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Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2003) 9: 211-217
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Death and dying in literature

John Skelton

John Skelton is a senior lecturer in medical communication skills at the Department of Primary Care and General Practice (University of Birmingham, Edgbaston B15 2TT, UK. Tel: 0121 414 3767/8534; e-mail: j.r.skelton{at}bham.ac.uk) and Director of the Interactive Skills Unit, which runs courses in communication and interactive management skills in the West Midlands and beyond. His first degree is in English literature and, before his career in medical education, he worked in applied linguistics. He has published widely in both applied linguistics and medical communication. With colleagues, he has run a special study module in literature and medicine for medical students at Birmingham.

This paper considers how death and dying are presented in literature. A wide range of texts, principally but not exclusively from the English language tradition, is used to illustrate themes. Broad categories are suggested for the study of death: some authors give personal accounts of their impending death or their sense of bereavement; some use literature to structure and order our thoughts about death; and some treat death as a literary device, using it, for example, as a symbolic representation of the decay of society. It concludes that the biggest obstacles that health professionals and patients face as they attempt to understand death in literature are concerned not with a lack of appropriate emotional depth, but with difficulties either in understanding the conventions of literature or in coming to terms with the cultural gaps imposed by time and place.




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