What it Means to Die With Dignity

Excuse some reflections on the death of Liam Payne. I want to say that he proves, alas, that death does not come in one direction.

Before the 19th century death was about the Nunc dimittis and submission to God’s will. In the 20th century it was glamourised in Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon, satirised in Waugh’s The Loved One, analysed in Jessica Mitford’s American Way of Death, and depicted as raging against the dying of the light by Dylan Thomas. Now, in the 21st century, death seems to revolve around the modern Jonathan Dimbleby/Polly Toynbee question about whether we, in the United Kingdom, ought to have ‘dignified’ deaths. By this they mean that we should be helped to commit suicide, or that we should be murdered by doctors, especially if the state thinks the utilitarian calculus will be served by a bit of assistance-unto-death. (You know, knock off granny to save a bit of capital.)

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