What The Dead Know Analysis

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A fable teaching a lesson about a doctor who abuses the power given to him and a short story about dead people coming to life, seems completely different in plot and intentions. But when these two pieces compared together, there are similar. In Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “Godfather Death” and Manuel Martinez’s “What the Dead Know”, the common theme of cheating death and selfishness shown between the two stories. The Doctor in “Godfather Death” was given the gift from his godfather, Death, to become a successful doctor. With that power given to him, the Doctor soon realizes that he can bend the rules for his own motives. Death stands on either end of the bed of a patient to decide the fate of the patient’s illness. The Doctor uses that fact …show more content…
But when the King becomes sick and Death stands at his feet, the Doctor wanted to save the King and cheat death. The Doctor says, “If I cheat death this one time…he will be angry, but since I am his godson, he will turn a blind eye, so I will risk it.” Knowing that Death was his godfather, the Doctor assumed he can get away with it. But when the King’s daughter became ill, the King promised anyone that saved her would become her husband. The Doctor using the same technique to cheat death, only wanted to inherit the crown, instead of helping people. This act of selfishness thus ended his life. The Doctor wan not content with his life as a successful doctor, but wanted a throne for himself. He put himself before his patients and paid the price. The Dead in “What the Dead Knows”, when resurrected, morals in life change. They wanted to live life to what made them happy, completely unconcerned with anybody else. The mindset of the dead was that they had a second chance to live, so they only wanted to do things that they never could when they were alive for the first time. Martinez states, “They were unconcerned with social conventions, and others’ feelings mattered only to an extent that they fit the formerly dead’s conception of how life should unfold.” The Dead lived their second life in constant state of selfish behavior that the living could not simply
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