Author's Note: This was inspired by an article I read online. It talks about the many stages of grief. I found some of the information very interesting, and thought I could easily compare the stages to many books and movies.
According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. People may go through these stages in a different order, but acceptance of the loss is always the ultimate goal. A person's grieving process is as unique as the person themselves. People handle grief in many different ways.
Denial is the stage where you are in a state of denial and shock. You don't believe anything that just happened, and your life simply becomes meaningless and overwhelming. This stage is shown in the book, Life of Pi, when Pi is on the life boat. He denies that his entire family had just died. Instead, to tell his story, he replaced people with animals.
Although it may not seem right at the time, anger is another stage in the healing process. Your anger can be aimed at anyone. This stage can be found in the movie, The Patriot. When Benjamin's second eldest son is killed by a British patrol, he and two of his sons track the patrol down, and eliminate each and every soldier of the patrol. At one point during the fight, Benjamin uses his tomahawk and viciously chops continuously at the final remaining soldier, even after he is dead. Benjamin purposely over killed the soldier because the anger and grief inside of him intensified to the point where he had to let it out physically.
Bargaining is another stage in the Five Stages of Grief. This is where the "if only…" or "what if…" statements come to your mind. You want every thing to be the way that it had once been, and wish you could have done something to prevent your tragedy. When Katniss of Hunger Games, watches Rue die in her arms, she instantly regrets splitting up earlier that day. If only I had stayed with her… What if I had protected her? These thoughts surely flowed through her mind as she watched her new friend slowly die.
You have to understand that depression is an appropriate reaction to grief. Depression does not automatically mean you have a mental illness. This stage is where you feel very empty. Life is meaningless. Nothing seems to get you to show any emotion, whether it's good or bad. Janina's mother in Milkweed experienced an overwhelming sense of grief when she was kicked out of her own house by the Nazis and forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto. The family lost everything including their freedom because they were Jewish. The mother's grief manifested itself mostly in the stage of depression. Unfortunately for her, she was unable to survive her depression and she died.
People grieve differently. They may pass through all the stages quickly, or they may get stuck in a stage for a lengthy period of time. Acceptance of the loss is the ultimate goal. Here, you finally accept your new reality. It does not mean you forget the loss, but you learn how to continue to live despite it. Acceptance allows you to move forward past your grief and into your future.
