Voices of Death

by Edwin S. Shneidman

Voices of Death is composed of personal documents -- letters, diaries, journals, confessions, reminiscences, interviews, and suicide notes -- written or recorded by people threatened by death. Searing, often beautiful, accounts of the human spirit in heroism and despair, each in its own way is a rutter for the passage we all must make. Interwoven with the personal documents are Dr. Shneidman's own humane and searching comments and suggestions.

Voices of Death does not deny the reality of death but, with compassion and hope, points the way for each of us to help both ourselves and others face death with courage and with grace.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Death

209 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1980

About the author

Dr. Edwin S. Shneidman (born c. 1918) is a noted American suicidologist/thanatologist. He with co-workers from the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center provided a major stimulus to research into suicide and its prevention. He was the founder of the American Association of Suicidology and of the principal United States journal for suicide studies, Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior. He is Professor of Thanatology Emeritus at the University of California and lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Paul Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voices of Death is a truly amazing look at what people communicate before they die. It is beautifully written, graceful in the way that it mixes together suicide notes, letters written by the terminally ill and condemned, and dialogue with the grief-stricken. This is a book that should be on every nightstand throughout America because it deals with one of the few things we all have in common: each of us must somehow face our own death.

Although most people are completely content to put off thinking about their ultimate end, the dying quoted in this book bring a kind of eloquence and understanding to it that is both moving and uplifting in scope.

Edwin S. Shneidman was one of the pioneers of modern thanatological theory (thanatology: the scientific study of death and the practices associated with it, including the study of the needs of the terminally ill and their families), especially concerning suicide. His approach to the subject in this book is extremely poetic. Quoting Melville extensively, Shneidman compares the wisdom imparted by the dying, the suicidal, and the survivors of death with the navigational logs, or rutters, kept by navigators as ships throughout Europe set sail to discover the world. The information imparted in these rutters was necessary for those who followed, so that navigators would know where shoals were located, which locals were hostile, what times of the year were unfavorable for weather in certain locations, and so on.

Those who have navigated the path to and through death have written their own rutters to help themselves and the rest of us to understand the difficulties of dying. The first third of the book concerns the voices of suicide. Suicide notes impart to us information about suffering from the living who are soon to depart by their own hand. Most illuminating here are several accounts written after a failed suicide attempt that should have succeeded. The second section of the book concentrates on the voices of those who are suffering a terminal illness and those who are soon to be executed. Unlike those considering suicide, these people no longer have any say in whether they will live or die. They will die and their thoughts on being removed from life before their time is extremely enlightening. The third section of book deals with those who have survived the death of a loved one. Mourning itself is shown to be a powerful psychological issue, especially for those who simply cannot accept the loss. It is like death itself.

The final section, containing Shneidman's concluding thoughts is simply beautiful. The words of this distinguished scientist who studied death for most of his life are especially elegant when he considers the inevitability of his own death.

Written in a simple, down-to-earth style, this book shines with the voices of people on the brink of death. And in the end, despite what some might consider a very dark topic, there is a beauty and grace that overcomes our gruesome mutual end.

I truly recommend this book for all readers!

[Ban Shee · Rating 4 out of 5]

|face death with courage and with grace |

[Nate Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't like it. Got halfway through and quit.