Deck 2: What Is Death What Does Death Mean

Question 1

The novel Frankenstein was strongly influenced by all the following EXCEPT the:

A) ongoing galvanic experiments
B) ongoing stealing and market of corpses
C) the Prometheus myth
D) its aged author's own preparation for death.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Darwin's shipboard experiments demonstrated thanatomimesis, which occurs when a:

A) dead animal is resuscitated by galvanic stimulation
B) live animal deliberately appears to be dead in order to avoid being killed
C) dead animal continues to move after it is no longer breathing
D) live animal consumes a dead animal for food.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

The position that death is not a sudden, massive event, but rather a complex process that takes place over time is promoted by:

A) Mary Shelley
B) Charles Darwin
C) Kenneth Iserson
D) Bakr Abu Zaid.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

"What then is death? It's not much of anything-simply one more event in a sequence that has no intrinsic meaning or value." This view can be found in:

A) On the Nature of Things (Lucretius)
B) the Old Testament (Christianity)
C) the New Testament (Christianity)
D) Islamic writings.

Question 5

The "deathification of sex" and the "sexualization of death" are associated with the teaching of:

A) Islam
B) the book of James and other passages in the New Testament (Christianity)
C) the Old Testament (Christianity)
D) Darwin.

Question 6

A New Age view of death is most similar to the views of:

A) Epicurus
B) the New Testament (Christianity)
C) Islam
D) the Harvard criteria.

Question 7

The perspective that death is subject to question, challenge, and revision like any other concept refers to:

A) healthy skepticism
B) symbolic construction
C) constructive symbolism
D) death denial.

Question 8

Mark Twain's account of the municipal "dead house" in Munich highlighted the practice of:

A) finding people who were alive but had been mistakenly pronounced dead
B) dropping hot wax on corpses to search for twitching as a sign of life
C) holding a mirror up to the nose and mouth of corpses to see if their breath was moist
D) using a wire to connect each corpse to a bell which would ring if any movement occurred.

Question 9

Jack Kevorkian, M.D. believed that this bodily function was the most reliable way to determine if a person is dead:

A) respiration
B) skin temperature
C) skin coloration
D) the condition of the eye.

Question 10

For more than 50 years, unresponsive patients considered as "beyond coma" have been known as having the following condition:

A) melancholia
B) metacomatosis
C) respirator brain
D) silent brain.

Question 11

Which of the following Harvard criteria would NOT have been familiar to physicians who practiced a century ago?

A) Unreceptive and unresponsive
B) No circulation to or within the brain
C) No reflexes
D) No movement and no breathing

Question 12

A transient vegetative state is defined by:

A) the cause
B) the duration
C) the location of damage in the brain
D) evidence of reflexes.

Question 13

The condition known to have been caused by brain damage that might be moderated or reversed is referred to as what type of vegetative state?

A) transient
B) akinetic
C) persistent
D) minimal.

Question 14

In 2008, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a report that examined various perspectives on what is considered to be the most significant development pertaining to death up to this point in time. This phenomenon is known as:

A) minimally conscious state
B) total brain failure
C) brain death
D) whole brain death.

Question 15

Which interpretation of death was associated with Mesopotamians and the ancient Greeks thousands of years ago?

A) Death is nothing.
B) Death is an enfeebled form of life.
C) Death is perpetual development.
D) Death is waiting.

Question 16

This interpretation of death was exemplified among ancient Egyptians and modern African groups:

A) Death is nothing.
B) Death is continuation.
C) Death is perpetual development.
D) Death is waiting.

Question 17

Evolutionary biology and philosophy stimulated the view of death as a time of:

A) cycling and recycling
B) enfeebled life
C) perpetual development
D) waiting.

Question 18

Which view of death emphasizes the three phases of suspension, judgment, and disposition?

A) perpetual development
B) continuation
C) waiting
D) cycling and recycling.

Question 19

Reincarnation, transmigration and rebirth as well as the symbolic Phoenix represent this interpretation of the death state:

A) perpetual development
B) continuation
C) waiting
D) cycling and recycling.

Question 20

The wheel is a core symbol of life and death for those who practice:

A) Buddhism
B) Shintoism
C) Islam
D) Judaism.

Question 21

Buddhism describes nirvana, the ultimate goal beyond the cycle of rebirths, as a state of:

A) nothing
B) continuation
C) enfeeblement
D) waiting

Question 22

"Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days." This attitude toward death and the dead was expressed in the:

A) Old Testament
B) New Testament
C) Quran (Koran)
D) Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Question 23

The ancient Greeks personified Death (Thanatos) as a twin brother to:

A) the Ruler of the Deep (Poseidon)
B) the Ruler of the Gods (Zeus)
C) Inebriation (Bacchus)
D) Sleep (Hypnos).

Question 24

Orpheus represented:

A) the power of forgetfulness of life's sorrows
B) the power of music over death
C) the power of revenge over both life and death
D) safety on the journey from life to death.

Question 25

Personifications of death have helped people to cope with death by:

A) objectifying an abstract concept
B) expressing feelings that are difficult to put into words
C) absorbing some of the shock, pain, anger, and fear that is experienced as a result of traumatic events
D) all of the above.

Question 26

The personifications of death found in the 1971 pioneering study included all of the following EXCEPT the:

A) gentle comforter
B) macabre
C) time keeper
D) gay deceiver.

Question 27

A 1997 follow-up study of death personifications found that:

A) Dr. Jack Kevorkian has emerged as a new image for death-the releaser
B) there has been a sharp increase in female personifications
C) women have more "grim and terrifying" images than men
D) all of the above.

Question 28

We recognize social death by observing how:

A) people behave when they think they are not being observed
B) a person is treated by others
C) healthy and vigorous a person seems to be
D) intelligent a person seems to be.

Question 29

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), capital punishment, and right-to die debates are examples of Foucault's notion of:

A) purgatory
B) social justice
C) necro-elitism
D) biopower.

Question 30

An individual who feels a "partial death" due to the loss of the ability to conceive children is experiencing:

A) phenomenological death
B) parapsychological death
C) social death
D) proxy death.

Question 31

The components of The Undead Complex include all of the following EXCEPT:

A) something mysterious happens between life and death and between death and life
B) scary stuff, because the decomposition of the body is so repulsive
C) something explosive happens as reanimated corpses leave the ground
D) sacred stuff because gods control the life and death cycle.

Question 32

Works of art commissioned during medieval times often displayed the theme of death as the:

A) great leveler
B) great validator
C) ultimate solution
D) ultimate meaningless event.

Question 33

Large and expensive funerals entered American life:

A) in the colonial days
B) after the Civil War
C) during the 1890s
D) after World War II.

Question 34

Studies have found that obituaries in big city newspapers:

A) give equal attention to the deaths of men and women
B) give more space and often use more photographs in reporting the death of men
C) print more photographs relating to women's deaths
D) are usually written by women.

Question 35

The Prometheus story, about a young man who becomes alive again after dying, inspired Mary Shelley's writings.

Question 36

The people of many world societies have long believed that death is marked by the separation of soul from body.

Question 37

Before the emergence of Christianity, other religions in the ancient world had emphasized a connection between withering away and fertility.

Question 38

Suicide and martyrdom, especially in earlier eras, were seen by some Christians as a preferred alternative to sexual indulgence.

Question 39

Schultz and Huet (2000/2001) found that in popular and award-winning films, male characters were six times more likely to instigate death and female characters were twice as likely to be the victims.

Question 40

In the past, people who experienced a stroke, epileptic seizure, or diabetic coma might have been pronounced as dead instead of receiving treatment.

Question 41

Catatonia is a neurological condition in which a person is conscious and able to think but cannot move any part of the body except the eyes.

Question 42

Akinetic mutism is defined by an inability of the human brain to initiate action or speak even with preserved sensorimotor pathways.

Question 43

According a report issued by the President's Council on Bioethics (2008), the term "total brain failure" excludes "death" because this condition should be verified rather than just being assumed.

Question 44

According to Kastenbaum, virtual reality has decreased the significance of the actual body of the deceased having to be a part of funeral rites and memorialization.

Question 45

The Catholic concept of "purgatory" was advocated by Luther and Calvin as a state of suspension.

Question 46

In Homer's epic, The Odyssey, the sailors are visited by a hybrid bird-person with heads that resemble women, who lures them to their death.

Question 47

Utilization of the skeleton as a symbol of death developed in medieval Europe.

Question 48

In a 1971 study of the ways we personify death, masculine personifications were given much more frequently than feminine.

Question 49

In the 1971 study of death personifications, most respondents viewed death as grim and terrifying.

Question 50

In a 1997 follow-up study of death personifications, women continued to favor the image of death as the "gentle comforter" while men described death as a "cold and remote" person.

Question 51

Feeling dead to one's self due to drug and alcohol use, or simply from aging, represents a part of phenomenological death.

Question 52

Biomedical developments and portrayal of vampires and zombies as the Undead continue to foster ambiguity about the borderline between "alive" and "dead."

Question 53

Unlike zombies, revenants and vampires have been associated largely with the voodoo religion and Creole culture as practiced in Haiti, West Africa, and areas of the U.S. South.

Question 54

Islam's history involving men and women being expected to wear special garments, ihram, on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, exemplifies the idea of death as the Great Validator.

Question 55

Fatal accidents are one example of a random, meaningless death event.

Question 56

What is the definition of the terms

-Biopower

Question 57

What is the definition of the terms

-Brain death

Question 58

What is the definition of the terms

-Catatonia

Question 59

What is the definition of the terms

-Coma, comatose

Question 60

What is the definition of the terms

-EEG

Question 61

What is the definition of the terms

-Ihram

Question 62

What is the definition of the terms

-Intravenous fluids

Question 63

What is the definition of the terms

-Martyrdom

Question 64

What is the definition of the terms

-Minimally conscious state

Question 65

What is the definition of the terms

-Necropolitics

Question 66

What is the definition of the terms

-Nirvana

Question 67

What is the definition of the terms

-Purgatory

Question 68

What is the definition of the terms

-Revenant

Question 69

What is the definition of the terms

-Thanatopolitics

Question 70

What is the definition of the terms

-Transient vegetative state

Question 71

Vampire

Question 72

What is the definition of the terms

-Vegetative state

Question 73

What is the definition of the terms

-Virtual reality

Question 74

What is the definition of the terms

-Zombie

Question 75

List any five of the common signs used in the traditional determination of death.

Question 76

Name the five Harvard criteria for brain death.

Question 77

What is the difference between viewing death as an event versus a state?

Question 78

Describe any three of the meanings that have been given to death.

Question 79

Describe two problems that may be encountered when telling a child that death is a long sleep.

Question 80

Explain how Kastenbaum reached the conclusion that the view of the New Age and Wicca movements toward death is more similar to that of Islam than to the views of Epicurus, Christianity, or the Harvard criteria. Fully describe each view of death in your response.