrounded environment, she then created a longing for a source of inspiration, more so a form of a rapture; in which the author turns to the Ancient Egyptians and their gods. The reason for the choice of ancient history as the foundation for the author’s form of rapture is because of two things. One, the Ancient Egyptians created a system of life that revolved around the event of dying and the belief that there is still some form of afterlife or resurrection of the body that occurs after the event of dying. And two, the Ancient Egyptians believed that this form of resurrection is the only right way of escaping the troubles and anguish of facing living consequences. Through this background knowledge, the author creates a parallel between death and resurrection as her form of escape from reality. From the “…roar in the high sky/” (H.D. 12) creating “over us, Apocryphal fire, /” (H.D 1) serves as the living consequence from the war, the author saw that with all the hostility, she could depend on the past to help her “…light a new