Death

This chapter examines the persistence of death, and the related concepts of salvation and the afterlife, in the life and writings of Johnson. As a pious rationalist, death presented a conundrum for Johnson, one that (according to Boswell) pitted his intellectual faculties against illogical, religious fear. It was indeed a source of enduring angst for Johnson, revealed in this chapter by: (1) his holy fear of death, a Christian duty that Johnson believed to be a deeply rational position informed by the uncertainty of salvation; (2) his contemplation of the dead, and his grief over departed loved ones (including his mother, his wife, and Robert Levet); and (3) the various biographical constructions of Johnson’s character when on his own deathbed, finally confronted with his own mortality.