Sample Essay On Self And Grave

In the simplest terms, a grave is an excavation in the ground where dead bodies are buried. The grave is a sad place. People adopt an air of melancholy, whether genuine or fake, because that is how people should behave by the grave (it is part of the ritual of burial) and because they mourn the end. The more hopeful, those who believe in life after death see it as the beginning of something new. Still, something only begins from the end of what precedes it, and the grave says this life is over and those still left in it are sad for being left behind.
Personally, and maybe like many other people, I used to loathe graves. Graves scared me to death. It is not as much about the fact that they mean the end, but more for the fact that they are such small spaces. Looking down into the six-inch hole, I can almost feel a replica of it somewhere in my chest. I can feel myself plunge and plunge deeper into it, and in my mind, it is not a six-inch hole but an abyss, an endless hole with no landing. It is the small space of it, the realization that the person in there cannot move even if they wanted to- of course, they would not, probably. But I know that feeling, the feeling of wanting to be somewhere else, to do something you love, to choose and decide and be disappointed and have another chance to choose and decide again. This is where the grave takes a new meaning; a metaphor that applies to the living, not the dead.
Essentially, according to Tuan (3), place denotes occupation. It represents security, that one can be identified with something, whatever ‘place’ they hold on to. Space, however, is about freedom. Here is a demonstration to help make these two clear. Place is what one has taken. For example, if one buys land, they have taken a place. That land is theirs for as long as they have not given it up or sold it. In other words, that land marks their place whether they are there in person or not. Those who know will always identify that ground with the name of the person. But that is not to say that place only has to do with ownership. It also has to do with even a temporary possession. For example, as long as one’s car is packed in the parking lot, they have a place and no one can take it until they move. But space represents the possibility of acquiring a place. It means the freedom to pick a place. In other words, a place occupies space.
However, ‘space’ and ‘place’ mean different things to different people. For some, a six by six meter room is just enough space. But for others, even a 30 by 30 meter room is still small. Part of it has to do with the reason for which wants the space. If a person wants to sleep and they are looking for a space for a bed, then a six by six meters room still works. However, if one wanted to dance to salsa, they a bigger room is needed. In fact, each of these reasons may seems misplaced is not done in the right room. For example, a 4 by 5 inch bed in a 30 by 30 meter room seems quite odd. But even worse would be trying to dance salsa in a six by six meter room. In essence, these two latter cases may feel ‘out of place’.
But then again, people can still feel confined even in biggest spaces and free even in the tightest of spaces. In other words, although space freedom to chose, people will in the end only choose what feel right, what makes them feel ‘in place’. It is in these meanings that we find the metaphor of grave for the living.
As already noted above, grave means the end of life as we know; that is, the essence of life, the elements that define life such as the ability to eat, to sleep and wake up and go to work, among others. The simple theme here is that of choice. Even for the religious who believe in life after death, once a person dies, they lose their freedom to choose, their free will. The dead can no longer make amends; they can wait for judgment day when they will be rewarded or punished for all the good or wrong they did before the first life. The living may seem to have that freedom. Well, they do have some of it. But each person is limited by certain factors (including lack of actual space to maybe build a home, lack of money, lack of information). They lack ‘place’ because of lack of ‘space’. They are metaphorically dead and inside a metaphorical grave, so now they are ‘out of place’.
As Tuan (11) notes, space as freedom is also about being able to do what will one likes. If all a person wants is to share a special moment with a lover, then dancing salsa in a six by six meters room might still feel liberating. This is related to what Tuan (17) refers to as space in the mind, the psychological aspects that define the ‘self’, what brings out our true selves. In this case, it is not really about the space in the physical world, but the space in the mind, the awareness that you can choose to dance and share it with someone you are most comfortable with, the person who makes you feel free to do what you like, to be you.
Price (126), for instance, examines the relationship between the place and experiences. Price notes that homes mean a lot to people. This is because, she says, homes are to people where their most intimate relationships are honed. Home tends to have the same calming and freedom effect on people however it looks, whether it is small or big. Lahiri (112) points out this paradoxical relationship between freedom and confinement in the home, the fact that people feel free within the confined space of a house.
This effect, Price implies, is a psychological one. People feel at ease at home. It provides them with security. The effect of ‘home’ in this case is a demonstration of Tuan’s notion of freedom as the absence of danger, which he implies in the anecdote of not feeling free in open sea as the mind contemplates all the danger that might lurk in all that expanse of water. Imanian (2) also stresses this question of danger and its implications on one’s sense of security, even at home.
Despite my reservations with the grave, I have to accept that I will die one day, and will be buried in a grave. I have come to start focusing on the premises of the grave as the beginning and less as an end to something. In this respect, I think the grave, just like home, is the paradox of freedom in confinement, in small spaces. It is the home we return to when we are done with the day and the troubles of the outside world, where we can be ourselves once again. The grave has to represent liberation. It marks the end of the world’s reign of us, puppeteer running our lives with the stick of ‘freewill’. While my body is confined in space, my spirit is free like sweet freedom two lovers slowly swinging on their feet in confined space, and still feeling like they are swooping in open space in the skies. Everything is possible, and my spirit can transcend the boundaries I never could in life. The physical world is the grave, arresting my abilities, and the grave my freedom from it.
Indeed, space, place and grave have much deeper meaning than just the physical aspects. It is a little complicated. Probably the interpretation is personal one. This is Tuan says throughout the book; that the grave and freedom is a metaphor. It goes beyond geography. What they mean to a person depends on their definitions of space, success and death. This paper is my personal interpretation of it.

Works Cited

Price, Patricia L. Dry Place: Landscapes of Belonging and Exclusion. Minneapolis:
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1979. Web
Imanian, Sara. “Children’s Sense of Security in Social Spaces”. SAGE Open, 4.4 (2014)
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Rhodes Island Reflections. N.d. Print.