How to Grow Old赏析

How to Grow Old赏析

王璐 20102251

Bertrand Arthur William Russell is a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. He is a philosopher lived nearly hundred years. His biggest charm is not, however, philosophy, and literature. Once won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, literature of the highest awards he, with his simple and beautiful language to tell you how to have a successful life.

This essay mainly discussed the best way to overcome the fear of death as you get older. The author pointed out that it is bad for old people to grow old happily if they were immersed in the memory of the past good times and the sadness of losing good friends. The structure of this essay is clearly divided into four layers of meaning. The first one is about the author’s opinion that old people shouldn’t fear death. The second one is about the approach to overcome the fear. The third one is about how to spend your life. The last is the author’s hope. All Russell’s ancestors did not live to a ripe old age. His great grandmother was such an exception that she lived to the age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendents. As soon as she became a widow, she devoted herself to woman’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. Her attitude towards her

grandchildren is contemplative and philanthropic, rather than unduly emotional. According to the author, the proper recipe for remaining young is to get involved into what you are interested in. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of you future. The author thinks there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past, the other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. In the opinion, the best way for an old person to overcome the fear of death is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal. Then the author used a simile to compare the life of an individual to a river. This comparison vividly showed every stage of life, and described the attitude to death which almost every person fears. The author’s view in this essay is surely taken seriously throughout the essay, and the theme of this essay is very outstanding and was demonstrated very clear and vivid.