Dead Endings: Making Meaning from the Afterlife

Abstract

We can read death and the end of a novel in similar ways; expecting both with certainty and, perhaps, having hope for a revelation of the meaning of what has gone before. The extra-temporal position in an eternal afterlife can be equated with the position of the reader at the end of a narrative, as comparison with the experience of reading allies the afterlife with the time after the end of the novel, when a succession of events can be understood as a whole. However, in emphasising the place of the afterlife as a model for the end and after of a narrative, it is important to situate both as tools for making sense of the world and of life. In reading and the afterlife, meaning is constructed as part of a hypothesis for an unknown future, but one which feeds back into making sense of the present. Reading about the afterlife forces these connections to the surface.

It transfers…in a flash…from you to…there the reader — And back. That’s it! ‘And back.’ You feel it…come back.

‘Close to me and Closer…(The Language of Heaven)’