Simone de Beauvoir’s A Very Easy Death

by Destini Baylis Adams

A Very Easy Death (1964) by Simone de Beauvoir

We are all going to die. No matter the culture or religion, everyone on earth knows that one day they’ll die. When the Covid-19 pandemic brought death to the forefront of everyone’s minds, I thought of my stepdad, who passed away when I was sixteen. January made it eight years since my stepdad passed away, and I was obsessed with how he would have reacted to it all. I wondered how he would have handled quarantining, being unable to see friends and family in person; the never-ending waves of new cases and variants, the feeling of uncertainty, if he could ever return to his old familiar way of life. I especially wondered how he would have handled wearing a mask- would his congestive heart failure make him unable to breathe? 

I was watching a video titled “Reading like Kat from 10 Things I Hate About You” when  the video creator, Sally Thames, mentioned that she would be reading A Very Easy Death by Simone De Beauvoir. Thames describes the book as “difficult but lovely” and said that De Beauvoir was candid in portraying grief. I had wanted to read De Beauvoir for a while, and hearing about her experiences coping with her mother’s death made me think of my own life, so I decided to start reading. De Beauvoir’s writing not only considers the inevitable truth that most people aren’t willing to acknowledge until it stares them in the face – that the people we know will inevitably die– but also brings some less recognized truths to the forefront: The grieving process does not always start when one’s loved ones pass away, but continues from the point that we know death is inevitable. When we grieve, we want to remember an idealized version of them. However, often reality gets in the way- especially when we have a complicated relationship with them while they’re still alive.  

The memoir begins when De Beauvoir’s mother, Francoise, is admitted to the hospital after breaking her leg. During Francoise’s visit, she finds out that she has cancer.  De Beauvoir’s shock is evident when she writes, “it is notorious that the parents are the last to admit that their son is mad; the children that their mom has cancer.” I felt more heartbroken for Francoise when her family “believed it all the less since that had been what she had been afraid of all her life.” De Beauvoir had never imagined that her mother’s obsessive fear of getting cancer could ever be justified and believed that there was a “wide difference between cancer and a sluggishness of the bowels that is treated with tamarind jelly” – the gulf in meaning between the idea of cancer and the reality of the treatment making it impossible to accept the truth.

“Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of,” Francoise says as she deals with the reality of her own death, while De Beauvoir deals with the inevitability of life without her mother. I felt like I was transported back into my sixteen-year-old mind, stuck worrying during the constant visits to the hospital. The initial image of the tumor blocking Francoise’s small intestine was hard to stomach. De Beauvoir describes the ordinary room that her mother stayed in for treatment, with an intravenous drip connected to her arm and a tube in her nose attached to an incomprehensible apparatus that ended in a jar. As “(her) nose was pinched and her face had shrunk even more; it was the saddest air of submission.” De Beauvoir slowly realized that her mother would never recover and be as she once was.

A Very Easy Death is written with objectivity. De Beauvoir does not get sentimental talking about her complicated relationship with her mother. She even says that her mother was closer and more fond of her sister, Poupette. This does not come across as bitter – rather, aware. The tension in their relationship comes from the intellectual esteem that Francoise had for De Beauvoir and which was lacking for her sister. When she confronts her mother about the loss of her Catholic faith, she produced a still greater strain: “The sight of her tears grieved me; but I soon realized that she was weeping over her failure, without caring about what was happening inside of me.” She goes on to say that they could have been on better terms if, “instead of asking everybody to pray for [her] soul”, Francoise had given her “a little confidence and sympathy.” The silence between these two women became impenetrable when She Came To Stay, another of De Beauvoir’s books, was released. Francoise had convinced herself that her daughter was a morally “good girl,” even saying to her, “I know you don’t think me intelligent; but still, you get your vitality from me,” to which De Beauvoir replies, “I should have been delighted to agree.” As Francoise lay on her deathbed, they both were aware of the tension between them, and, unfortunately, it did not diminish with her passing.

The Joan Didion-esque perspective helps De Beauvoir capture the full picture of her relationship with her mother. When I picked it up, I only knew that this book was about coping with her mother’s death. I thought that I would get a sentimental meditation on loss. I was hoping for a storybook ending where these two women reconcile their differences and come to accept each other as they really are. This is not what happened. De Beauvoir does not sugarcoat her reality. Instead, A Very Easy Death is a real-life account of the process of losing. My expectations had me on the edge of my seat throughout the entirety of my short reading, and by the end, I was reminded of how hard letting go of my step dad really was. Both De Beauvoir and her mother come across as holistic human beings, neither being the hero nor the villain. Though De Beauvoir is writing this personal account, I felt like I got an unbiased perspective on their lives and inner worlds.

A Very Easy Death ends with De Beauvoir saying, “All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.” I walked away from this book understanding that grief begins when we understand that death is imminent, that our time with each other is limited, and that we must make the most of it before coming to terms with that final separation. Learning this made me reframe my experience with my stepdad before his death. I thought that my grief started when he passed away, and that fear was all I felt before. This book made me realize that grief and fear are not mutually exclusive, that the unavoidable nature of death causes fear, and that fear becomes grief. 

While I enjoyed learning about the complexity of grief, I don’t think I agree with the ending of this book.  It simultaneously denies and acknowledges the truth: All men must die. It is not fair how soon some people die. It’s not fair how many are forced to meet death, but death is the ending everyone receives no matter how they’ve lived their lives. Yet De Beauvoir makes it seem that death itself is wrong no matter the circumstance. In a way, this black and white thinking in a way denies that death is just an unavoidable part of life. She acknowledges that “All men must die” but contradicts herself by stating that death is an “unjustifiable violation.” This final line clashes with the objective tone that she sets out throughout the book. Simone De Beauvoir was a human being, so she could not stay objective despite her best efforts. She comes across as angry – which is, in and of itself, a part of grief. But this anger reveals a part of the human condition. And that’s why A Very Easy Death is such a challenging book to read – it shows the complexity of grief in ways that, in our regular experiences, are hard to be made aware of. This book is perfect for anyone curious about the complexities of grief, anyone in the process of losing a loved one, and anyone struggling to deal with loss. This book mirrors the human condition- we all must die, but understanding this truth is never easy.