Being Dead Death Scene Analysis

The chilling death scene of the married zoologist couple, Joseph and Celice, when they are brutally murdered in the dunes of Baritone Bay, serves to a illuminate the greater meaning of Jim Crace’s novel, Being Dead, as a whole. Joseph and Celice who met and fell in love thirty years earlier during a research trip at Baritone Bay, have finally decided to return to the location. Their return was prolonged by the guilt that plagued Celice for many years after the death of one of her peers, Festa. Upon return, they find a seemingly secluded area to picnic and have awkward, yet intimate sex, but are soon viciously beaten to death by a man who then steals their belongings.
The scene serves to highlight and emphasize many themes and character traits, which contribute to the

Animals and organisms of the dunes alike begin to feast on their open wounds and benefit from the injuries. This supports the meaning of the work as a whole by showing that once death initiates itself all that is left of the person is a spiritless and meaningless corpse to be thrown into a coffin, just as the deceased couple eventually are after they are found. In addition, the narrator describes that both Joseph’s and Celice’s “characters” bleed out of them into the lisom grass as they are dying. This supports the overall meaning by describing the state of being dead. In the novel, when a person dies, all that is left behind is memories or any materialistic thing that the individual left behind. However, these may not mean much for people like Syl, the zoologist’s daughter, who held no sentimental feelings of any of her father or mother’s personal belongings that she discovered at their home. Once death has come, the person’s spirit is extinguished and they reside in a state of nothingness. The person does not stay behind but instead is swallowed up by the uncaring