# What Death and Mortality means in The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford

> A recurring preoccupation with death, the terror of dying, and the struggle to find meaning or comfort in the face of mortality, especially when traditional religious assurances about an afterlife have been lost.

## Explanation

A recurring preoccupation with death, the terror of dying, and the struggle to find meaning or comfort in the face of mortality, especially when traditional religious assurances about an afterlife have been lost.

The entire poem is a meditation on the speaker's imminent death and his physical decay.

Rutherford prays for death during his depression and later fears dying 'the most contemptible of all deaths' from alcoholism.

Rutherford reflects on the inevitability of death and the contradictions of life, seeing good and evil as inseparable.

Miss Mardon's death and Rutherford's subsequent broken-heartedness, as well as reflections on death as a regenerator, are central.

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