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Leslie Escobar
Professor, Topf
English 114B
26 March 2014
Postmortal Essay Final Draft
For many centuries immortality has been craved by humanity, the thought of living
forever sparks up the idea of a pleasure-filled life. In the book The Postmortal by Drew Magary,
he illustrates how humanity reacts once a cure for mortality is created. That means that people
get to live for much longer without worrying about getting old. That is something impressive, but
in the book it explains how it really can be if the cure would happen in reality. Initially it brought
out happiness to some people but at the end it ended destroying everyone. The cure brought out
problems such as over population, religion conflict in the book, which mirrors issues in society
today. I agree that we should address these issues because we are moving towards a degree
quality of life, our religion conflicts are escalating needlessly, and unsustainable population.
Just imagine if they get to live for decades with the cure for ageing. In other words they
will get the chance to explore things and travel around the world. They could spend more time
with family members and see grandkids and great grandkids grow. They will even have more
time to finish college since they will not grow old and they will still be the same age.
Nonetheless many people would not want to be married with the same person for decades. Many
things they can do with the cure and live a happy life after if they choose the right path.
For example, people will not want to be married with the same person for decades for the
fact that they will not find different thing to do for so many years. According to Barbara
Walterss article she describes how relationship wont work if you spend many years with the
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same person. She said, Well, if we live much longer than a century, our relationships, our
spending habits, our retirement plans are bound to undergo sweeping changes (Walters). This
means that the much time they spend with someone or doing the same thing they are going to get
bored pretty easily. They cannot find something to do every day because either they will be short
of money to travel around or they wont have the ability to spend much time seeing the same
person every day. In the book Postmortal John did not want to get marry with Sonia because he
knew that he would have to spend the rest of his life with her, which was going to be for decades.
Eventually marriage wont last longer anymore. Now in days people get marry and after you
know months later they are getting divorce because they did not found the happiness or maybe
they just got bored of living in the same roof with each other.
But by living longer the meaning of life will no longer exist since people would prefer to
live for decades. We came to this world for a short time not to live for decades. Everyone will
die when their time comes. Dont they think if they live forever they wont get tired of seeing the
same things all over again? Baines states in the Postmortal that without death, we dont learn a
goddamn thing about life (Magary 197). In other words, they need to have in mind that they
will die someday; therefore, they should live life without regrets. And everything they do they
should take it as a lesson. Many people now live life with regrets and scared of someone else will
judge them. They live in a shell and they are afraid to come out.
After when people got bored of living the same life they gave up on themselves. They did
not want to live the miserable life they were living, since they did not have any fun anymore.
Many of them decided to call the End Specialist to get killed; John and Ernie were the ones that
did the job. The End Specialist became more popular because people no longer wanted to live.
Like Chuck that wanted to die and he died because he was bored of everything. Everywhere he
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went, or the things he did were not fun as they were at the beginning. John and Ernie had to kill
Chuck from the cannon because thats what he wanted. Many people choose how they wanted to
die some of them died in a painful way and other did not have to go through pain.
Now people take advantage of life. They do not do anything to make the best out of it,
some of them all they do is stay at home, eat junk food and watch movies on Netflix. They do
not look after their health which is something that we will make them live a little longer. Instead
of going out with friends to places they choose to be home all day. They are not having the fun
they should have be having since they do not know when their time is going to come to die.
Lately we are having issues with religion. The book relates the issues to almost what is
happening now. Many things are applicable, for instant the book talks about how church does
not accept the cure and churches in the U.S do not accept gay marriage. In the Postmortal John is
one of many people that did not believe in religion. Now many people do not have the same
belief as many people did before. Things are changing as years pass by, for instant now there is
more controversy about same-sexual marriage.
In the book Johns son David helps him believe in God. David helps out John to realize
that killing innocent people or killing people in general was not good. David told John, You
should join us. You look You look lonely. Disconnected (Magary 216). John did not have
anyone to look after him after Katy, and his father died. The way that David wanted to help him
out was by sending him to the church where he goes. After that John decided to take a look of
how it was going to be at the church and he after all he quit his job. He got more connected to
God belief. Sometimes people do things that they do not want to do but when they feel lonely
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they separate themselves from other people and do wrong things. And there are times when it
will be too late to notice the mistakes that they have made.
The churches that do not accept same-sexual marriages are Catholic and Christians. The
book Moral Argument, Religion, and Same-Sex Marriage by Babst, Gordon Albert, Emily R.
Gill, and Jason Pierceson, discuss how Some claim religious law only permits heterosexual
marriage (Babts 11). Same-sexual marriage is something bad for many people since they have
grew up in the environment that have made them believe that same sex marriage is something
seeing as bad. Commonly Catholic and Christians people do not allow gay marriage on their
churches. Their belief is that that is against God and the bible. That should not be like that, if
people are happy marrying the same sex person that should not affect other people. They have
the right to be happy as everyone else is.
The book talks about how the cure caused overpopulation over time. That happens
because people took advantage of the cure. That actually is something applicable that is
occurring right now in The United States where we are dealing with overpopulation. In the
United States they are approximately 7 billionth people. People are having babies and knowing
the fact that we are short in sources for food, and water. People having more babies and fewer
people are dying for the circumstance that there is more treatment for medical problems. In the
article, Why Were Running out of Water by Andrew Nusca, she explains how we are short of
sources. How we dispose of water will have a direct impact on our future supplies of water, the
food we eat and our environment (Nusca). We do not actually think how much is going to affect
us later on since we are wasting water when we do not have too.
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The Postmortal points out how people suffered because they did not have enough food
and water for the fact that they had too many people. They were all suffering since they were not
getting any rain and stores were running out of water. Plus because it was over populated they
did not have enough room for people at the hospital. People were packed against all sides of the
hospital breezeway, between the two sets of glass doors (Magary 278). They did not have space
at the hospitals and because of that they had people on the floor. Many things happen because
people were not dying due to the cure for aging.
Since they were having overpopulation the government took over by killing people even
when they did not want to die. The End Specialist was in charge of that they went to people
house and tell them that they going to be killed. They were killing people that were old because
they thought that they did not have to live any longer. The government looks at old people as
they are not important to them. That is pretty scary because imagine if that happens in the U.S
because overpopulation is taking the same path as the one from the book. Innocent people would
have to die when they do not deserve to be killed.
In the United States we are going through over population. The cause of overpopulation
is bringing out more problems to the environment. We are polluting the planet for the reason that
many people are drying cars and fewer actually like to ride bikes. Another reason is where
people live; now there are people living on the streets because they do not have money to pay for
an apartment. There are fewer jobs opportunities for people and they dont have the money to
buy grocery due to the fact that the prices of things are going higher. For example the price of the
gasoline is higher now, healthy food is expensive. The only food that people will find cheap is
fast food, which is bad for their health.
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How can we help control over population? Well one way is by people stop having so
many babies. I think one or two babies are good but many people start having babies like if its
the thing to do. Another thing it could be used cars less and maybe use transportation instead
since that will help stop traffic. People can ride bikes and that is helpful for their health and with
that there will be helping the environment since they will not be making pollution. Reserve more
water, for example, when we take a shower, we take long showers when we could just take 15-20
minutes.
The Postmortal gives us many hits of what is going to happen to the planet is poeple do
not take action now that maybe it is not too late. Basically it is giving us the main points that are
occurring now in the U.S. The book points out how they were having overpopulation, religious
conflict and many more; those are some events that are actually happening now. The book has
resemble problems that the country will be facing later on in years due to people not taking
actions of things that are happening. Individuals should change the way they live since we are
not going to live for decades, for instead get out of their shells and be happy with what they
have.






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Works Cited
Andrew Nusca. Why we're running out of water. SmartPlanet. Web. 20 Mar. 2014
Babst, Gordon Albert, Emily R. Gill, and Jason Pierceson. Moral Argument, Religion, and Same-
sex Marriage: Advancing the Public Good. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009. Print. 18
Mar. 2014.
Magary, Drew. The Postmortal: A Novel. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.
Walters, Barbara. "Live to 150, Can You Do It?" ABC News. ABC News Network, 01 Apr.
2008. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.