This essay examines two personal essays—Toni Bentley's "The Bad Lion" and J. Churchon's "The Dead Book"—as contrasting meditations on death. The paper argues that each author's reaction to death is shaped by her underlying conception of what a "life" is. Bentley treats life as fundamentally social, interpreting the lives and deaths of lions through the lens of human relationships, family bonds, and moral transgression. Churchon treats life as fundamentally biological, focusing on the body as a vessel whose animation defines personhood. The paper analyzes both perspectives in turn, then critiques them as ultimately incomplete, noting that neither account addresses the ineffable dimension of existence that death most clearly reveals.
The paper demonstrates comparative textual analysis: two source texts are examined not in isolation but in dialogue with each other, organized around a shared conceptual question (what is a life?). This structure allows the writer to highlight meaningful contrast without simply alternating summaries.
The paper follows a clear three-part structure: an introductory framing section establishes context and thesis; two parallel body sections (one per author) develop each perspective using quoted evidence; and a combined analysis-and-conclusion section critiques both views and gestures toward a broader understanding of death. The parallel structure makes the comparison easy to follow and reinforces the central contrast between social and biological conceptions of life.
Death is a profoundly sensitive topic in our society — one we do not fully understand, yet one that is governed by clear social conventions. When death occurs in the presence of others, we are expected to be solemn, reflective, and tender. We are also expected to focus on the deceased person rather than on the phenomenon of death itself.
The essays by Bentley and Churchon are valuable precisely because they record reactions to death that were not performed in front of others. As a result, those reactions are less bound by convention, making them more honest and, admittedly, more unsettling. Unsettling, however, is exactly how most people privately experience death — so the effect is entirely appropriate. How one reacts to death depends largely on what one understands "life" to be. Bentley and Churchon take two very different approaches to the meaning of death in their essays, and those approaches are shaped by their respective understandings of what a life is. For Bentley, a life is a social phenomenon; for Churchon, it is primarily a biological one.
Bentley views a life — whether human or animal — as a social phenomenon. The significance and meaning of one's existence are determined primarily by one's social ties and interactions. On safari, she describes the "bad lion" in terms of family tragedy rather than natural spectacle: "…with his brother and three females: a mother and her two grown daughters. The mother had no tail. She had lost it along with two of her four cubs in a hyena attack four years ago. The two remaining cubs are the grown daughters with her now" (Bentley, 2009, p. 3). Although safaris are intended to showcase the exotic beauty of nature, all Bentley could see was a lioness's tragic life story.
For Bentley, the murdered lioness was significant because she was an elder of the pride, the mother of an alpha male, and the victim of a violent outsider. She characterized the lioness as heroic because she "…separated herself from her pride…to divert Satan and his brother from them, her family as it were. The females in a lion pride are related: mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts" (Bentley, 2009, p. 4). For Bentley, the significance of a life is contained almost entirely in its "life story." Because death precludes further social interaction and severs all social ties, she naturally views it as tragic and regretful.
Bentley's conception of life leads her to interpret the lions' behavior through the lens of human sociology. She is particularly disturbed by the gruesome killing of a female lion by a violent male she has nicknamed "Satan." Bentley attributes a higher degree of conscious volition to the lions' actions than is commonly recognized in animal behavior. She describes Satan's repeated murders of sexually uncooperative lionesses as "…deviant, the need to dominate gone awry, even for a lion," and concludes that Satan is a "…serial rapist, necrophiliac, (and a) killer" — terms ordinarily reserved for human actors.
Churchon views life not as a social phenomenon but as a biological one. For her, human beings are bodies — brimming with energy one moment and completely inanimate the next. This animating energy is the dividing line between life and death.
When animated, the body is more than a body; it is the vessel for a person, complete with a particular personality, a history, a smile, and a laugh. When that animation ceases, however, the body becomes a mere object — one that Churchon, as a medical professional, must preserve, package, and store according to hospital protocol: "Whenever a baby died, I wrapped it in a blanket, and then, around the blanket, I wound a sky blue disposable pad. I took the football-sized package — baby, blanket, and pad — down to the morgue and opened the door of the refrigerator there and placed the package on the glass shelf as gently as I could" (Churchon, 2009, p. 44). This clinical description captures the tension between professional duty and personal grief that runs throughout her essay.
Churchon's focus on the biological dimension of life produces distress when she witnesses the expiration of those very faculties. While preparing a body for storage, she recalls thinking: "The person to whom this pulseless neck and silent heart and these dilated pupils belonged is gone. Yet ten minutes ago, one minute ago, Mrs. Jones was still here, still breathing…" (Churchon, 2009, p. 45).
The body is the physical symbol of a person while that person is alive, but what does it represent after death? Viewing dead bodies was unsettling for Churchon because they no longer signified what they once had: "As I flash my light into each pair of eyes and feel each pulseless neck, I think, Who were you?" (Churchon, 2009, p. 45). The bodies perplexed her because they had become symbols emptied of meaning — signs that no longer pointed to anything.
Although death marks the end of life, it does not necessarily mark the end of existence. The end of life is merely the end of existence in a particular form. Churchon pays excessive attention to this form — the human body and the consciousness that animates it. For her, the person is extinguished when the last breath leaves the body. This materialist view of mortality forecloses the possibility that something persists beyond biological cessation.
The essays by Bentley and Churchon are valuable as exercises in aesthetic contemplation. They explore aspects of death that are rarely examined with such earnestness and skill. However, both essays ultimately represent limited views of death and of life. They focus exclusively on the social and biological aspects of existence, neglecting the profound, ineffable dimension of life that presents itself most clearly at the very moment of death.
Bentley, T. (2009). The bad lion. New York Review of Books (November 5, 2009).
Churchon, J. (2009). The dead book. The Sun (February 2009), 43–45.
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