The Role of Illness and Death

The role of illness and death plays a different role in the lives of people. The way that one reacts to and deals with these situations depends on the way they view and value life. The ways the following people have dealt with illness and death have not only affected their own lived substantially but they have significantly helped the way these people have affected people in their own lives. Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Charles Darwin, Adolf Hitler, and Paul Tsongas have all been faced with some sort of illness or death in their own lives, though each one of them was impacted differently. In the following pages the impact of illness and death with each of these individuals will be viewed in comparison towards the others.

When one thinks of the name Osama bin Laden, they think of 9/11 or mass murderer. Bin Laden seems to be portrayed as a terrorist by the media but once looked into, he is a psychologically complex person acting out on feelings on what he had learned of as right through out his whole life. Bin Laden was obviously not born a terrorist, no one is, and these characteristics were a result of the role his family played in his life and his wartime experiences . Osama came from a wealthy family and attended school for a business degree. Being of a Saudi background, his society was very secretive especially about his family life. At a young age, about ten or thirteen, Osama dealt with the death of his father, Mohammed. This loss was large in the eyes of a Saudi and Islamic society considering they were both patriarchal and the males' role in the household was prominent. After his fathers' death, bin Laden put himself under the tutelage of other males, mostly older at that. In some ways, they replaced his father yet they were less powerful. He made his role models radical Muslim leaders.

Another way that the death of his father may have impacted him was in his decision to enter the Afghanistan war. Being part of this war and seeing the deaths of others just like him may have made him very indifferent to the idea of taking a human life. Justifying this may have helped bin Laden and his followers to carry out mass casualties as in those that happened on September 11, 2001 and his horrid attitude towards those who died that horrible day. These may just be small parts of one mans life that have affected him like this but they have played a large part in the American history of the 21st century.

Seeing how Osama bin Laden was affected by the death of his father, one may want to look back to World War II and the role Adolf Hitler had in the mass murder of the Jewish culture and people. When looking at the childhood of Hitler a reader would find that up until his adolescence, Adolf had a pretty normal childhood until his father retired and began spending time at home. Like bin Laden, Hitler was pushed away by his father maybe not by the same reasons; Adolf was literally beaten where bin Laden was pushed aside for his older brothers; and both lost their fathers at a harshly young age, when they needed a male figure in their lives. His life at home seemed to be totally totalitarian before his father had passed. The brutal ruler was his father and his mother and the rest of the children dealt with his moods, etc. The early life of his father seems to have reflected on Adolf greatly. Alois, his father, did not know who his father was nor did he really have a father figure in his life. It is possible that Alois' father was Jewish and that may have had something to do with Adolf's hatred for 'Jews' later on in life.

Another part of Hitler's life that may have affected him was his relationship with his mother. Hitler was loved very much by his mother and overly spoiled. This may have had something to do with the earlier death of three other children, Adolf was the only one who survived and she held on to that tightly. She firmly believed, as a practicing Catholic, that she was being punished for her adulterous activity with Alois before their marriage. Hitler had huge disdain for his father but never really showed it, possibly in order to be loved by his mother. Hiding these feelings for his father even after his death give a look into the life of Adolf Hitler and how he gave it everything he had in order to conceal much of his personality yet glorify the parts that were not the truth. He tried to stop any contact with his family. These acts of death, his father's and his mothers reaction to the death of her three earlier children, formed Adolf to what he became and brought out the hate he not only had in himself but the hatred he had in others.

Charles Darwin, one of the most controversial men in the history of the world, was not only affected by illness but also by death. The loss of his mother at the age of eight, though he does not remember her, did have a huge impact on his life. Because of his loss, he was in awe of his father; thought of his father as the largest man he had ever seen. After her death he began to spend his life with boys and men with educational segregation. This type of segregation from women in an all male society also impacted his fears and concerns over marriage. He wrote down reasons to marry and not to marry, and eventually decides that marriage was a good idea. He married his cousin, Emma and over time he had ten children. Charles was able to focus his marriage and family around his scientific work while being a devoted father and husband. Soon enough Charles again was faced with death, when illness affected his children or wife he became concerned. In 1851, his ten year old daughter, Annie died and Darwin himself was so devastated that he wrote a sketch of her. Later in life he was still affected by her death and tears would come down his face every time someone mentioned her. Emma's illness of migraines and her almost 16 years of pregnancy also upset him; he had compassion for his wife. It is thought that Charles Darwin may have been bitten by an insect forcing him to become a physical mess. He was also a hypochondriac which did not help with his own illness. Eventually he builds a cocoon around himself to do his research and his mind becomes a machine for pumping out theories. The death of his