A Journal Of The Plague Year Essay

Words: 1438
Pages: 6

Death is the end of the life of a person or organism, and the death could either be quick and painless or long and painful. Death happens to everyone, there is no escaping death. There are good sides to death. Humans just have to remember death serves to console the dying man and that death is not something to be afraid of. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe writes stories of human suffering from the London plague of 1665, both physical and psychological. Readers cannot help but be affected by the pervasive and continuous examples of despair, pain, and grief. The pain of the plague was so severe some wished for death. Ars Moriendi, The Book of the Craft of Dying, is a manual of Christian literature that provided practical guidance for the dying and those attending them. These manuals informed the dying about what to expect, and prescribed prayers, actions, and attitudes that would lead to a "good …show more content…
The plague was perplexing in nearly all of its elements to those who lived through it in London at the time of 1665. The explanations of its origins were rumors, and it was difficult to know exactly how it entered the city. How it spread was also a matter of speculation. Some people believed it was by breath and others believed it was through contact with a sick person's bedding or clothing. Doctors were unsure how to tell whether or not a person was sick, how long they had been sick, and what was the best way to cure them. Often the sick did not know they were affected until it was too late, so many people spread the plague unknowingly. Sometimes people dropped dead in the middle of the street, unaware of the illness until the hour of their death. So many people were dropping dead in the streets that the job as caretakers became very popular. The caretakers were left to take care of the corpses that were littered in London and Defoe writes