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About this quote

What does it mean?
Janet begs others to wake the dead, showing she refuses to accept the reality of death.
In plain terms
She wants to wake the dead but does not understand they are gone.
What can you take from it?
Grief often leads to denial of death.

Where it applies

  • funerals
  • mourning

Putting it to work

  • understanding loss
  • grief counseling

Questions to consider

  • How do people cope when grief is too much?

Another view

Denial is a natural stage but not a permanent solution.

More from John Crowe Ransom

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  2. And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard. You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore? May you know it yet ten more.

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  3. Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husbands, her aunts, an infant of three, And …

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