Apologies for the late augmenters post.
During our class on Katheine Anne Porter’s story, we extensively discussed the conversation around death, particularly in Miranda’s looking forward to death as an escape, but she also clearly flees from death.
I think reflecting on this now is very interesting, especially in relation with the interview we watched for Dream of Ding Village , where Yan Lianke discusses how books portray people as fearless of death (in the context of war) but in reality everyone is actually scared of dying. In a way we see Miranda as a character representing that split in how people want to act, but in reality cannot act in that way.
Also, in the conveners’ post for the book, they brought up death and religion of trying to maybe study how much of her views on death are dependent on her christian faith. This reminded me of Jacques Derrida’s book The Gift of Death which very interestingly studies “questions first introduced in his book “Given Time” about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide.” (Book depository)
I would not consider this book a light or fun read, but it’s interesting if you want to think of death in new ways.