Argument+3

**Death**
Reasoning of death itself.

Clithero vs Edgar, is the overall approach to death that is seen in the novel. Clithero's choice to die with the knowledge that he killed someone trying to help them, rather than having someone try to instill into his mind that there is no justification for the murdrer he has commited. Sarsefield's judgement of Clithero underlines what society has made him to belief. History itself has proven that society has been wrong many times in the labels it has placed upon 'crazy' people, simply because of their contradtion to the majority. Clithero is one of these 'crazy' people who stood firm until his suicide. In contrast to this firmness, Edgar's constant change in reasoning for Clithero's actions, where initially he places no justification for the death of his friend Waldegrave, too later feel pity for that very assain. Not only pity but Edgars agrees with Clithero as to the murder of Mrs. Lorimar as a solution to her grievences."He desired to confer on her the hightest and the only benefit of which he believed her capable. He sought to rescue her from tormenting regret and lingering agonies." Although their view is pessimistic, it has come from one individual's mind, not from the minds of the majority whom simply follow what they are told. Clithero and Edgar share the idea that "Death is but a shifting of the scene, and the endless progress of eternity, which, to the good, is merely the perfection of felicity, is, to the wicked, an accumulation of woe." Death should not be seen as the beginning of sorrowful, and depressing sentiments but rather the commencement of happiness and the end of sad sentiments. This reasoning did not seem to go in accordance to what Sarsefield believes, thus we see that Edgar ultimately ends up siding with Sarsefield, his mentor, father figure, and admitting that he was wrong from having been misguided from a "powerful benevolence". Edgar goes through constant changes in his state of mind, to only end up ignoring the knowledge (whether it had been accurate or not) he had previously gained with Clithero "Consciousness itself is the malady; the pest; of which he only is cured who ceases to think", and simplistically agreeing with what Sarsefield had told him.

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Bibliography
 * Brown, B. Charles. __Edgar Huntly: Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.__ Penguin Classics, 1799.