Death has long been a subject of philosophical debate, and many theorists have cultivated various ideas about it. A frequent concern in many schools of philosophy is the person’s increasing awareness of death and eventual acceptance of it. The Stoics, for instance, viewed death as a natural and inevitable part of life. Freud argued that two opposing drives impel a person and are in tension—a drive toward living and a drive toward dying: “The aim of all life is death” (Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920).

Alluded to in the story, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross posited in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, that when facing death, a person undergoes five distinct stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her theory is referenced in a conversation between the narrator and the friend. The friend says she can’t remember the stage that follows denial (3). The narrator remembers but does not share the stages, suggesting that both women are presumably stuck in the denial phase, unwilling to accept that death is the end for both of them, and the friend’s death will arrive sooner than the narrator’s.

Throughout “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” the narrator’s many fears are understood as substitutes for her larger fear of death, since

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