Grief (novel) The stages are denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. The narrator, as well as other characters in the story, slowly passes through these stages in trying to deal with death. During the story, the theme of dealing with grief overcomes the narrator, the landlord and Frank. Premature death grief results from the guilt that they try to deal with because of the AIDS epidemic. Many of their friends, for example one named Nick is overcome by the disease. When told about his HIV, Nick “looked like a deer caught in a car’s headlights for weeks... he even chased the doctor who
Grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, "On Death and Dying". Based on the uncredited earlier work of John Bowlby and Colin Murray-Parkes, Kübler-Ross actually applied the stages to persons who were dying, not persons who were grieving. Her studies involved her work with the terminally ill. The popular but empirically unsupported model describes in five distinct stages how people deal with their impending death. The five stages are: The theory holds that the stages are a part of the framework that helps people learn to live without what they have lost. The stages model, which came about in the