“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm…
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
progress through the guts of a beggar.”
(Shakespeare IV.iii.28-32)
One of main overlying themes throughout William Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is the idea, as exemplified by the quote above, that death acts as an equalizer between individuals. Specifically in this example, Hamlet states to Claudius that despite the power, wealth, and status of his position as a king, in death he can rank below a beggar. It embodies the idea that regardless of how much you achieve in life, and no matter your socioeconomic standing, you can never beat death – it will eventually consume everyone, making death an equal playing field. Yet one aspect of death being a great equalizer that I never thought about was the fact that the life leading up to death, and what ultimately what becomes the reason for death, can differ greatly between individuals, making death an unfair experience for many.
The CSI:Dixie cases offers an insight to these stories. These inquests provide some background information into the lives of the people at the morgue. One thing, however, that I found interesting, as Stephen Berry points out on his website is “that inquests do not remotely represent a complete portrait of how people died at a particular place and time. They represent only what the ruling class of a community chose to investigate.” (Homicide | CSI: Dixie). This was a very interesting point that caused me to raise the question – do we, as an audience, choose the stories that are circulated in the market? In other words, what is the impact of society in determining which marginalized groups get a voice, and which do not?
While scrolling through the page of homicide deaths, one that I found very interesting amidst a plague of brutal and unfair deaths, was that of a man named Gabriel. His inquest finding states, “died from wounds inflicted upon him in his rebellion and violent resistance against his master. A justifiable homicide.” (Homicide | CSI: Dixie). The statement pronounces that his death is one that “justifiable”. This leads to me wonder, if a life narrative was published around Gabriel’s life, would the public see it as no more than a blank sheet of paper? It also makes me question how the way we perceive life narratives changes throughout time. Perhaps society would not be accepting of Gabriel’s autobiography in the 1800’s, whereas now perhaps it would become a bestseller. In the article by Rebecca Onion, she identifies that “the documents collected in CSI:Dixie were the results of inquests that tried to resolve each local death in a way that would ensure stability in the community”. (Slate Magazine) In other words, a conclusion was conceived to ensure that the social organization of the community is not to be disrupted. This highlights the power of a life narrative in its ability to propel change in society, or at least bring to light the injustice that builds a social hierarchy.
I find it interesting that in documenting the past, it can show how we can go about change in the future. Much like the documenting of widespread epidemics, injustice is just another infection that has caused the death of many individuals. Yet I still wonder about the role of the audience in the success of a narrative, and how we approach the social issues that many of these narratives dictate. Is a narrative’s success a result of the fight for equality – for example now that marginalized groups have a greater voice in justifying their own actions, and we have lend more attention to listen? And if that is the case, does that mean the audience has the say in what stories are “justifiable?”, and which social issues are important enough to disrupt our concrete organization of society?
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Print.
“Homicide | CSI: Dixie”. Csidixie.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.
“The Hundreds Of Life Stories Found In Coroner’S Reports From The 19Th-Century South”. Slate Magazine. N.p., 2017. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.