The greatest gifts one can give do not always come in small packages. Sometimes the greatest present a person could receive is the utter extinction of a person’s very existence. Through death, we can sometimes benefit even if it evokes mixed deep uncomfortable feelings. Death for the sake of ritual and or tradition is an act that has been practiced throughout history. By today’s standards this seems morbidly disturbing. Death for relief, revenge, and or for the opinionated bettering of society has also occurred as long as recorded history.
This cold homicidal act is usually considered psychotically driven even if most everyone, whether secretly or openly, wanted the demise to occur. A death for acceptance, understanding, and or love is another gift of death as old as time itself but when the death is a self sacrificing act imposed on oneself for a loved one it does not diminish the sorrow and heartfelt pity it leaves the survivors for whom the victim died. Literature is wrapped with numerous examples of these three ultimate gifts of death. Let us explore an example of each and further our understanding of this great, grisly gift.
In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson’s death is a prime example of the accepted expected traditional ritualistic demise. Tessies life is randomly sacrificed for the greater good of her community and their belief that it will bring a prosperous harvest (Jackson 334). Tessie’s life is the price paid for a year of good luck and fortune for her whole community. To her family and friends it is irrelevant that Tessie is the victim. What becomes relevant is that for the greater good someone in the town must die by the vicious hand of the other townsfolk.
As brutal as it seems the annual murdering of an innocent being has long been practiced in many cultures. Look at the ancient Mayans and who they used ritual sacrifice to appease their gods. Whether the sacrifice is to please ones god or to manipulate the fate of the future for some traditional belief it is not that uncommon in fiction or fact. We may not agree with this way of thinking and acting, but nonetheless, Tessie’s personally unwanted but presumably self-foreseeing gamble towards demise is a gift seen by her peers as necessary, fair, and just.
It is a gift of death enveloped be a viscous mob that is ornately decorated with a ribbon of stones to be opened by her whole community in the name of ritual and tradition for the prosperous benefit of all. Fortunato’s gift of death in Edgar Allen Poe’s gruesome tale “The Cask Of Amontillado” is intended for all those individuals who had suffered through Fortunato’s taunting, bragging, and arrogance. Although Fortunato is completely unaware of his impending doom, we find that in the mind of a person like Montresor, who has been driven over the preverbal edge, Fortunato’s death is a psychotically rewarding gift of revenge (Poe 973-974).
Maniacs kill for various reasons but sometimes, as in the case of Montresor, a perfectly sane person can cross over to madness for the reason of alleviating the world of having to bear another human being’s contemptible existence. Fortunato’s death is a gift to all those who are unfortunate enough to have to have succumbed to his arogent matter-of-fact self promoting and bragging. This frighteningly grim murder, as evil as it is, is still a doorway to Fortunato’s present of no longer being. This is a gift that a sane person would morally despise but secretly relish.
His murder is a reward to all those whom Fortunato annoyed. It is presented within an enormous container carefully concealed with the intricate cruel paper of brick and held together using a sticky tape of mortar but it is a gift nonetheless. Paul Wilmott’s death, in D. H. Lawrence’s short story “The Rocking Horse Winner”, is filled with sadness and irony but it is still a gift. Paul’s departure from life is driven by the strong desire to please his mother Mrs. Hester Wilmott (Lawrence 1028-1029). The fact that Paul loses his life is, in his own mind, a small price to pay for that which he most wishes acceptance and peace.
Paul gives until he is extinguished, like snuffed candles on a cake, all in the name of what he believes would bring about his mother’s love. That which Mrs. Wilmott ultimately receives from Paul’s blowing out of life ends up being much more than monetary. His death shows her a mirror into her soul. She is tragically faced with the bitter reality that she has unwittingly implanted the seed in her son’s mind to make the ultimate choice to give his own life to appease her selfish heart. Mrs. Wilmott finds herself becoming the selfish vessel which encases the gift that is her own cold heart.
Those who sacrifice themselves for the love of others often evoke feelings of extreme pity from those who hear about it but in this case we are also faced with our pity for Mrs. Wilmott’s inability to have loved her son. Paul and Hester show that the gift of one’s own life in exchange for a glimmer of perceived happiness is dreadfully tragic. It is an extreme act of selflessness that Paul played out for a person who ultimately realizes her heart of cold hard stone is the cause of this horrible outcome.
His enormously giving gift of self-sacrifice is left behind forever to be opened and reopened by an undeserving receiver. In the end it is Paul himself who is the only real recipient of his gift of death. He at least dies believing he has done what it would take to please his mother. When you close your eyes and make a wish you will sometimes find the personal price of that wish is way to expensive. When death is delivered and wrapped, no matter how many bows and ribbons, no matter how ornate the parchment used is, the reality is that death is still death.
In these three literary examples, no matter how the deaths occurred and no matter how they made you personally feel, they can arguably be construed as gifts to someone. They all, from someone’s point of view, were justifiable. Whether it be a peer, a madman, or the victim themselves they all saw the deaths as a reasonable solution bestowed upon a twisted situation. It is said that the biggest gift of all may sometimes come in a small package, but as we have discovered, the biggest gift of all is sometimes the exact same size as a coffin.
