Death in Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, City Cafeteria, And Death Shall Have no Dominion and Grandparents Death is a highly personal. It affects each of us differently. He hit Peter Kocan's man in the city canteen making him look empty and disoriented. He influenced Dylan Thomas by making him think about what would happen next and what could be done to avoid it. Death also affected Robert Lowell, making him realize how much it had changed his life. Luckily, I feel like I've avoided death in many ways, but I've also been touched by it, even recently. While I was preparing this essay, ironically, one of my pets died. It was a hen called Ellephante, which belonged to my younger sister. I didn't know what to think. I don't think, even now, several days later, I feel that the chicken is gone. I guess I'm in denial. I constantly revisit, in my mind, the times I walked into my backyard to be greeted with a flutter of wings and a white body running down the hill to greet me. I imagine this sentiment is similar to that expressed in Grandparents, by Robert Lowell. As he walks around the farm, which now belongs to him, he feels a certain pang of loneliness, of missing his grandparents. Small things made him angry: the gramophone and the coffee-stained pool table. Little things still make my sister angry: going to the shed to feed the remaining chickens, or looking out the window and not seeing that other white shape we have come to know and love as Hellephante. Taken before its time (the dog next door is undoubtedly the culprit), I don't think Ellephante "went sweetly into that good night." Ellephante was a feisty chicken, always very vocal and very affectionate and gentle... middle of paper... I look at death as Dylan Thomas does - as a natural progression from life. I'm not sure what I believe: some days it's reincarnation, other days it's a very scientific return to a state of atoms in different forms, other days (when I'm upset) it's just being buried and then it stops, some days it's brought by this world to another. I don't know if I believe in Heaven or Hell as such, but it's nice to think about it sometimes. Unlike many people I know, I do not fear death: I once feared it, but I have come to accept it as an inevitable part of life, which everyone will have to face. I only know that when the time comes to leave, I want people to remember the good moments and not dwell on the bad ones. "Dying is as natural as being born; and for a small child, perhaps, that is as painful as the other." Francis Bacon - 'Essays "On Death"'