Josie

by Vance Palmer

Death is something that people face every day. In Vance Palmer’s short story ‘Josie’, he discretely explores how people react to and cope with life death.

‘There had never been such quiet in the school before. No one wanted to move; no one wanted to look around.’ The quiet and shock that invades the school after the announcement of Josie’s death is harrowing, even more so when the reader learns that, ‘We had nearly forgotten about Josie … No one had ever liked Josie very much,’ demonstrating the idea that she was an outcast, making her death all the more upsetting. 

The general immediate reaction was the speculation of the circumstances of her death, illustrating the truth of human nature; fear. The fear in the children is fear of losing their lives, when they speculate that Josie died of a disease, ‘It ain’t catching, is it?’ Palmer also successfully demonstrates human remorse, ‘But it seemed wicked to think of all that now,’ in reference to people's afterthoughts on what Josie did ‘wrong’. 

One main part of this story, however, is the ways in which people justify their sins. By telling the story of Bob Sheddan, and how his quote, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner,’ changes people’s perspective on life, Palmer illustrates the ways in which people can justify their recklessness as ‘living life’, to maintain the illusion that they will go to heaven or other as relative to their own religion and beliefs. This is a coping mechanism, because death is one of the greatest fears a human can face. The tale of Josie and how her death affected her peers perfectly illustrates how people cope with the idea of death, and how they obtain religious absolution to live comfortably within themselves and their actions.