The Denial of Death

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1973

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Preface-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface Summary

Immediately, Ernest Becker lays out the main thesis of The Fear of Death, which is that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else” (ix). Death is such a powerful concept that it is actually the main driver of human activity. Becker writes that the anthropologist A. M. Hocart argued that “primitives” (ix) instead seemed to celebrate death with their rituals. However, Becker counters that it still seems that “the fear of death is a universal in the human condition” (ix). The tendency of certain societies to celebrate death comes from a kind of negation of that fear, in the belief that there is an afterlife or some kind of positive transformation following death.

Becker lays out two major goals in writing The Fear of Death. The first is to try to combine together various views on the human condition, even ones he disagrees with. The second is to summarize modern psychology since Freud (xi). In particular, Becker wants to engage with the work of psychologist Otto Rank, who “had his own, unique, and perfectly thought-out system of ideas” (xiii).

Chapter 1 Summary

Becker begins by describing how, in his own time, people want “concepts that help men understand their dilemma” (1). One such concept is heroism, which is basically why people want to be seen as great and famous. Drawing on Freud, Becker argues that behind the need for heroism is narcissism, which is the human tendency to put oneself ahead of others.

This narcissism is most apparent in childhood. The selfishness of a child “expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation” (3). Once a child becomes an adult, this becomes the heroic impulse to stand out more than anyone else. According to Becker, this desire even shows up in mundane ways, like the desire to own a bigger car than other people. In fact, Becker defines a society as “a symbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customs and rules for behavior, designed to serve as a vehicle for earthly heroism” (4), with different societies and cultures having various “hero systems” (5).

Becker lays out several problems with the hero system of his own time and society. So-called “primitive” societies manage to give all of their members a sense of heroism. However, Becker sees modern societies as unable to give everyone in them that sense. So, the demand for that recognition manifests in campaigns for “freedom and human dignity” that are actually about being “given a sense of primary heroism” (5). It is also a problem when younger generations no longer believe in their culture’s hero system, which Becker believes is the case in his own time. He writes, “The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up” (6). This has led to a rejection by younger generations of both traditional society and religion.

Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis

In the Preface and introductory chapter, Becker spells out his main argument:

The main thesis of this book is that [...] the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man (ix).

This idea is not entirely original to Becker, as he admits. Becker’s purpose in writing The Denial of Death is that it is an effort to fit this idea into the context of modern psychoanalysis.

It is also important that Becker is writing at a time when there has been significant social unrest across the Americas and Europe, as well as history-changing victories by social movements like the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements in the United States (see: Background). The 1960s and ’70s saw countercultural movements that challenged or outright rejected traditional religious and social institutions. This is what Becker means when he writes that the youth “no longer feel heroic” (7) and have lost faith in their own culture.

Brief as these chapters are, they also introduce the three major themes in The Denial of Death. First, there is The Problem of the Modern World. As will become clear in later chapters, Becker views the modern world as overseeing a loss of belief systems that provide individuals with a sense of transcendence and mystery (200-01). Becker also hints at his view of the Binary of the Bodily and Symbolic by noting that “primitive” societies addressed the problem of the fear of death by cloaking death with a “ritual elevation” that most “modern Westerners have trouble believing any more” (ix). Lastly, there is Dealing With the World and Culture. In these early chapters, Becker first introduces the idea that it is the role of culture and society to provide people with a way to assert their own individuality in the face of death and the cosmos.