Written Preparation

Q: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow. Use your own language.

Human Beings feel afraid of death just as children feel afraid of darkness; and just as children’s fear of darkness is increased by the stories which they have heard about ghosts and thieves, human beings’ fear of death is increased by the stories which they have heard about the agony of the dying man. If a human being regards death as a kind of punishment for the sins he has committed and if he looks upon death as a means of making an entry into another world, he is certainly taking a religious and sacred view of death. But if a human being looks upon death as a law of nature and then feels afraid of it, his attitude is one of cowardice. However, even in religious meditation about death there is something a mixture of folly and superstition. Monks have written books in which they have described the painful experience which they underwent by inflicting physical tortures upon themselves as a form of self-purification. Such books may lead one to think that, if the pain of even a finger being squeezed or pressed is unbearable, the pains of death must be indescribably agonizing. Such books thus increase a Man’s fear of death.

Seneca, a Roman Philosopher, expressed the view that the circumstances and ceremonies of death frighten people more than death itself would do. A dying man is heard uttering groans; his body is seen undergoing convulsions; his face appears to be absolutely bloodless and pale; at his death his friends begin to weep and his relations put on mourning clothes; various rituals are performed. All these facts make death appear more horrible than it would be otherwise.