On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying

Angelou, Maya. "The Last Decision." Poem (1983).
An elderly person speaks about not wanting to die yet. "Today," the speaker declares in the poem's last line, "I'll give up living."

Chekov, Anton "Misery." Short story (1886).
Iona Potapov, a taxi driver, tries to share his grief over the death of his son with his passengers and others, but they do not understand. At last Iona reconciles his grief when he tells his horse about his sadness and she "breathes on her master's hands" in tacit understanding.

Dickinson, Emily. "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." Poem (1890).
Dickinson's famous poem describes a peaceful carriage ride as a metaphor for death. The first stanza describes picking death up as a passenger. As Dickinson writes, "the Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality. "

Donne, John. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Poems (1624).
Donne meditates upon his experience of the stages of illness. This poem is the source of the well-known quotation: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind . . . never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Novel (1930).
Addie Bundren is dying in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Her husband, her children, neighbors, and doctor speak about her in individual chapters in a fancifully dense tale about honoring Addie's wishes.

Hemingway, Ernest. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Short story (1936).
A young man in Africa with his wife is frustrated by his terminal illness.

Lawrence, D.H. "The Ship of Death." Poem (1947).
A poem about preparing for and accepting death.

Oe, Kenzaburo. A Personal Matter. Novel (1964).
A father whose son is born with a brain hernia tries to avoid responsibility for the child, turning to alcohol and an ex-girlfriend in his confusion and anger. He agrees to give the son only sugar water, but the boy lives, and the father realizes he cannot abandon his dying son.

Rilke, Ranier Maria. "The Swan." Poem (1982).
In this poem by Czech poet Maria Ranier Rilke, dying is described as a swan who leaves land, and the water "receives him gently."

Roth, Philip. Patrimony, A True Story. Novel (1991).
Philip Roth writes about the death of his father, Herbert, who is diagnosed at first with Bell's palsy, then a brain tumor, and finally, terminal cancer. Roth writes about his father's increasing helplessness, his own emergency quintuple bypass surgery, and his dreams of his father speaking to him from the grave.

Thomas, Dylan. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." Poem (1951).
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's famous poem in which a son asks his father to fight death-"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Woolf, Virginia. "The Death of the Moth." Essay (1942).
An allegory of the lifespan of an insect who hovers about a flame.